My philosophy is that I’m an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes. – Steve Prefontaine
Original title – The Latest Front Runner. But nobody was reading it.
I typically read literary biographies of artists. Still hoping to become one myself someday.
Interrupted my schedule for The Front Runner – two words – between C.M. Kushins’ Cooler Than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard and Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux. Dutch, Pre and The Savage From Peru have more in common than many might imagine.
Got a note from an old buddy, a bibliophile of no little renown:
If you haven’t already discovered this book, this may be the greatest track biography ever written. I don’t think Kenny Moore could have touched this. I am only 50 pages into it since I read it only at breakfast, but this is fantastic.
Not so fast, my friend.
Not sure what page I am on, I responded, but reasonably confident there are more than a couple of better WRITTEN biographies. Turns out I was on page 51. I read it only at bedtime, but I go to sleep twice daily.
And I had just been exhausted by the opening sentence of the final paragraph on the previous page. The aforementioned Page Fifty. To wit:
A haggard-at-the-finish-line Steve, looking like he had more in common with a mummified pharaoh than an eighteen-year-old high school boy, finally broke the Oregon high school mile mark with a time of 4:11.1 in the first dual meet of the outdoor season.
I could have been in a bad mood. Maybe jealous. Book picks up the pace around page 52.
A gifted gay athlete is threatened with outing.
“The Front Runner” – already used by a half dozen other books – is a weak title.
Just last year, I shared the good news about Brad Fawley’s The Frontrunner. One word. https://www.jackdogwelch.com/?p=57602
Loving the book nonetheless, like an old running enthusiast who lived in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, in 1975.
Walt Chadwick, OG track aficionado, had this to say. “O’Meara gave me a deeper insight into Prefontaine than any previous book or conversation ever has. His research is deeper than any magazine story, book or movie we’ve seen. I could be wrong about that but he wrote a great book.”
Amazon would have us believe On the 50th anniversary of American Track and Field icon Steve Prefontaine’s tragic death comes an essential reappraisal of his life and legacy, a powerful work of narrative history exploring the forces and psychology that made Prefontaine great and separating the man from the myths.
Speaking of myths… Pat Tyson said, “There is no Nike without Pre.” Steve Bence adds, “Nike wouldn’t exist without Pre… Without Pre wearing the shoes in competition, I don’t think Nike would have succeeded.” It’s right there on Page 271.
Amazon continues In the fifty years since his tragic death in a car crash, Steve Prefontaine has towered over American distance running. One of the most recognizable and charismatic figures to ever run competitively in the United States, Prefontaine has endured as a source of inspiration and fascination—a talent who presaged the American running boom of the late 1970s and helped put Nike on the map as the brand’s first celebrity-athlete face.
Now on the anniversary of his untimely death, author Brendan O’Meara, host of the Creative Nonfiction podcast, offers a fresh, definitive retelling of Prefontaine’s life, revisiting one of the most enigmatic figures in American sports with a twenty-first-century lens. Through over a hundred and fifty original interviews with family, friends, teammates, and competitors, this long-overdue reappraisal of Prefontaine—the first such exhaustive treatment in almost thirty years—provides never-before-told stories about the unique talent, innovative mental strength, and personal struggles that shaped Prefontaine on and off the track. Bringing new depth to an athlete long eclipsed by his brash, aggressive running style and the heartbreak of his death at twenty-four, O’Meara finds the man inside the myth, scrutinizing a legacy that has shaped American sports culture for decades.
What emerges is a singular portrait of a distinctly American talent, a story written in the pines and firs of the Pacific Northwest back when running was more blue-collar love than corporate pursuit—the story of a runner whose short life casts a long, fast shadow.
Like Pre in the 1972 Olympic 5K final, O’Meara’s The Front Runner – great effort! – came up a little short. Others agree.
3.0 out of 5 stars One Dimensional
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2025
This is a one dimensional biography of Steve, rightfully focused almost exclusively on his running. What is lacking is a more nuanced look at Steve the man. For example in the 2 movies about the life of Prefontaine (Prefontaine and Without Limits) two different women are portrayed as his significant other. A Mary Marckx fills the role in Without Limits, a Nancy Alleman has the spotlight in Prefontaine. How is this possible? Reportedly, Mary was Steve’s Portland girlfriend and Nancy was his Eugene girl friend. Mary would later state that she was unaware of this duplicity until Steve’s parents asked her at Steve’s funeral about a Nancy, also attending, who claimed to be Steve’s girl friend. Nancy was his teammate and also ran for Oregon. The author fails to examine this part of Steve’s life. Steve’s friends would later comment on how Steve compartmentalized his life so even close friends were unaware of some aspects of his life, as his work with prison inmates (also not mentioned in this biography). Any reader of this book who is also a track & field fan will find most of the track/cross country coverage familiar reading. That reader will still wonder about the rest of the Steve Prefontaine story.
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Next up? Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life by Dan Nadel.
R. Crumb strikes me as an ultramarathoner.
Dave Reinhardt has a couple pf Pre stories.
(1) in Fall of 1972 after he got back from the Olympics a few of my teammates and I had somehow gotten ahold of one of those new fancy pre-paid phone cards just out in the market. Somehow we got Pre’s phone number and called him up! He answered and we all kept passing the phone around from a pay phone on the 2nd floor at McDowell Hall at American u in DC (probably a shrine by now) asking him questions for 20 minutes. He was cooking up a meal in his trailer outside Eugene with his girlfriend. He was very nice. Us kids from American U! Wow. Fortunately we were a good team having finished 19th the year before at the NCAA Meet in Knoxville, so had some street cred.
(2) when at the NCAA Track championships at LSU in June 1973 Pre walked out of the dorm we were staying in and strutting like The Man, with a phalanx of other Oregon distance runners in his wake, right by me and a few buddies as we parted the seas to let him and his crew by us. He looked straight ahead, barely nodding. I was in awe to say the least. He was legendary already.