V 1 N. 9 "Pre We Hardly Knew Ye...." by Paul O'Shea

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in Cross Country Journal in the March/April 2015 issue and in our humble blog last year (2018) just prior to the Prefontaine Classic. The editorial board has decided that this will become an annual event. Pre, We Hardly Knew Ye By Paul O’Shea Photo: Tony Duffy To give anything less than your best, he famously said, was to sacrifice the gift. It was an ethic Steve Prefontaine shared with us to the end of his brief life. In the spring of 1975 I was riding under the Hudson River on a PATH train linking New York City with Hoboken, New Jersey, reading a newspaper. Buried in a sports news summary I came across these sentences: American distance runner Steve Prefontaine is dead, killed in an automobile crash in Eugene, Oregon. Prefontaine was 24 years old. One of America’s greatest distance runners was gone. I was shocked, devastated by the news. In a few weeks the international track and field community will...