61

Sociology of Sport Journal, 2004, 21, 61-83© 2004 Human Kinetics Publishers, Inc.

Steve Prefontaine: From Rebel With a Causeto Hero With a Swoosh

Theresa A. Walton

World-class runner Steve Prefontaine died May 30, 1975, at the age of 24. Running duringa time of unparalleled track and field popularity, he was a favorite media focus. Incredibly,he regained media attention in the 1990s. Using a critical cultural studies approach, thisarticle explores media accounts of Prefontaine. A 1970s working-class “rebel with a cause,”Prefontaine served as an ideal of White working-class masculinity and as a voice calling forstructural changes to the track and field governing body. In the 1990s, with the Nike fundedreemergence of Prefontaine, that rebelliousness was recontextualized and co-opted, shift-ing Prefontaine into a commodified maverick celebrity, embodying the changing ideals ofWhite, classless masculinity and supporting the ideology of individualism in late consumercapitalism.

Coureur d’élite mondiale originaire de l’Oregon, Steve Prefontaine est décédé le 30 mai1975 à l’âge de 24 ans. Populaire dans les années 1970, il est revenu dans l’actualité dansles années 1990. À partir d’une approche des études culturelles, cet article se penche sur lacouverture médiatique de Prefontaine. En tant que « rebelle avec cause » de la classe ouvrièredes années ‘70, Prefontaine a servi comme idéal de la masculinité blanche de cette classe etcomme représentant de ceux qui demandaient des changements structuraux au sein del’athlétisme. Dans les années ‘90, le retour de Prefontaine fut subventionné par Nike et soncôté rebelle fut co-opté. Ceci a fait de lui une célébrité marchandée représentant maintenantles idéaux de la masculinité blanche « sans classe » et supportant l’idéologie del’individualisme au sein du capitalisme de consommation.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. Ilike to make something beautiful. When I run, I like to make people stop andsay, I’ve never seen anyone run like that before.

(Steve Prefontaine in Jordan, 1997, p. 161)

In May of 1995, 20 years after Steve Prefontaine’s death, all heads wereturned to the score board at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field as “Pre’speople” sat quietly watching the timer tick down the final minute—the amount oftime it would have taken the charismatic runner to cover the final lap of his 13:21.9American record time over 5,000 m. “Pre”’s friend, Olympic marathon runner andsportswriter Kenny Moore, gave a speech lasting the time of Prefontaine’s record,leaving the last minute for silent contemplation of the loss to the running commu-nity.

Walton is with the School of Exercise, Leisure, and Sport, Kent State University,Kent, OH 44242.

62 Walton

The occasion for this tribute was the Prefontaine Classic track and field meetat the University of Oregon in Eugene. The meet remains one of the very fewpremiere track meets in the United States, drawing internationally elitecompetitors—the type of event Prefontaine lobbied for when he was alive. Manyfans wore their original “GO PRE” T-shirts to Hayward Field. For me, as part ofthe crowd, the raw emotion and sense of tragedy still surrounding Prefontaine 20years after his death, was the most striking and powerful aspect of the event. Therewere many teary-eyed and somber faces as the thoughts of the crowd were di-rected toward the loss of their runner, Pre. Why are the memories and feelings sostrong more than 20 years after his death? Why this particular runner, Prefontaine?What meanings are made of Prefontaine culturally?

Clearly, there was a world-class runner, Steve Prefontaine, who very suc-cessfully competed for the University of Oregon. At the time of his death he ownedseven American records between 2,000 and 10,000 m. As an 18-year-old in 1969,he competed in the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships finishing fourthand winning a spot on the AAU team representing the United States in Europeanmeets the summer before he started college. He won a record four titles at 5,000 mat the NCAA track championships. After his freshman year in college, Prefontainenever lost a cross-country race, winning three NCAA Championship titles in theprocess. He earned a fourth place finish in the 1972 Munich Olympic 5,000-mrace and came back his senior year of college to go undefeated in distances greaterthan 1,500 m. Yet it is not solely Prefontaine’s statistics that create his legacy.They are only a small part of his cultural meaning. They are a necessary but notsufficient cause for his enduring popularity.

Various meanings of Prefontaine have been, and continue to be, constructedand conveyed in the stories told in the media and in the stories that runners tell toeach other. Very few of Pre’s fans actually knew him personally, and by the 1990smany of his fans had never even seen him run. Thus, we know Prefontaine throughhis media construction. The stories created about Steve Prefontaine illustrate cul-tural meanings embedded in their historical context. As Richard Lipsky (1981)notes,

The sports star, as a vernacular hero, moves with the flow of everyday life.We can learn a great deal about the values that are taking hold within ordi-nary lives and mass consciousness by looking at who rises as an athletichero at a particular time. (p. 107)

Furthermore, we can learn a great deal about cultural change across time by exam-ining the ways stories about sports heroes are remembered and reremembered.

Mainstream media constructions of Prefontaine have an enormous amountof influence on the answer to the question “Who is Pre?” Garry Whannel (1998)points out that “sport is presented largely in terms of stars and narratives: the me-dia narrativises the events of sport, transforming them into stories with stars andcharacters: heroes and villains” (p. 251). The case of Prefontaine, a sport hero whohas moved through time, provides entry into how heroes are imagined and thenreimagined at different cultural and historical points. Prefontaine, a 1970s working-class “rebel with a cause,” served both as an ideal of White working-class mascu-linity and as a voice for structural changes to the track-and-field governing body,the AAU. In the 1990s, with the Nike-funded reemergence of Prefontaine, that

Hero With a Swoosh 63

rebelliousness was recontextualized and co-opted, shifting Prefontaine into acommodified maverick hero, embodying the changing ideals of White, classlessmasculinity and supporting the ideology of individualism of late consumer capi-talism. Using a critical cultural studies approach, this article explores the tellingand retelling of stories of Prefontaine and the ways that these accounts supportcertain understandings of who counts as a hero—and, significantly, what underly-ing values are represented, created, and supported by Prefontaine, the cultural hero.

