Since no one else has posted on it yet, I suppose I will offer my thoughts on the new Steve Prefontaine biography. Short version: It's great. Well worth the read. Now for the long version:
The book caught me by surprise right from the start. I learned that Steve (as well as his older half sister, Neta) endured corporal punishment. Steve's mother, Elfriede, either beat the two kids herself or demanded that their father, Ray, take the strap to them. Brendan O'Meara writes, " While it is a stretch to connect a straight line from being beaten as a child to Steve wanting to then 'abuse' his competition, the pain he endured at the hand of his father was, without question, a condition of his upbringing, in the same way that the pervasive culture of masculinity endemic to Coos Bay [the blue collar town where he was raised] also was an ingredient to the roundness of Steve's character and burgeoning sense of self." While I draw no conclusion myself on the matter I do note that both Gerry Lindgren and Frank Shorter, fellow Olympians, endured serious abuse as kids as well.
I found O'Meara to be an excellent writer, as good as, if not better than, Chris Lear, Matt Fitgerald, or Kenny Moore. Here is a sample of work:
The strain on Steve's face as he surged down the stretch was nothing new among distance runners. He wasn't the first runner to show discomfort, far from the first to experience it. However, he might have been the first to show signs of apocalyptic distress, but upon hearing the roars of the people, he found another gear that transcended consciousness. He rarely raced to merely win; he raced to make a statement, and the crowd felt complicit. He gave, they gave, and they saw him respond. The way he ran, at times, was far from elegant. At five foot nine, he didn't benefit from long-legged grace. Steve often looked like a misplaced running back who might charge through a brick wall rather than glide like a deer, which endeared him even more to the people. It still looked like effort when he cocked his head to the left, brow forever furrowed; and to an audience no stranger to hard work, this display of effort was precisely what made watching Steve perform in Eugene so special. It didn't matter how big his lead was-he never made it look easy. The drama wasn't in the finish; it was in watching Steve pour every bit of himself into the performance, four hundred meters at a time.
Obviously O'Meara is a fan. He goes to great lengths to describe Pre's charisma and appeal, both on the track and off. He also focuses on Pre's boundless energy and how he used that energy and appeal to fight track's governing body, the AAU, to improve the rights and rewards of athletes. And Pre's contribution to the young company called Nike is highlighted as well. But the author does not ignore Pre's faults. O'Meara is quite willing to note instances where Steve was brash, overconfident, rude, or immature. Steve's drinking, which likely contributed to his death, is addressed as well.
I did find myself wondering why O'Meara skipped over many topics. While Steve's high school cross country seasons were covered in great detail, there is scant attention paid to his XC exploits at the University of Oregon. This, for a runner who was third in the NCAA as a freshman and then won the event three times after that. In 1971, his junior year, he won the PAC-8 while the Oregon team finished second. As Tom Jordan tells it, "The school was willing to send him [to the national championship] but not the team. Pre would have none of it. He stated that he would not defend his NCAA title unless the entire team was sent. I was, and it won." That is a great story and deserves to be told in depth. Unfortunately O'Meara doesn't do that.
Another thing that gets little to no attention in the biography is any story or commentary from Steves younger sister Linda. I found that surprising since she has worked hard to keep his memory alive and in the spotlight. Nor is there any commentary from Steve's girlfriends Nancy Allman or Mary Marckx. I did discover a likely explanation for the absence. In the acknowledgments at the end of the book he writes about how his rough draft was 160,000 words. His editor told him to cut out 50,000 words. I like to think that someday we will get an extended version of the book with everything that didn't make it into the 270 pages of the present biography.
In the last chapter O'Meara quotes another author, Howard Bryant: "Everybody gets forgotten. The only people who don't get forgotten are the ones we keep telling stories about, the ones we keep repeating." This biography will do much to keep the memory and the magic of Steve Prefontaine going.