Hayward Field: The Cathedral of American Distance Running
Near Eugene, Oregon
There is a feeling track athletes report about running at Hayward Field that they rarely describe at other venues. The crowd is close to the track. The crowd knows distance running. And the crowd has been coming here, in one form or another, since nineteen twenty-one.
The field was named for Bill Hayward, who coached the University of Oregon track program from nineteen four to nineteen forty-seven: forty-three years. During that time he coached four world record holders, six American record holders, and nine Olympians. He served as a coach for the American team at six Olympic Games, beginning in Stockholm in nineteen twelve. When the university named the new football and track facility after him in nineteen nineteen, he was working as the team trainer during halftime of the dedication game and did not learn about the honor until the following day.
Bill Bowerman built on that foundation. Over his twenty-four years as head coach beginning in nineteen forty-eight, Bowerman trained thirty-one Olympic athletes, fifty-one All-Americans, twelve American record holders, and twenty-two NCAA champions. He had a winning season every year but one. Steve Prefontaine arrived in nineteen sixty-nine and electrified the place.
Together, these threads made Eugene into what it eventually started calling itself: Track Town, USA.
The field was rebuilt and expanded beginning in twenty eighteen, with a new stadium opening in twenty twenty that can hold more than twelve thousand spectators, expandable to twenty-five thousand for major events. Eugene hosted the World Athletics Championships in twenty twenty-two, the first time that event was held in the United States in its forty-year history.
The Prefontaine Classic is still run here every year. The tradition of watching serious running in this small city in the southern Willamette Valley is now more than a century old and shows no sign of stopping.