Examining Prefontaine in this way assumes an understanding of him “as aproduct of commercial culture, imbued with symbolic values, which seek to stimu-late desire and identification among the consuming populace” (Andrews & Jack-son, 2001, p. 9). Prefontaine, then, is no longer only the embodied runner who ranin the late 1960s and early 1970s, he is also a signifier of particular underlying andperhaps unquestioned ideologies. In effect, Prefontaine becomes a part of an on-going dialogue in the negotiation of power along the lines of race, class, gender,and sexuality.

The stories of Prefontaine are not simply the truth about the real life of a lateAmerican distance runner; they are constructed entry points into ongoing debatesover appropriate heroes. Media representations of Prefontaine support the myth ofthe American dream across time, with subtly changing versions of White mascu-linity that speak to the particular negotiations of power around cultural under-standings of race, class, gender, and sexuality in each time period. Prefontaine’smedia image works to assuage the changing anxieties of, and potential threats to,the hegemony of White masculinity during each time period.

Theoretical Framework

The interdisciplinary space of critical cultural studies offers a useful frameworkfor understanding Prefontaine’s fractured and multiple cultural meanings. Themeanings of Prefontaine emerge from the mediated stories and representations ofhim, and these narratives tell as much about who constructed them, the intendedaudience, and the intended purpose as they do about Steve Prefontaine. The ideo-logical subtexts of these discourses express their cultural and historical specificity.According to Andrews and Jackson (2001), “celebrities are crafted as contextuallysensitive points of cultural negotiation, between those controlling the dominantmodes and mechanisms of cultural production, and their perceptions of theaudience’s practices of cultural reception” (p. 5). The methods of this type of re-search are intrinsically tied to the theoretical framework.

Critical cultural studies looks to literary criticism for models and methods ofreading culture as “text” in order to deconstruct cultural negotiation. McDonaldand Birrell point specifically to “the adoption of discursive analytical strategiesinfluenced by semiotics and post-structuralism” (1999, p. 290). The turn towardnarrative and language has been influenced by a poststructuralist understanding ofthe “primacy of meaning, language, and subjectivity” (McDonald & Birrell, pp.290). Poststructuralism suggests that language is not a simple reflection of reality,but rather that experience is constituted through narrative (McDonald & Birrell).Given this perspective, all written language offers a particular construction of real-ity. This turn in conceptualizing language has also opened the door for using dis-cursive analysis in order to make social critiques.

64 Walton

Whereas Prefontaine himself might be considered an authority on hismeaning—as captured in quotes and interviews—he is not the “sole author of thetext that is known culturally” as Prefontaine (McDonald & Birrell, 1999, p. 292).Prefontaine’s representation of himself is always mediated by those in control ofmainstream media sources. Those with control over the means of media produc-tion powerfully shape cultural meanings (McDonald & Birrell). In the case ofPrefontaine, these texts were produced by a group of predominately White, malesportswriters in the 1970s, and by a different set of mostly White men, mainlyNike executives, video producers, and those connected with University of Oregontrack and field in the 1990s. These particular groups have had a significant influ-ence on the construction of Prefontaine’s meanings. The perspectives of these twoprivileged groups, published and presented in mainstream media, can arguably beconsidered the dominant constructions of Prefontaine.

Nonetheless, every consumer of the images and texts of Prefontaine has theopportunity, given his or her own experience and perspective, to make meaning ofPrefontaine. This opportunity is limited, though, by the structure of the informa-tion available. John Storey (1996) states, “It is the Gramscian insistence (before,with, and after Gramsci), learnt from Marx, that we make culture and we are madeby culture; there is agency and there is structure” (p. 11). The ongoing exchangewithin and between the processes of production and activities of consumption arecentral to understanding our capitalist culture.

According to Theberge and Birrell (1994), cultural studies focus on a com-plex dynamic among the producer of the text, the structural qualities of the text,and the context in which the text is consumed. Whereas the truth about the realPrefontaine might be out there, there is no access to it that is not subjectivelymediated. McDonald and Birrell (1999) write, “Perhaps it is not possible to knowthe truth since it is only in the telling that a truth claim is asserted” (p. 293). Thus,what gets to count as truth is political, being interwoven with power relations(McDonald & Birrell).

In this article, I read media representations of Prefontaine closely and exam-ine them for multiple meanings given their cultural contexts and intended audi-ence. McDonald and Birrell (1999) and Birrell and McDonald (2000) have arguedfor the legitimacy of a research method that offers a critical sport analysis by read-ing particular events or figures as texts. The method involves an analysis of nonlit-erary cultural forms, done much like literary critics examine texts. This allows thecultural critic to examine the intersection of several axes of power in a complexway. Cultural forms are read to find out how power relations, particularly thosestructured along the lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality are represented.Important for examining Prefontaine, this type of critical analysis argues for anexamination of the “normalized category of whiteness” that is “rarely interrogatedin the mainstream” (McDonald & Birrell, p.284).

Thus, Prefontaine will be read as a text using the media accounts that repre-sent and recreate him as the entry points to this reading. McDonald and Birrell(1999) point out that a critical analysis of a sports figure such as Prefontaine offers“a unique point of access to the constitutive meanings and power relations of thelarger worlds we inhabit” (p. 283). Rather than arguing for a generalization ofpower relations, “each cultural incident offers a unique site for understanding spe-cific articulations of power” (McDonald & Birrell, p. 284). Therefore, the particu-larity of certain sports figures reveals the fluidity and complexity of power relations.

Hero With a Swoosh 65

Sources

This study includes media sources from the early to mid-1970s and the mid- tolate1990s. For the 1970s material, I focused on the print-media constructions innewspapers and magazines of Prefontaine’s death in 1975, examining how theyreflect the times in which he lived and how those stories were created. Specifi-cally, this analysis includes the following newspapers and magazines: Oregonian(Portland), Eugene Register-Guard, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, ChicagoTribune, Life, Sports Illustrated, Runner’s World, and Track and Field News. Therewere 52 magazine and newspaper articles from the 1970s. The newspaper andmagazine accounts of Prefontaine’s death are most interesting to me because thisis the first opportunity to see how media sources reflect on the meaning of his life.Because he was only 24 years old at the time of his death, this is not surprising.These particular accounts are informative of what representations of his life getprivileged. The analysis also includes two books: PRE: America’s Greatest Run-ning Legend by Tom Jordan (1997) and Fred Wilt’s summary of Prefontaine’straining in How They Train, Volume II: Long Distances (1973).

