“Pre didn’t understand the concept of winning”- Jonathan Gault

Can't we just split the difference? 4th at the Olympics at age 21 is an incredible feat, regardless of how the race goes. Add in his US titles and records, and he was one of the very best runners of his era, and one of the best Americans ever. The guy wasn't Bekele, but if he had been born 50 years later, there's an excellent chance he'd be one of the best Americans today and a global threat.

This other stuff...eh. Pre had better race tactics than he's often given credit for, but if your goal is to run with the most "guts", that's actually a whole lot easier than running to win. Yeah, you suffer, but the suffering is the easy part, relatively. The hard part is to feel the gradual rise of pain, to see your dreams suspended in front of your eyes, as if close enough to reach out and grab, to feel a building temptation to relax off the knife's edge into the certainty of maximum effort--and to nevertheless maintain the distance runner's equanimity, to run with the foreknowledge that the pain is coming and yet to remain clear-eyed and coldly logical, to be carried by the waves yet not be consumed by them.

I'm no Pre (or Malmo), but I know these feelings, as probably do most of us on this site. Running at the top level may make these feelings more intense, but it doesn't change the overall dynamics. And I don't believe there's anything about Pre's running style that was "tougher" than his competition. Pre wasn't a god or a special breed of human. He was just a really, really good, intensely popular runner who died too soon and became even more of a cultural phenomenon than he already was.

centro 2012 1500

He ran 3:54.6 in 1973 when the WR was 3:51.1 by Ryun. He was only 21 at Munich, at that time he didn't have that kind of mile speed. I think it's reasonable to say he was starting to get even better.

What everyone is forgetting of course is back when he ran US athletes had little choice of when and where they could compete due to the AAU and their TV meets. If an athlete refused to run in an AAU sanctioned meet, well, they weren't allowed to run anywhere else. He also was fiscally poor and had to train and race without sponsorship money.

"What American born male has won an Olympic gold medal at 5000 in the last 60 years? For that matter other than Kenyan born Chelimo and Lagat what American has medalled at 5000 in the Olympics or Worlds?"

You're the one who needs comprehension skills. It was pretty obvious I was referring to the time frame since 1964. Dunce.

"Big boys"? Viren was only about 18 months older than Pre.

And do you really believe Pre taught anything to Viren and Stewart on how to "find their courage???

Dave Wottle got lucky and ruined American middle distance running for the next 40 years. Heck, I'd argue that result still stains American thought process, based on how often it's touted and the number of ignorant coaches who teach it that way.

In Las Vegas sports betting there is the well known concept of the right side and the wrong side. Lots of guys show up in the community, win early, and squawk. It means absolutely nothing if the games selected are clearly the wrong side. They become a laughingstock even while collecting. Nobody cares about short terms results. Keep applying wrong side variables like giving points with mediocre teams based on current form and you'll leave town broke on a bus.

In that realm everybody understands long term foundational truths, that if you continue to apply methods that defeat the norm by a vital few percent, it turns into a gold mine grind. Volume and an edge. Ceding ground in top company is the wrong side. It will always be the wrong side, regardless of sport or the occasional outlier like Dave Wottle. Wrong side types are forced to rely on outliers because their overall thought process is so screwed up.

Ethiopians and Kenyans in distance running. Yes, there will be flops. Yes, there will be dopers. That is all normal distribution. But if you continually apply right side tactics like sending out waves of your most athletic youth to train at altitude and run fast from the front, that is classic right side. Heroes emerge, ones who never know that Dave Wottle types even exist, far in their wake.

Naturally the doping dunces don't understand as much. I wasn't surprised at all by the identity of one poster in this thread who proclaimed that a sole result is everything, while raving about Dave Wottle. That genius is forced to denounce every front running assembly line right side East African as nothing but a doper, because his lilliputian mind has no concept of defeating norms via volume and edge.

Steve Prefontaine was right side. Dave Wottle was wrong side. If the years had mounted the results would have added clarity. Regardless, the United States has recently and finally emerged from the Wottle malaise with a genius frontrunner like Mu, even as there is still pathetic devotion to Hocker types and the ever-brilliant obsession with closing times.

It's also hilarious that the doping dunces desperately root against Jakob. His tactics are the essence of right side. Make yourself the pacer while scoffing at conventional wisdom.

That's what he believed in the beginning of his career. Sadly we'll never know how he would develop with racing and thinking.

Yeah, he got a chance to speak more on the subject. Yet, you're stating his knowing/not knowing like you actually talked to him. Your assumption is just from one piece of podcast content, which Rojo tried to use against him, simply to make fun of him.

