Steve Prefontaine: Coos Bay's Runner and the Amateur Athlete as Political Actor

The town of Coos Bay produced the fastest American distance runner of his era. Steve Prefontaine was born here in nineteen fifty-one, grew up running the hills of the southern Oregon Coast, and by his early twenties had set American records at every track distance from two thousand to ten thousand meters. He ran the front, not tactical races. He led from the start, pressed the pace until the competition broke, and won or lost at the front of the field. At the nineteen seventy-two Munich Olympics he finished fourth in the five thousand meters, close enough to a medal that he spent the remaining three years of his life preparing to take it in Montreal.

He did not make it to Montreal. He died in a single-car accident in Eugene on May thirtieth, nineteen seventy-five. He was twenty-four.

What Prefontaine's records obscure is his parallel career as an advocate. The Amateur Athletic Union, which controlled United States track and field, prohibited amateur athletes from earning money while simultaneously profiting from their performances by accepting foreign government subsidies and organizing international meets that the athletes were required to attend without pay. Prefontaine found this arrangement morally repellent and said so in public, loudly. He testified before Congress in nineteen seventy-three, arguing that the system exploited athletes and demanding reform.

The AAU did not listen to him while he was alive. Three years after his death, Congress passed the Amateur Sports Act of nineteen seventy-eight, which restructured United States amateur athletics largely along the lines he had argued for. The pre-race favorite at Munich is remembered. The man who testified before Congress is less often mentioned. Coos Bay remembers both.