Next, I consider the changing meanings of Prefontaine in media construc-tions of the 1990s. This entails a close reading of the two major motion picturesabout his life, Prefontaine (Smith, Lutz, Doonan, Gilbert, & James, 1997), pro-duced by Hollywood Pictures (Disney), and Without Limits (Cruise, Wagner, &Towne, 1998), produced by Warner Brothers. I also examine the video documen-tary Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), produced by Nike designer GeoffHollister and Westcom Communications in Eugene, OR; the rerelease of TomJordan’s book under the title PRE: America’s Greatest Running Legend (1997);and print media in the form of newspaper and magazine articles. The print mediainclude 25 articles from the following newspapers and magazines: Eugene Regis-ter-Guard, Oregonian, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Des Moines Register,Cedar Rapids Gazette, Chicago Tribune, Runner’s World, Sports Illustrated, Run-ning Times, and Track and Field News.

Rebel With a Cause: 1970s

Prefontaine’s running prominence came at a time characterized, like Pre, as rebel-lious. The Civil Rights movement, the women’s movement, student protests, andthe Vietnam War marked this era. In the athletic world, White male authority, sym-bolized by coaches, came into question. “The Angry Black Athlete,” portrayed onthe cover of a 1968 Sports Illustrated, was epitomized by the Mexico City Olym-pic protest of John Carlos and Tommie Smith. The athletic system was questionedon every front. Baseball player Curt Flood was fighting for free agency and callingthe buying and selling of players by franchises a master–slave relationship. Blackathletes not only broke color barriers but also excelled in public sport: Hank Aaron’sbreaking of Babe Ruth’s home run record, Arthur Ashe’s success on the tenniscourts, Frank Robinson’s appointment as the first player–manager of a profes-sional baseball team, and the growing number of Black players in basketball. Theseathletes not only entered the public forum but also openly questioned the system-atic racism that they faced.

Prefontaine the text both reflects and constitutes the zeitgeist of the late 1960sand early 1970s. Just as Muhammad Ali was contentious and controversial—at

66 Walton

once loved by certain segments of the population and castigated by others, includ-ing some members of the press—so was Prefontaine. He ran during the time of arebellious, antiestablishment youth movement, and he was at once an insider andan outsider. As an aggressive White working-class athlete, he provided a contrastto the rise of Black athletes and the encroachment of women on the athletic fields(and into other previously male-dominated spaces), but he was also part of therebellion—fighting particularly against the old guard of track-and-field governanceembodied in the AAU. Understanding Prefontaine’s 1970s popularity begins withan examination of his particular geographical and historical placement.

The Oregon Rube

Prefontaine’s hometown, Coos Bay, OR, is often portrayed as a coastal fishingtown that produced aggressive loggers, longshoremen, and fishermen; this charac-terization is used to explain Prefontaine’s aggressive racing style and energeticand blunt personality (Amdur, 1975, p. 1). Coos Bay, like much of Oregon and thenorthwest, relies heavily on the physically demanding timber and fishing indus-tries that have long been male dominated. According to Prefontaine, he wanted tobe an athlete because

you don’t have too many ways to jump. You can be an athlete. Athletes arevery, very big in Coos Bay. You can study and try to be an intellectual, butthere aren’t many of those. Or you can go drag the gut in your Chevy with aswitchblade in your pocket. (Amdur, 1975, p. 1)

Prefontaine supports the ideology of the American dream using running as hisvehicle out of a rough working-class life and at the same time maintaining accept-able masculinity within the working-class ethos. Throughout the 1970s, sports-writers used his working-class background to explain his toughness, honesty, andstrong work ethic (Amdur, 1975; Davis, 1971a, 1971b, 1975a, 1975b; Moore, 1975;Newnham, 1975a, 1975b, 1975c, 1975d). In constructing him as a rebel, manymedia accounts also focused on Prefontaine’s individuality and independence. Hewas shown to reflect a version of candid, rugged, working-class masculinity bornof the tough physicality that was necessary to work in the timber and fishing in-dustries.

Prefontaine is rooted in Coos Bay, but part of the legacy of Prefontaine is thelegacy of Hayward Field, the University of Oregon, and Eugene, the self-describedrunning capital of America. Prefontaine’s relationship with the fans in Eugene wasoften chronicled in the media, and “Pre’s people,” as they are referred to through-out his media representations, were loud and supportive fans. Competitors arequoted as saying that the roar at Hayward field for Pre was deafening. The chant of“Pre, Pre, Pre!” was standard whenever he raced in Eugene, and he would some-times take two or three victory laps with fans massed along the gates, screamingfor him. A month before Prefontaine’s death, journalist Blaine Newnham borroweda quote from a Track and Field News article (“Pre,” 1975, p. 58) to describe thephenomenon: “The enthusiasm he generates at meets more than substantiates anydoubts as to his general popularity, which borders on fanaticism” (1975a, p. B1).

Thus, the particular site of Prefontaine’s success has a lot to do with hisenduring legacy. As Oregonian sportswriter Leo Davis (1975b) described it, “InEugene he could do no wrong; there is probably nothing in sports to compare with

Hero With a Swoosh 67

the love affair between Steve and ‘his people’” (p. C1). The status of Eugene as therunning capital fed off Prefontaine’s success and personality. Moreover, his leg-end grew from the special atmosphere of Hayward Field and his relationship withhis people there. Prefontaine’s relationship with his people in Eugene was oftenexplained by a variety of writers as a “blue-collar thing.” Part of acceptance intothe working-class world of Coos Bay was success in sports. In an article in theNew York Times, Moore wrote,

He had a sense of his people—the working-class, plain-spoken people whoreally appreciated somebody being tough and coming down on one side orthe other. He had these ferocious loyalties; on the other side of the coin wasferocious defiance if you crossed what he thought was right. (“Prefontaine:What,” 1975, p. 3)

Another Oregon runner, Jere VanDyk, compared Prefontaine to Hank Stamper, theprotagonist in Ken Kesey’s novel Sometimes a Great Notion, set in a town similarto Coos Bay. “Pre is the same independent, obstinate, tough lumberjack depictedin the novel. He is naive, unsophisticated, and unafraid of anything—records orbureaucrats” (“Prefontaine: What,” 1975, p. 3). His coach, Bill Dellinger, wasquoted in the Oregonian as saying, “In four years [of college] he never missed arace or for that matter a workout. Once he ran with a 103-degree temperature anddidn’t let on until it was over. That day he ran 13:24 for three miles” (“U.S. TrackStar,” 1975, p. A1). Thus, Prefontaine was portrayed as the epitome of blue-collarideals: tough, hard-working, physical, honest, dependable, and independent.

