His second three took slightly longer, but his winning margin was 35.2 seconds over Washington State’s Dan Murphy, who had hung on until slowed by a stitch at 4M.

Pre had reportedly been suffering stomach problems in recent weeks and was unable to finish a tryout race 2 weeks earlier, but he showed little sign of being hampered here, as he blasted through the first 3M in 13:56. Unexpectedly, the next 5 positions were filled by Washington Staters, who handed Oregon a 20–86 pasting in the team tussle. November 1971: Washington State Easily Upsets OregonĮugene, Oregon, October 30-Expectedly, Oregon’s Steve Prefontaine ran away from the rest of the field, blazing a swift 28:10.8 for 6M to acquire his third Northern Division title.

We have taken the liberty of doing some stylistic updatings to mirror our modern protocol and also added an editorial comment or three: Given the wealth of Pre material we generated during the Olympic year, this one is broken up into multiple parts.

HERE, IN THE FOURTH of a long multi-part series, is how we reported the career of Steve Prefontaine in our pages from the fall of ’71 through the indoor season of ’72, with the same photographs we used at the time.

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