Total running time on this crisp and cold night was 59:44
GO NFA Wildcats !!!!
Pre died in the early morning hours of Friday May 30, 1975. We raced at Hawyard Field the previous Thursday evening. To the left is Pre talking to me before the 800m. Pre ran 5000m in what turned out to be his final race. Pre died about 6 hours after this picture was taken.
[from Tom Jordan's book] "Against the unbearableness of Steve Prefontaine's death, it is comforting to know that virtually everyone he cared about was close to him on the last night of his life."
His last race over, Pre took several victory laps, saying thanks to the people of Eugene. At one point, he stopped and talked with his family who had come from Coos Bay to watch the meet. After signing autographs, he went to the apartment of his friends Mark Feig and Steve Bence to shower.
Later, Pre stopped by the Oregon awards banquet and talked to Bill Dellinger about his training. After a brief visit, he and his girlfriend, Nancy Allman {Pre was dating Nancy instead of Mary at the time of his death}, left for a party being held by Geoff Hollister up at his house to celebrate the end of the Finnish tour.
First, however, Pre made his ritual stop at the Paddock for congratulations and a few beers. Then he went to the party about 10:00 p.m.
Shorter, Moore, and the Finns were there. Pre's parents were there. Walt McClure, too. Pre was happy and relieved that the tour was over. According to some of the guests there, he drank about six beers in the two hours he remained at the party.
At 12:15 a.m., Pre left with Nancy and Frank. "We all three got into the MG and drove down to the UO ticket office where Nancy had left her car and let her off," Shorter told Jerry Uhrhammer of the Eugene Register-Guard. "Then he drove me home."
Shorter was staying with the Ken Moores at their home on one of the hills encircling Eugene. He and Pre sat in the car for a few minutes, discussing what their stand would be on the AAU moratorium. Both agreed that they would not duck the meet, but would run their specialties all-out, and then take on the AAU. With that, Shorter got out of the car, and Pre drove on down the hill.
What exactly happened at the bottom of Skyline Boulevard is open to question. It was a road Pre had run along hundreds of times in his years in Eugene. As it approaches the intersection with Birch Lane, there is a sharp curve. Although there was no indication of excessive speed, Pre's 1973 MGB crossed the center line, went over the curb and hit one wall of the natural rock that lines either side of the street. His car flipped over, pinning him underneath. The MG was equipped with a roll bar, but Pre was not wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident. He apparently did not die instantly, but suffocated from the impact and weight of the car on his chest.
There were skid marks for 40 feet from the wall, indicating that he had slammed on the brakes after losing control of the car. Why he lost control is unknown.
Moments after the accident, another car, also an MG, came on the scene. The occupant, seeing someone pinned under the overturned auto, apparently panicked and sped off to get his father, a doctor. By the time neighbors had alerted the police and they arrived at the accident, there was no longer a pulse. Pre was dead.
An autopsy performed the next day showed that the level of alcohol in Pre's blood was 0.16 percent, above the Oregon legal limit of 0.10 percent. Perhaps his driving wa impaired enough that he simply misjudged the curve and his approach speed. Perhaps, as one policeman speculated, he was reaching for his cassette tape of John Denver's "Back Home Again" and took his eyes off the road. Perhaps he failed to make the turn for an altogether different reason.
The result is the same.
Flags at half-mast, the scoreboard clock ticking away, and silence. Absolute silence. Eugene was saying good-bye to Steve Prefontaine. At the end of the ceremony, the crowd stood, applauding the time on the clock - 12:36.2 - a time Pre once said he would be satisfied with in the three mile. photo by Don Chadez.
An excellent competitive runner during his high school years at Bulkeley School in New London, Connecticut, Kelley began racing in marathons during his college years. From 1950 to 1954, he attended Boston University, a Massachusetts school located about a mile from the Boston Marathon finish line. While at Boston University, he would excel in team races and would run his first two Boston Marathons, in 1953 and 1954. He finished fifth in the 1953 race before following up with a 7th place finish the next year. After graduation from college, Kelley would finish 2nd in the 1956 Boston Marathon and made his way onto the U.S. Olympic Marathon team which competed in Melbourne, Australia during the same year. He would go on to win the Boston Marathon outright in 1957 while setting a new course record on the remeasured course. After his win at Boston, Kelley would win several other marathons including eight consecutive wins of the Yonkers Marathon in Yonkers, New York.[1] As a result of his record setting performance at Yonkers in 1960, he again found his way onto the U.S. Olympic Marathon team and competed in the 1960 Olympics in Rome. He placed 21st and 19th in the Melbourne and Rome Olympic marathons respectively.
John J. Kelley is the only runner to ever win both the Boston Marathon and Mount Washington Road Race, which he won in 1961. He made the ascent in one hour and 8 minutes 54 seconds, nearly seven minutes faster than the winning times in the three previous years the race had been held, 1936-1938.
After the pinnacle of his career as a runner, he went onto a successful career as high school running coach. At Fitch High School in Groton, Connecticut, Kelley coached Amby Burfoot, winner of the 1968 Boston Marathon. In addition to coaching, Kelley would find work over the years as a newspaper columnist, free lance writer, cab driver and running wear store co-owner. John Kelley married Jacintha C. Braga in 1953, and has three children, Julia, Kathleen, and Eileen.
No comments:
Post a Comment