Steve Prefontaine’s last race was 40 years ago today

Steve Prefontaine
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U.S. Olympic distance running icon Steve Prefontaine ran his final race on May 29, 1975, and won, a 5000m at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.

Hours later, he died after driving his orange 1973 MGB convertible into a rock embankment now known as “Pre’s Rock,” a shrine seen by runners visiting Eugene from around the world. (More on the circumstances of Prefontaine’s death in a (Eugene) Register-Guard story from this week here).

Prefontaine finished fourth in his only Olympic race, the Munich 1972 5000m, but he was at the time of his death and is perhaps even more today one of the most inspirational Olympians not to win a medal, for a nation that especially celebrates podium finishers.

A Sports Illustrated cover athlete, Prefontaine’s magnetic passion, American records from 2000m to 10,000m, and his front-running style continued to be celebrated in print and in the 1997 and 1998 films “Prefontaine” and “Without Limits,” which have become popular road-trip viewings for high school track teams.

In his final race 40 years ago, Prefontaine defeated friend and 1972 Olympic marathon champion Frank Shorter. Shorter has described the events of May 29, 1975, many times. You can watch Shorter go through it in the film, “Fire on the Track.”

“We had a very simple telephone call. He called up and said, ‘Gee, I really need you to come out and run this race because [Finnish 1972 Olympic 5000m and 10,000m champion Lasse] Viren’s backed out, and he’s not going to be here.’ My response was, sure. It wasn’t a problem. Again, some people would say, Oh God, my reputation, I’m not trained for it. … We were good enough friends, that he was asking me a favor. I knew that even though he would probably beat me, we were certainly going to have a fun race. Maybe he’d drag me along, and I could run pretty fast. As I recollect the race, I think I did a fair amount of leading at the start. We kind of traded off. He ran something under 13 minutes and 30 seconds, and I ran a little bit over. That’s how it turned out. I ran a pretty good performance. But he was in better shape than I was at that point in time.”

Shorter believed he was the last person to see Prefontaine alive that night, after Prefontaine dropped him off at the home of 1968 and 1972 Olympian and former Oregon runner Kenny Moore.

“I probably talked to him maybe two or three minutes before he died. He was fine. I was fine. I said good night to him, and we may have even talked about running the next day. I went to sleep actually feeling very good, like it had been a great evening. And lo and behold, I got awakened early the next morning by Kenny Moore. He told me Steve had died heading down the hill.”

The annual Prefontaine Classic track and field meet takes place at Hayward Field on Friday and Saturday. The men’s 5000m race is Friday night at 9 p.m. local time/12 a.m. Saturday Eastern time live on USATF.TV, preceded by a “Pre’s Legacy” piece, according to the Register-Guard.

“Not focus so much on his death, but that 40 years ago was his last race and since then the impact he’s had on all facets of U.S. track and field,” meet director Tom Jordan said, according to the newspaper.

The majority of events are Saturday. NBCSN will have live coverage Saturday from 3:30-4:30 p.m. ET, followed by NBC from 4:30-6. NBC Sports Live Extra will stream the entire broadcast window. The full schedule and entry lists can be found here.

Five events to watch at the Prefontaine Classic

Swiss extend best streak in curling history; Norway continues epic winter sports season

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Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni extended the most dominant run in world curling championships history, skipping a women’s team to a fourth consecutive title and pushing an unbeaten streak to 36 consecutive games.

Tirinzoni, along with Alina Pätz (who throws the last stones), Carole Howald and Briar Schwaller-Hürlimann, beat Norway 6-3 in Sunday’s final in Sandviken, Sweden.

They went 14-0 for the tournament after a Swiss team also skipped by Tirinzoni also went 14-0 to win the 2022 World title. Tirinzoni’s last defeat in world championship play came during round-robin in 2021 at the hands of Swede Anna Hasselborg, the 2018 Olympic champion.

In all, Tirinzoni’s Swiss are 42-1 over the last three world championships and 45-1 in world championship play dating to the start of the 2019 playoffs. Tirinzoni also skipped the Swiss at the last two Olympics, finishing seventh and then fourth.

Tirinzoni, a 43-year-old who has worked as a project management officer for Migros Bank, is the lone female skip to win three or more consecutive world titles.

The lone man to do it is reigning Olympic champion Niklas Edin of Sweden, who goes for a fifth in a row next week in Ottawa. Edin’s teams lost at least once in round-robin play in each of their four title runs.

Norway extended its incredible winter sports season by earning its first world medal in women’s curling since 2005.

Norway has 53 medals, including 18 golds, in world championships in Winter Olympic program events this season, surpassing its records for medals and gold medals at a single edition of a Winter Olympics (39 and 16).

A Canadian team skipped by Kerri Einarson took bronze. Canada has gone four consecutive women’s worlds without making the final, a record drought for its men’s or women’s teams.