In the Puritan work ethic, pride in community service is interconnected withthe exaltation of hard work. Prefontaine represented this ideal, as well. For ex-ample, he volunteered at a prison near Eugene and established a race that contin-ues today. Frank Shorter noted that “not many people knew of Prefontaine’s in-volvement in talking to kids at the local high schools about venereal disease orworking with prisoners. During his life he kept it to himself” (“Prefontaine: What,”1975, p. 3). Newspaper reports portrayed this as evidence of his true nature underthe hard, competitive exterior. “Those who knew Steve Prefontaine well insistedthat his hard shell covered a warm interior. There were times one got glimpses of adifferent Pre—friendly, community-minded, struggling with self-doubt” (Kardongin “Prefontaine: What,” p. 3).

Steve Prefontaine lived at a time and place—the late 1960s and early 1970sin Eugene, OR—in which track and field enjoyed tremendous popularity. WhereasAmerican men have never dominated elite distance running, the 1960s and 1970smarked a time when their presence was certainly felt on the international circuit.2

Moreover, Eugene and the University of Oregon were at the forefront of the Ameri-can running boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s. These conditions, combinedwith Prefontaine’s impressive ability, his success at the University of Oregon, andhis outspoken personality, created a context for him to become an attractive sub-ject for media attention.

Aggressive Masculinity: Great White (Heterosexual) Hope

Pre graduated from college in 1974. Although he lived in a tiny trailer on the $3-a-day allowance provided by the AAU and food stamps, Prefontaine turned down$200,000 offered to him by the fledgling professional International Track

68 Walton

Association (Moore, 1975, p. 24).3 He struggled economically to maintain hisamateur status in order to redeem his fourth-place finish in the 1972 Munich Olym-pics. Thus, the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games were of considerable importancein the coverage of Prefontaine’s life. He needed to maintain his amateur status ifhe wanted to compete in Montreal, where he felt he had unfinished business againsthis European competition. Until the Europeans were “well and honestly thrashed,”he said, “what would I do with all that money?” (Moore, 1975, p. 24). Thus, hewas shown to represent the ideal of the amateur athlete—running for the love ofcompetition and the sport rather than for money.

Issues of race, gender, and sexuality were rarely, if ever, mentioned in ar-ticles about Prefontaine; Whiteness, masculinity, and heterosexuality were theuninterrogated norms. Prefontaine was a White man, representing a White working-class town and ethic, and was written about by other White men, mostly sports-writers and runners. His people in Eugene were also mostly White.4 The portrayalof Prefontaine by the media further bolstered the notion of the working-class ethicbeing ideally White and masculine. Whereas the texts surrounding Prefontaine’sdeath paint a picture of working-class ideals, they also highlight the White worldin which the story of Prefontaine was painted.

An example of the uninterrogated norm of Whiteness can be found in com-paring coverage of tennis player Arthur Ashe in the New York Times and coverageof Prefontaine that appeared on the same page. In the article, “Arthur Ashe and theProblems of Growing Up Black,” Ashe was described as complex. “Why? Be-cause he is a black man playing tennis in a white world” (1975, p. 3). The articledescribes Ashe’s admittance into tennis as an “emasculating process,” saying thatAshe “continues to wear white on black” as his tennis demeanor.

Whereas it is beneficial for Prefontaine to have grown up in the tough andthreatened culture of the fishing and timber industries, it is a problem for ArthurAshe to grow up Black. Prefontaine’s working-class background was somethinghe could gain strength from and eventually overcome. Prefontaine was portrayedas having the agency to make systematic changes by rebelling. Ashe was describedas changing himself to fit within a system. Ironically Ashe could never change thedefining obstacle to his acceptance—his skin color. Of course his problem mightbetter be understood as growing up in and competing in a racist culture.

Prefontaine’s embodiment of male privilege is also implied in mediated ac-counts. Competitive sports, like the fishing and timber industries, were male-dominated domains in the 1960s and 1970s. As it became less economically viableto make a living at fishing and logging in Oregon, and it appeared that a preservefor male values might disappear, many might have turned to an Oregon sports herowho embodied those dominant ideals of masculinity. In conjunction with the threatsto the economic viability of the fishing and logging industries and their status as amale domain, male hegemony in the sports world was also challenged at this time.5

In this context, Prefontaine was portrayed as the embodiment of the White work-ing-class masculine athlete.

According to Lois Bryson (1994) and other sport scholars, “sport is a power-ful institution through which male hegemony is constructed and reconstructed” (p.47). Perhaps people turned to Prefontaine to recapture the lost masculinity of thetimber and fishing industries, as well as that of the sporting world. Bryson sug-gests that sport supports masculine hegemony by linking maleness with highlyvalued and visible skills and by linking maleness with positively sanctioned use of

Hero With a Swoosh 69

aggression, force, and violence. Prefontaine was heralded in media accounts forbringing his brand of toughness and aggression to a sport in which it was nottypically found—distance running. His presence not only reinforced masculineideals of sport but also legitimated distance running as a sport for real men.

Rebel Against the System(s)

Prefontaine’s main rebellion was his fight against the injustices of the AAU’s con-trol of athletes (Conrad, 1975a; Jordan, 1997; “Prefontaine: What,” 1975, p. 3).According to media accounts, His honesty and integrity led him to rebel againstthe wrongs he perceived around him. The telling of his life plays into the dominantideology of the American dream of individual responsibility and control of ourown destiny. Prefontaine, in fighting the injustices in his own life, was portrayedas a working-class hero—a rebel with a cause. Prefontaine felt unfairly restrainedby the AAU in two ways. First, he was not allowed to compete against those whomhe wanted to compete against—the best in the world—and second, the AAU didnot support him monetarily in his athletic development.

