Early in the morning of May 30, 1975, hours after winning a 5K race against Olympic gold medalist Frank Shorter, legendary Oregon distance runner Steve Prefontaine rolled his car on a narrow, winding street near Eugene’s Hendricks Park. He was pinned underneath his vehicle and was pronounced dead at the scene.
At age 24, the Coos Bay native—often called simply “Pre”—was already a hero. Not only was he a gutsy athlete who held every American record from two kilometers to 10, he also volunteered at an Oregon prison, fought to change the amateur athletics standards of the day, and worked to restore Hayward Field’s condemned, wooden west grandstands.
Days after Prefontaine’s death, his former head coach at the University of Oregon, Bill Bowerman, sat down at a typewriter and wrote a memo that would have lasting impact on Eugene’s track scene. It reads, in part:…