In the 51 years since Pre finished 4th, no American has finished 4th or higher in the Olympic 5,000.

Gault seems to be reinforcing a misconception about Pre being a frontrunner. He was not unless he was going for a record. Most of the time, he sat in the pack until the last 3 laps then did a long kick. He was never going to win an Olympics because he wasn't strong enough to run away from a world class field -- few athletes are -- and his last lap kick was substandard. Rod Dixon, I believe, beat him every single time they raced, usually with a kick.

Have you heard of Paul Chelimo?

Here is what I see as a very relevant piece of information relating to the automobile accident and death of S. Roland Prefontaine. There has been plenty of speculation and the world might not ever know the real truth, but for those that belittle Pre's legacy to that of a drunk this is worth a read. From Geoff Hollister's book "Out of Nowhere":

Sitting in the stands at Hayward Field at the Prefontaine Classic
in 1995, a man tapped me on the shoulder, “Geoff Hollister?” I
said, “Yes,” and he responded, “You might want to talk to my
son.” I moved up a row.
“I was the tow truck driver that responded to the call for the
Prefontaine accident.” He told me that after that event, he quit
his job, moved to Alaska and became a commercial
fisherman. It’s hard to describe what I was feeling. I’d spent a
lot of time dwelling in Pre’s world while I was working on the
film projects, but the moment of his death had always been
elusive. Here was a guy who could shed some light on
something I’d been wondering about for years.
He told me that the night of the accident he was ordered by
the police to lift the car so Pre’s body could be removed.
Reports indicated that Pre had not worn a seatbelt. Reports also
indicated that he did not suffer one broken bone. Yet the tow
truck operator recalled that when he lifted the car, Pre’s body
went up with it. I struggled with how that could happen if he
wasn’t strapped in.
The day after Pre died, Eugene Police Chief Allen seemed
almost proud to announce Pre’s alcohol level and added,
“Steve Prefontaine might have been a hero to kids, but he
wasn’t to us.” I wondered about the alcohol level, as I had
been close to Pre his last few hours. He was so busy talking, he
hardly had time to eat or drink anything. With his parents,S
Bowerman, and his high school coach, Walt McClure, all at the
house, this wasn’t a binge party. I knew he had lost
considerable fluid in his 5000 effort hours earlier and he had
eaten little.
What I didn’t know was how the accident scene was
handled. Officer Rex Ballinger’s accident report was riddled
with mistakes, from getting the license plate number wrong to
reporting tire skids on the pavement that simply were not there.
Sergeant Richard Lovell, the same officer with whom Pre had
once had an angry exchange in the downtown mall over Pre’s
unleashed dog, was one of the first to arrive, and his dislike for
Pre is well known. The county medical examiner was never
called. A Dr. Jacobsen had come down from his home above
Skyline and asked to at least make an attempt at CPR. The
police simply said it was too late. They transported Pre’s body
to England’s Funeral Home, where the mortician was asked to
draw the blood. The mortician countered that he did not do
that. The police ordered him to do it anyway.
Dr. Ed Wilson, the county medical examiner at the time, is
still upset today over what transpired. He made it his mission
that the public would vote on a policy change in Lane County:
in the future with any non-natural death, the body must be
taken to Sacred Heart hospital for testing. The vote passed.
I have always been concerned about DUI and the use of seat
belts. A vehicle is a big, dangerous weapon. But I am also
convinced that Pre could be alive today. The Alvarados, who lived
in the house closest to the accident scene, confirmed there was a
second car at the scene of the accident, yet it drove away. The
police, who had already decided this was a single car accident, left
the Alvarado’s account out of their report. Bill Alvarado tried to
chase the car down but failed. He returned to the accident a few
minutes later and said that Pre was still breathing. The driver of the
other car, Karl Bylund, passed a police polygraph test, saying that
he left to go get help, as his father is a doctor. He never returned.
Pre struggled to breathe for at least five minutes. If that driver had
returned to the scene, he and Bill Alvarado could have lifted the
car off of Pre. They could have saved him.

I don't know why J. Gault would make this absurd statement.

Running hard and forcing your competition to work hard to beat you might be great, but it isn’t really “winning” as Gault was using it in his sentence. He clearly used “winning” to mean coming in first place.

If we want to broaden the definition of “winning” to mean something other than coming in first, that’s fine, but then we could find a lot better examples of “winners” then people running around a track for fun.

Talented runners love to chalk their running success up to “courage” or “heart” that less talented runners supposedly lack.

There’s no need to change the definition of winning. Pre won LOTS of hard-fought, competitive races. He was a winner.

What are the World Games (not the World Champs!)