Sportswriter Leo Davis (1975a) noted, “Prefontaine was a critic of the Ama-teur Athletic Union, which he charged exploited American athletes” (p. C2). FrankShorter said, “He spoke out [against the AAU] when others were quiet” (Davis,1975a, p. C2). John Hall (1975) asserted, “Prefontaine was most visible as theangry young man. He was one of the most outspoken leaders fighting to get theAAU to improve conditions for American track and field athletes trying to com-pete on an international level” (p. 3).

Prefontaine had several complaints against the AAU. First, Pre was vocal incriticizing the competition schedule set by the AAU that all USA team memberswere required to follow or face sanctions. He felt that the AAU did not take intoconsideration the development of individual athletes and often scheduled the trackteam, for political and monetary reasons, to compete against what Prefontaineconsidered to be subpar competition that did not properly prepare him for his strongEuropean opposition. Prefontaine felt he should be allowed to construct his ownschedule to face the best in the world in his events. Pre’s anger was evident:

Where are the best runners? Emiel Puttemans is Belgian. Brendan Foster isEnglish. Rod Dixon is Kiwi. Knut and Arne Kvalheim are Norwegians. LasseViren is from Finland. Does the AAU have any of them on their wonderfultelevised schedule? Hell, no. For me, running against the Poles and Czechswould be like running against high school kids. (Moore, 1975, pp. 22–23)

In defiance of the AAU, Pre ventured into the realm of meet promotion by organiz-ing a U.S. tour for the Finnish national team and a meet in Eugene to host them inthe spring of 1975. His purpose was to be able to run against the great Viren, whohad won both the 5,000- and 10,000-m runs at the 1972 Olympics (races he wonagain at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal).6

Pre’s other main complaint against the AAU was the lack of monetary sup-port and the exploitation of athletes. Not only was there no system in place tosupport athlete development, athletes were not allowed to profit from their com-petitive endeavors. Thus, AAU officials would appropriate the appearance fees ofthe American athletes, whereas athletes from other countries received that moneyfor themselves.

70 Walton

“I’m just like any other American,” he told a reporter from the Oregon Jour-nal. “If I don’t pay my electric bill, they turn off my lights. After college, ourathletes are turned out to pasture. We have no Olympic program in this country.It’s as simple as that. No sports medicine, no camps, no nothing.” (Kardong,1991, p. 5)

Prefontaine resisted the track-and-field system as embodied by the AAU to try totransform it into a completely new governing system—one that supported national-class athletes. The Finnish and Russian programs were government-sponsored train-ing programs for elite athletes, not sponsorship of individual athletes by privateindustry, as is now the case in the United States.

Prefontaine argued that the AAU not only did not assist American runnersbut also held them back.

I hate all this gung-ho, run-for-the-red-white-and-blue attitude that the AAUspouts. If that’s important to some people, fine, more power to ’em. But,damn it, I wish they’d leave me alone to do what I want to do—run againstthe best. (Moore, 1975, p. 23)

Prefontaine was unapologetic in his criticism of the AAU, and that often made himunpopular with the sports establishment—including sport writers. Sportswriterssometimes criticized Prefontaine for being unpatriotic in his strong stance againstthe AAU. Pre argued for a national amateur athletic program in the United Statesand was strongly critical of the existing American sport system:

People say I should be running for a gold medal for the old red, white, andblue and all that bull, but it’s not gonna be that way. I’m the one who hadmade the sacrifices. Those are my American records, not the country’s. Icompete for myself. To hell with love of country. . . . If you asked me if Iwould give up my American citizenship, I would say never. But if you askedme if I’d trade our sports program for a Finnish sports program or a Russianprogram, I’d say darn right. (Amdur, 1975, p. B1)

That rebellion against the establishment, however, also seemed to be a significantaspect of his popularity with the general public in the politically charged 1970s.For example, in the early spring of 1975, Prefontaine was voted the favorite ath-lete of Track and Field News readers.

Working-class Oregon, the site of Prefontaine’s struggle, can be seen as aplace where ideology and institutional structures conflict. Just as those who workhard in the timber industry are not guaranteed the economic success that meritocraticideals dictate should come with honest labor, Prefontaine’s athletic success wasnot accompanied by economic gain. The combination of capitalism and a domi-nant ideology valuing individual achievement over ascribed status has led to anethic of professionalism in sport in the United States. The elite-amateur systemwas what Prefontaine fought against. But in the context of Oregon’s economicsituation, Prefontaine’s ability to compete against the best in the world, despitebeing prevented from earning a living from running, possibly made him a moreappealing hero to “his” working people. As will become evident, Pre’s rebelliontakes on new meaning and significance with his reemergence in 1990s media nar-ratives.

Hero With a Swoosh 71

Athlete Dying Young

The last meet of the American tour hosted for the Finnish National team in Eugenewas Prefontaine’s last race. Four hours later he died when his sports car rolled andcrushed him in a single-car accident (“U.S. Track Star,” 1975). His blood alcohollevel was 0.16%, well above the legal limit. Prefontaine’s death, which in the cur-rent climate of intolerance of drinking and driving could have been the undoing ofhis popularity, was portrayed by the 1970s media as evidence of his unfailinghonesty. Whereas Prefontaine’s death was undeniably linked with his drinkingalcohol and driving, that was not the main story presented by the media. Only theChicago Tribune mentions his drinking in their headline. The rest of the papersfocused on Prefontaine, a track star, dying in a car accident. Not until the third orfourth paragraph did most articles mention Prefontaine’s blood alcohol level. Aswill become evident, Prefontaine’s drinking and driving disappears altogether in1990s media representations, a significant omission.

Prefontaine was portrayed as having always been honest about his love ofbeer, and this love was portrayed in the articles about his death as proof of his loveof life—part of his rebellious, White, blue-collar, working-man image. As Moorewrote, “Because he had never been hypocritical about his use of alcohol, the man-ner of his death could not diminish [his] honesty” (1975, p. 25). Thus, Prefontaine’sdrinking was used, via 1970s media discourse, to further his reputation for livinglife to the fullest, as well as to bolster the portrayal of his honest, working-classbackground.

