As Gerry and “Pre” closed in on the finish, they were running as one. Steve Savage of Oregon, Rick Riley of Washington State and Greg Brock of host Stanford led the second bunch.
The two seesawed back and forth in the lead, building up 200y on the field. The two diminutive distance giants immediately opened a wide gap on the remainder of a quality field and by the mile post, passed in approximately 4:23, had about 80y on the second group. Prefontaine sprinted off the starting line as though he had a fifth of the distance to run and Lindgren went right after him.
Oregon jammed 4 men into the top 10 for 46 points and the team title, besting Washington State’s 63. Stanford, California, November 15-Gerry Lindgren and Steve Prefontaine traded stride-for-stride throughout the 5.9M of the first Pacific-8 XC Championship, but at the finish line it was the indefatigable Lindgren who prevailed over the sensational Prefontaine.īoth runners clocked 28:32.4 over the hilly, but fast, route on the Stanford golf course, leading 26 runners under 30:00 and 19 under the old course best of 29:46.4 by Stanford’s Brook Thomas.
(DICK REESE) The battle for the Pac-8 title couldn’t have been any closer as Gerry Lindgren got the nod in a same-time thriller. Pre and his Oregon teammates prep for the Pac-8 XC Championships. Rick Riley of Washington State was 7th in 30:18. Gerry didn’t fall, but said he had to nearly stop three or four times to keep from it. Oregon’s runners, the only ones to wear spikes on the slippery, leaf-covered course at Oregon State which also involved some hard-surfaced areas, got 5 of the first 6 places and a surprisingly easy victory over highly-regarded Washington State, 19–44.įreshman Prefontaine went ahead early on the grass, watched Gerry Lindgren burn by and build a 60y lead on the second and third miles of asphalt, then gained it all back-pIus 150y-as they got back on grass and Lindgren found the going too treacherous. And for his first-ever 6M, Steve Prefontaine did the same. … Pacific Coast: For a team giving little emphasis to cross country and running its first meet of the year, Oregon made quite a showing in the Northern Division (of the Pac-8) race. November 1969: XC Roundup November 1969: In the first of what would be 5 front-page appearances, Pre was captured winning the Pac-8’s Northern Division XC race. We have taken the liberty of doing some stylistic updatings to mirror our modern protocol and also added an editorial comment or three: HERE, IN THE SECOND of a long multi-part series, is how we reported the career of Steve Prefontaine in our pages from the fall of ’69 through the summer of ’70, with the same photographs we used at the time.
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