Twenty-five years ago, on the twentieth anniversary of his death, I wrote this piece which appears in When Running Was Young And So Were We. – JDW
A book could be written based on a single question: what if Pre hadn’t had too much to drink that night at Geoff Hollister’s house and got back to his own bed safely?
Think about it.
Or simply gotten hurt, better yet, and came back stronger than ever. Think about it.
If I am any judge of creativity, and I am, this is a good idea, one somebody could run with.
S’pose Pre had lived.
S’pose a couple of strong buddies, Mac Wilkins comes to mind, followed Pre down the hill from the party at Hollister’s. Maybe Phil Knight is driving the car and they come around the corner and there’s Pre’s little MGB turned over, a tire still spinning. Everybody piles out of the car and rushes to Pre.
“Can you breathe?” Mac asks his friend.
“Barely.” Comes the whispered response. Those superhuman lungs.
“Can you move?” Knight wonders.
Pre wiggles his hands, lifts his legs, those incredible legs. “Yes.”
“Should we try to move him or wait for help?”
Knight doesn’t know what to do next. Help isn’t coming. Nobody wants to leave to seek aid. And nobody wants to stand there and watch helplessly as the car presses down on Pre. Too crushing.
“We can lift the car,” Wilkins offers, moving toward the car. “You pull him clear.”
Knight isn’t so sure. Pre coughs weakly, a death rattle perhaps caught in his throat. He lifts his free arm, reaches a hand out, like that guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
“Just do it,” Pre says.
Anybody else would’ve died, doctors said, but Pre, he was so strong, so gutsy, so not-ready-yet-to-die, Pre lived.
Imagine that comeback.
He’s hurt so bad he can’t compete until the Bob Woodell Meet the next spring. An entire year lost, in his prime. Hayward Field is alive, full to the rafters, where the rubber snakes hang. The weather is typical Bluegene, Oregun, gray, overcast, rain, dark for days.
Suddenly, a hush.
Like E.F. Hutton was talking and everybody in the stadium had stopped talking to overhear a stock tip. So quiet, you could hear Tom Ragsdale, one of the meet officials, fart. A brave ray of sunlight, like hope, pokes through the cloud.
Slowly, like background noise, a murmur begins to grow. The ray blossoms into a bright beam. The noise begins to wash across the infield, waves washing from the East stands to the West stands. And back again.
It’s him.
Pre.
The beam of light shone on Steven Roland Prefontaine, followed him like a personal spotlight as he jogged onto the Stevenson Track.
Everybody stood.
They cheered, they applauded, they stomped their feet and shook the stands. Hadn’t been this much noise here since his last race. No. This was the most noise ever.
The finish line.
All they can see is Pre’s back.