Much of the construction of the tragedy surrounding Prefontaine focuses onthe theme of lost potential, because he was only 24 at the time of his death. In theoriginal footage of his 1972 Olympic race in Munich, the commentator says,

I predict that Steve Prefontaine will win the 5,000-meter run, and that hewill do it in world record time, but he will have to do it in Montreal [in1976]. Because today he is running against the very big boys. (Hollister &Moore, 1996)

Thus, he was regarded as the future of American distance running.

“Whispering Loudly”: Nike’s Influence

An analysis of media discourse surrounding Prefontaine reveals as much aboutmainstream American culture in the 1990s as it reveals about the late Oregon run-ner. The cultural context for the reemergence of Prefontaine’s story in the 1990swas marked by increasing globalization, consumerism, and commodification. Sportfigures, more than ever, have become mediated celebrities. Given the large num-ber of current celebrity athletes, why return to a little-known 1970s distance run-ner? What can be made of the cultural climate of the late 1990s that would againmake Prefontaine a relevant cultural hero? In effect, the 1990s texts of Prefontaineoffer a nostalgic response to the imagined apolitical and apathetic “Generation X,”threats to White masculinity, and the increasing commodification of sport and sportheroes. Certainly, the Whiteness of Prefontaine can only be understood in the 1990sin contrast to the domination of Black male athletes in the professional sports offootball and, particularly, basketball, and also, increasingly, in the sport of track

72 Walton

and field. Prefontaine’s Whiteness also must be understood in relation to the crisisof masculinity of the 1990s that is clearly tied to the rise of Black male athletes inpublic consciousness. In this section I examine the changes in Prefontaine’s mean-ing over time by exploring the connection between Prefontaine’s reemergence andthe Nike Corporation. I will focus on how this connection plays out in the three1990s video productions on Prefontaine.

Prefontaine’s 1990s media reemergence was clearly connected with the NikeCorporation. Through a Nike-funded documentary about Prefontaine, Fire on theTrack (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), and two feature films about him, Prefontaine(Smith, et al., 1997) and Without Limits (Cruise, et al., 1998), Nike has enjoyedenormous advertising exposure. Nike Corporation uses a strategy ex–Nike execu-tive Rob Strasser describes as “‘whispering loudly’—allowing the consumer tofigure things out for himself” (Strasser & Becklund, 1993, p. 230). By whisperingloudly, Nike tells the story of Prefontaine in a way that makes it seem natural thatthe stories of Nike and Bowerman are central to his construction, despite the factthat Nike started out only a few years before Prefontaine’s death. Goldman andPapson (1998) note, “Nike ads tend to let viewers be actively involved in makingsense of the ad—making it appear as if they are the ones doing the meaning con-struction” (p. 36). This strategy is apparent in Nike’s underlying support for andparticipation in the video productions of Prefontaine.

In the 1970s Steve Prefontaine gained media attention not only for his im-pressive running but also for his tough image and outspoken personality; his en-during popularity has been attributed to this combination. In short, he became ahero for American runners in the 1990s just like he was a fan favorite in the 1970s.According to Goldman and Papson (1998), “When Nike’s marketing and advertis-ing decision-makers do their job well, Nike appears to ‘speak the voice’ of thesesubcultures as an insider, speaking to other insiders who share a set of recognizedsigns” (p. 37). For example, Nike’s first print advertisement using Prefontaine wasan extreme close-up of his eyes, with nothing else to identify him. Real runners,the same runners who made pilgrimages to Prefontaine’s enshrined crash site inEugene, knew without being told who he was. According to former American mara-thon record holder Alberto Salazar, “As other kids who were aspiring baseball playersmight hear of Babe Ruth, that’s how I would hear about Pre” (Jordan, 1997, p. 55).

Prefontaine’s construction in the 1990s changed in accordance with culturalstandards of the decade. Whereas the 1970s coverage of Prefontaine’s death in-formed readers of his blood alcohol level, there is no mention in Fire on the Track(Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), or in either of the movies, that Prefontaine died whileintoxicated. In the 1970s his drinking was portrayed as evidence of his love of life;in the 1990s media producers apparently did not think fans would be so forgiving.

Moreover, media representations of Prefontaine work to resolve the con-flicts of his contentious relationships with teammates, coaches, and the media byconstructing him as so driven and honest that he could be no other way. As histeammate Mac Wilkens says in Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), “Ba-sically, all of this behavior that may have been abrasive or seemed cocky was justhim being focused and being honest. Nobody else was that focused or that in-tense.” According to Nike, that intensity, a trait the corporation claims for itself,leads them both to be successful. Nike CEO Phil Knight maintained, “Pre was arebel from a working-class background, a guy full of cockiness and pride and guts.Pre’s spirit is the cornerstone of this company’s soul” (Katz, 1994, p. 64).

Hero With a Swoosh 73

During his eulogy of Prefontaine in Without Limits (Cruise et al., 1998), thecharacter of Bowerman voices his belief that he, the coach, learned from Prefontaineinstead of the other way around. He discovered through the lessons that Prefontainetaught him that winning was not most important. He acknowledged, “The realpurpose of running is not to win a race, it’s to test the limits of the human heart.That he did. Nobody did it more often. Nobody did it better.” Thus, Prefontaine’sfailure to win in the Olympics or to set a world record is apparently reconciled for1990s American viewers who expect those standards of their athletic celebrities.Moreover, because of his death at an early age, Prefontaine never really got toreach his potential as evidenced in his plans to redeem himself at the MontrealOlympics in 1976 rather than to run professionally.

Pre’s Media Reemergence: The Rebel as Commodified Hero

The considerable media attention focused on Prefontaine in the mid- to late 1990sindicates the complexity of the movement of cultural figures through time. Notonly are 1990s reconstructions of Prefontaine in an ongoing unspoken dialoguewith his representations in the 1970s, they are in conversation with the underlyingcultural conflicts of the 1990s. Specifically, the resurgence of Prefontaine pro-vides relief for the dual cultural crises of masculinity and Whiteness in the sportarena. The re-creation of Prefontaine as a hero of the 1990s serves to reach a sportaudience that apparently longs nostalgically for an ideally White masculine ama-teur athletic hero. Prefontaine embodies a stark contrast from the sport celebritywho is increasingly different in terms of race and social background from the largelyWhite male sport audience (and producers). Prefontaine, as reimagined in the 1990s,provides an alternative to the encroachment of women in the previously male spaceof commodified sport and an answer to the question posed by the December 8,1997, cover of Sports Illustrated, “Whatever happened to the White athlete?”Prefontaine further serves as a nostalgic reminder of Nike’s roots in track andfield, thereby recreating and supporting Nike’s image as an authentic and sincereplayer in the global sport arena.

