EUGENE, Oregon – To get to the shrine that is Pre’s Rock, about a mile east of Hayward Field, you must go – drive, sure, but on foot is best, really – up.
The spot where Steve Prefontaine died, 50 years ago next year, is up a steep and winding hill. Do you believe in certain theologies? Up?
On the occasion of a major track meet, like this week’s U.S. Olympic Trials, pilgrims wind their way up to the Rock. As they did Thursday. Scott Davis, 53, of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a pastor, referring to Prefontaine: “He’s an inspirational figure. Never quitting.” Michelle Bright, 51, of Bryan, Texas, and Katherine Denena, also 51, of College Station, Texas, Bright saying of Pre, “I’ve always known the name.”
Scott Davis, 53, of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, with a picture of his high school track team
Katherine Denena, 51, of College Station, Texas, and Michelle Bright, 51, of Bryan, Texas, at Pre’s Rock
What is it about Steve Prefontaine, dead since late May 1975?
What is it about track and field, about the Olympics, that he is so venerated? And in this way?
America’s greatest Black track athletes of the past are not worshipped like this. Jesse Owens. Rafer Johnson. Flo Jo.
Compare: Pre.
Why do they come from near and far, to leave shoes, socks, notes, ribbons, race bibs, trophies, pictures and more?
The University of Oregon English professor Daniel Wojcik has written at length about Prefontaine, and in particular, the roadside memorial. In a chapter he contributed to a 2008 book about “shrines and pilgrimage in the modern world,” sites as varied as Graceland and Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris, he wrote, “The practices and personalized spirituality expressed at Pre’s Rock blur the boundaries between the sacred and secular, pilgrimage and tourism, shrine and memorial, inspirational and supernatural intercession.”
In a 2015 article in Grantland, Wojcik said ambiguity around the accident itself – Pre, just 24, was drunk and flipped his car, or something else happened nobody knows exactly what – means those coming to the Rock are trying to create “new meanings from the death event,” simultaneously aiming to “create a meaningful narrative from his death and reaffirm his life.”
OK – but why?
And why is the site of the Pre crash so very different than the 30-day rule for roadside memorials in Hawaii? The many descanso roadside shrines in New Mexico? Maryland launched a “virtual memorial” page – no actual shrines. See it online here.
The answer is perhaps straightforward.
The Olympics are rooted in hopes and dreams, no sport more so than track and field, the most elemental of them all. Pheidippides, Olympia, Chariots of Fire — Pre represents a link to all that.
That is, the idea of Pre represents that connection.
The Pre whose life was cut short, abruptly. Whose hopes and dreams ended, like that. There is, Davis, the pastor, said, a “tragic beauty” to the story.
Some of the collection Thursday at Pre’s Rock
The Pre who surged to the front of the Munich 1972 5k – pain is my friend, OK but no matter, let’s see what I’ve got – that is the Pre so many carry forward in their own hopes and dreams.
Davis brought to Eugene, to the Rock, a picture of himself from his high school track team near Boston. “No matter what happens to you in life,” Davis said, “you get up and give it your best.” Like, Davis said, his grandfather, who had gone to work in his teens in the Depression: “He went at it every day to take care of his family.” The way Pre would have wanted it, Davis suggested.
Seven years ago, Davis was saying, he himself was going through a rough patch. He had ballooned up to 235 pounds. A woman at his church suggested he try a local 5k. I couldn’t walk to the end of my block, he said but, you know, Pre. In high school, Davis would have, he said, run 5k in 15 or so minutes. This race he did in 36. But — he finished.
Over the next year, Davis said, he lost 50 pounds. Pre, he said, “was on my mind the whole time.”
Davis said, “Just go at it.
“I think this is where sports and life come together.”
Michelle Bright, who threw the javelin at Texas Tech, was 2 when Steve Prefontaine died. Same for Katherine Denena. Their birthdays, both, were just days ago. Michelle’s parents talked about Pre the way she would go on to talk to her kids about Michael Jordan – with an emphasis on a “reckless competitiveness.”
That he came in fourth in that race in Munich? “He’s normal,” Michelle said. “He’s not untouchable.”
“He’s human,” Katherine echoed, and seeing that humanity in Pre is absolutely part of it, too.
“That’s what I love about the Olympics. And Olympic athletes,” Michelle said. “They’re just like us.”
“Any day can be that day,” the best day of your life, Katherine said.
There’s a Pre quote, or at least one often attributed to Pre. Michelle Bright rattled it off:
“‘No matter how hard you train, somebody will train harder.
‘No matter how hard you run, somebody will run harder.
‘No matter how hard you want it, somebody will want it more.
‘I am somebody.’”
She paused. She said:
“I love that.”