A U.S. team skipped by Olympian Tabitha Peterson finished seventh in round-robin, missing the playoffs by one spot.

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Ilia Malinin eyed new heights at figure skating worlds, but a jump to gold requires more

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At 18 years old, Ilia Malinin already has reached immortality in figure skating for technical achievement, being the first to land a quadruple Axel jump in competition.

The self-styled “Quadg0d” already has shown the chutzpah (or hubris?) to go for the most technically difficult free skate program ever attempted at the world championships, including that quad Axel, the hardest jump anyone has tried.

It helped bring U.S. champion Malinin the world bronze medal Saturday in Saitama, Japan, where he made more history as the first to land the quad Axel at worlds.

But it already had him thinking that the way to reach the tops of both the worlds and Olympus might be to acknowledge his mortal limits.

Yes, if Malinin (288.44 points) had cleanly landed all six quads he did instead of going clean on just three of the six, it would have closed or even overcome the gap between him and repeat champion Shoma Uno of Japan (301.14) and surprise silver medalist Cha Jun-Hwan (296.03), the first South Korean man to win a world medal.

That’s a big if, as no one ever has done six clean quads in a free skate.

And the energy needed for those quads, physical and mental, hurts Malinin’s chances of closing another big gap with the world leaders: the difference in their “artistic” marks, known as component scores.

Malinin’s technical scores led the field in both the short program and free skate. But his component scores were lower than at last year’s worlds, when he finished ninth, and they ranked 10th in the short program and 11th in the free this time. Uno had an 18.44-point overall advantage over Malinin in PCS, Cha a 13.47 advantage.

FIGURE SKATING WORLDS: Chock, Bates, and a long road to gold | Results

As usual in figure skating, some of the PCS difference owes to the idea of paying your dues. After all, at his first world championships, eventual Olympic champion Nathan Chen had PCS scores only slightly better than Malinin’s, and Chen’s numbers improved substantially by the next season.

But credit Malinin for quickly grasping the reality that his current skating has a lot of rough edges on the performance side.

“I’ve noticed that it’s really hard to go for a lot of risks,” he said in answer to a press conference question about what he had learned from this competition. “Sometimes going for the risks you get really good rewards, but I think that maybe sometimes it’s OK to lower the risks and go for a lot cleaner skate. I think it will be beneficial next season to lower the standards a bit.”

So could it be “been-there, done-that” with the quad Axel? (and the talk of quints and quad-quad combinations?)

Saturday’s was his fourth clean quad Axel in seven attempts this season, but it got substantially the lowest grade of execution (0.36) of the four with positive marks. It was his opening jump in the four-minute free, and, after a stopped-in-your tracks landing, his next two quads, flip and Lutz, were both badly flawed.

And there were still some three minutes to go.

Malinin did not directly answer about letting the quad Axel go now that he has definitively proved he can do it. What he did say could be seen as hinting at it.

“With the whole components factor … it’s probably because you know, after doing a lot of these jumps, (which) are difficult jumps, it’s really hard to try to perform for the audience,” he said.

“Even though some people might enjoy jumping, and it’s one of the things I enjoy, but I also like to perform to the audience. So I think next season, I would really want to focus on this performing side.”

Chen had told me essentially the same thing for a 2017 Ice Network story (reposted last year by NBCOlympics.com) about his several years of ballet training. He regretted not being able to show that training more because of the program-consuming athletic demands that come with being an elite figure skater.

“When I watch my skating when I was younger, I definitely see all this balletic movement and this artistry come through,” Chen said then. “When I watch my artistry now, it’s like, ‘Yes, it’s still there,’ but at the same time, I’m so focused on the jumps, it takes away from it.”

The artistry can still be developed and displayed, as Chen showed and as prolific and proficient quad jumpers like Uno and the now retired two-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan have proved.

For another perspective on how hard it is to combine both, look at the difficulty it posed for the consummate performer, Jason Brown, who had the highest PCS scores while finishing a strong fifth (280.84).

Since Brown dropped his Sisyphean attempts to do a clean quad after 26 tries (20 in a free skate), the last at the 2022 U.S. Championships, he has received the two highest international free skate scores of his career, at the 2022 Olympics and this world meet.

It meant Brown’s coming to terms with his limitations and the fact that in the sport’s current iteration, his lack of quads gives him little chance of winning a global championship medal. What he did instead was give people the chance to see the beauty of his blade work, his striking movement, his expressiveness.

He has, at 28, become an audience favorite more than ever. And the judges Saturday gave Brown six maximum PCS scores (10.0.)

“I’m so happy about today’s performance,” Brown told media in the mixed zone. “I did my best to go out there and skate my skate. And that’s what I did.”

The quadg0d is realizing that he, too, must accept limitations if he wants to achieve his goals. Ilia Malinin can’t simply jump his way onto the highest steps of the most prized podiums.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.

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