Whereas the highly visible professional men’s games of football and, par-ticularly, basketball are increasingly dominated by African American players, Whiteaudiences and sportswriters struggle with how to understand these changes. Onone hand, the language of winning seems to cross cultural divides, but as ToddBoyd (1999) notes, “America loves their Black entertainers when they behaveproperly and stay in their place.” Furthermore, recent debates question whetherBlack male athletic success on the fields necessarily contributes to the advance-ment of social justice (Hartmann, 2000; Leonard, 2000). The visibility of the ath-letic success of Black male athletes seems to provide proof of the progress againstracism in ways that allow the White majority to continue to enjoy their privilegewhile ignoring systematic racism (Lipsitz, 1998; Roediger, 1991). The uneasy ne-gotiation of race in sport opens a place for reclaiming Prefontaine as a nostalgicreimagining of White masculinity that plays out not only with Pre but also with hislate coach, Bill Bowerman, and Nike.

The Nike-funded documentary of Prefontaine’s life, Fire on the Track(Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), plays a central role in the creation of the connectionbetween Prefontaine and Nike. Geoff Hollister, a Nike designer, produced thedocumentary. With a Nike employee as producer and the main funding coming

74 Walton

from Nike, it is no surprise that Nike’s interests are well represented in the film.The production that was released first, Fire on the Track has been influential in theongoing construction of Prefontaine. Moreover, because many of the same peoplewho researched, wrote, and produced Fire on the Track also helped createPrefontaine (Smith et al., 1997) and Without Limits (Cruise et al., 1998), the con-structions throughout these works are intertwined.

Fire on the Track—Establishing Nike as Central

Through Oregon novelist Ken Kesey’s poetic narration, Fire on the Track (Hollister& Lyttle, 1996) creates a romantic vision of Prefontaine: “He came here [to Hay-ward Field] to build his fire. . . . We [Pre’s people] came here to feel that fire. To us,Pre was more than a name—it was a condition.” The film establishes the tragicnature of Prefontaine’s story by flashing to headlines with the news of his deathfrom the Oregonian and Eugene Register-Guard newspapers. Through interviewswith former coaches, teammates, and competitors, as well as friends, family, andsportswriters, the documentary establishes its authority and gives the impressionof authenticity.

Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996) places Prefontaine’s childhoodin the 1960s “golden age” of track and field. The story works to create Prefontaineas a floating signifier, first connected with Coos Bay, then Hayward Field, theUniversity of Oregon, and Eugene, leading eventually and finally to Nike. Thebulk of the story occurs in Eugene with coach Bill Bowerman as a principal figureboth during and after Pre’s college years. As Prefontaine’s college and Olympiccoach, Bowerman is established as a fundamental part of the 1990s story of Pre. Akey element to understanding Bowerman, according to Fire on the Track, was hisconstant experimentation with every aspect of track and field, from track surfacesto running shoes. This quest for knowledge to improve track-and-field performancesnaturally lead to his working with Phil Knight to create a shoe company—Nike.

The professionalized status of track and field since 1981 has meant opensponsorship contracts between companies and athletes. Companies pay athletes towear their products, using images of those athletes for advertisement. Nike hassponsored many elite track-and-field athletes such as Marion Jones, MichaelJohnson, and the Kenyan national team. Of course, Nike is not just track based,and their main sponsorship in the 1990s rested with basketball player MichaelJordan. The connection between Michael Jordan and Nike is so strong that Jordan’snumber (23) and image have come to signify Nike (Armstrong, 1996). In Fire onthe Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), there is a cut to a black track between manysections of the documentary. Lanes two and three are the focus, so the number 23appears numerous times. In an example of how Nike whispers loudly, Nike sym-bolically links Prefontaine with Jordan. In doing so, the market interests are con-nected, as well, linking a tamer Pre with apolitical hero Michael Jordan.

Prefontaine’s representations show how success comes to those who workhard, thus supporting the ideology of capitalism as a meritocracy. This is reflectedin the last quote in Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), from one of Pre’speople, who says,

When was the last time you really did your best and you got through and yousaid, ‘God I did my best.’ That’s Steve Prefontaine. He got on the track. He

Hero With a Swoosh 75

did his best. Every time. Everyday. He worked out every day, and the resultwas he was the best there ever was. What a message.

Because we rely on private business to support athletics, however, the sys-tem is not run solely by merit. In order to be sponsored, an athlete must be morethan just good—he or she must have something else to offer in order to be useful inselling products. According to Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996), Prehad a connection with his people in Eugene and within the running community. Assportswriter Blaine Newnham said in the film, “He turned out to be quite a show-man” (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996).

Read critically, Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996) is as much aboutNike as it is about Prefontaine. Nike CEO Phil Knight’s image and voice figureprominently, appearing nine times. Nike, as a theme or image, occupies 15% ofthe 58-min film with approximately 65 Nike swooshes gracing the screen duringthe documentary. The longest still shot features a close-up of Prefontaine lying ona lawn (presumably at Hayward Field) in a Nike jacket. The documentary returnsto the beach for its final scene, to end with an image of a sandy footprint with anoverlay image of a large red Nike swoosh dominating the screen.

The narrative Nike constructs of itself is similar to the story that it tells ofPrefontaine, and University of Oregon coach Bill Bowerman is central to bothstories. Geoff Hollister, Nike employee and the film’s producer, during an inter-view in the film, explicitly establishes these connections:

The time that Prefontaine came to Oregon, 1969, so much preceded him, Ireally think, [that] set the stage. You had all of Bowerman’s footwear devel-opments. The tracks were definitely getting faster with the experimentationBill did with all-weather surfaces. And, with Bowerman’s jogging classesyou had a very educated crowd. So Steve showed up with all this, maybe notseeming to fit together other than the fact that Bowerman was in the middle ofit all. He was the instigator. He was the catalyst. He was the promoter. But nowhe really had someone to promote all this around. (Hollister & Moore, 1996)

Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996) portrays Bowerman as a “shaperof champions,” who tinkered with all aspects of performance, including the “feather-light spikes” he made for “his men.” The documentary introduces us early to Nikein an understated way, revealing, “One of these men was Phil Knight. Togetherthey started a small shoe company. It would become bigger.” This narration isaccompanied with a still shot of young Knight running in an Oregon uniform.Without naming Nike, the documentary loudly whispers Nike’s success and itsconnection with Prefontaine.

An emphasis on Bowerman in Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996)places Nike as central to the story of Prefontaine. According to Nike legend,Bowerman worked with his former athlete, Phil Knight, making shoes in his base-ment with his wife’s waffle iron and selling them out of the back of a truck. Thedocumentary establishes that “Nike as a brand name was only a year old and waslosing $50,000 a year in 1973 when Steve Prefontaine joined the company.”7 Nikedid not make racing spikes during Prefontaine’s lifetime. Not incidentally, it isimpossible to distinguish the brands of all but one pair of running shoes worn inFire on the Track—despite the many images of athletes competing. The onedistinguishable pair, of course, are Nike trainers that are subtly highlighted with

76 Walton

special effects to create wavering Nike swooshes. Whereas the logos of Prefontaine’sTiger or Adidas racing shoes are obscured, he is shown throughout the video inNike clothes.

Nike’s first advertising strategy was a print ad campaign for their waffletrainers. The 1976 advertisement proclaimed that the shoes were “Made Famousby Word-of-Foot Advertising.” Like other shoe companies, Nike wanted prominentathletes in their shoes. Whereas open endorsement contracts were not allowed foramateur athletes, Nike did find ways to help athletes and, most important, getNikes on their feet. In another example of whispering loudly, Nike sponsored Ath-letics West, a track club that helped athletes by supplying free equipment and travelmoney for competition. In turn, athletes wore the Athletics West singlet, as well asNike running shoes and clothes. Strasser and Becklund maintain that

the decision not to name the club “Nike” was deliberate, an effort not only toavoid antagonizing amateur officials but also to abstain from commercializ-ing the club. Runners would know Nike was behind the club, and whereverAthletics West athletes competed, the Nike name gained legitimacy. (1991,p. 230)

Prefontaine is shown several times in Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle,1996) racing in the Athletics West uniform, a white jersey with a small green treewith a circle around it. He was also given a salary of $5,000 per year to work inNike’s store, act as a Nike representative, and run Nike clinics for high school andcollege runners. Knight maintained that Pre was the perfect athlete for Nike be-cause “he had a certain amount of rebel in him” but he was a “rebel with a cause”(Hollister & Lyttle). Whereas the cause in the 1970s was an overhaul of the AAU,that cause in the 1990s becomes unquestioned support for the commercializationof track and field.

During the 1960s and 1970s, endorsement deals between shoe companiesand athletes were becoming established as the norm. Nike was quick to realize thatendorsements were the best way to advertise. Their first endorsement was withRomanian tennis player Ilie Nastase in 1972. Nastase might not have been anobvious choice for a bad-tempered bad boy, except for being dubbed “Nasty” inthe press. Nor was he an all-American hero. But he was an athlete Nike’s budgetcould afford, and, according to Strasser and Becklund, “Nike would look back onthis early endorsement as its first step in a highly successful marketing campaignthat turned its ‘bad boy’ athletes into counterculture heroes who sold shoes” (1991,p. 120). Prefontaine’s story is clearly being used in this tradition.

In the most blatant example of Nike’s self-endorsement, Fire on the Track(Hollister & Lyttle, 1996) includes a Nike television commercial. Supporting Nike’sclaim of having, like Prefontaine, a little bit of rebel, the documentary includes aNike commercial featuring other Nike rebels: John McEnroe, Charles Barkley,and Andre Agassi. Like these other athletes, Prefontaine’s cause, as constructed inthe 1990s, might come from rebellion against social norms but not in fighting forsystematic changes. Agassi shakes up the country club with long hair and brightclothes, and McEnroe is best known for throwing rackets and having temper tan-trums. Meanwhile, Barkley reminds us, “I am not a role model.” In the 1990s,professionalization is the only option offered to replace the “shamateur” sportssystem of the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s, however, Prefontaine argued in support

Hero With a Swoosh 77

of the Finnish state-supported athletic system. As he said in a Track and FieldNews interview, “There’s no way I can be as prepared as the Europeans: my gov-ernment isn’t taking care of me” (Hendershott, 1974, p. 5).

Prefontaine is portrayed as having helped to build Nike, but Nike now pro-duces Pre. The relationship between Pre and Nike is decidedly unbalanced, how-ever. Prefontaine obviously does not benefit from his 1990s media popularity. Onthe most cynical level, Prefontaine is the perfect endorser of Nike products be-cause he does not have to be paid at all. And in a late consumer-capitalist culture,this also works to legitimate Pre as a real sport hero. His purity as an athlete doesnot come into question over the issue of endorsement dollars. With other sportcelebrities of the 1990s, “bigger contracts and proliferating endorsements promptfans to suspect that money rather than the love of the game is the prime motiva-tion” (Goldman & Papson, 1998, p. 63). Nike has worked through print advertise-ments and video productions to tame the image of Prefontaine and to create a lesscontroversial and commodified hero with pure motives.

Prefontaine, or Fire on the Track Continued

Prefontaine (Smith et al., 1997), a Disney production, was written and di-rected by Steve James and filmed by cinematographer Peter Gilbert, best knownfor their documentary Hoop Dreams (1995). Using a docudrama format, the moviefollows the story of Prefontaine’s life as presented in Fire on the Track, at timesalmost verbatim, fleshing out characters and relationships in order to get as closeto reality as possible. The ties to Fire on the Track are strong; executive producersJon Lutz and Mark Doonan headed both projects. The same historical researcher,Tom Jordan, worked on both projects, and Nike designer and Fire producer GeoffHollister was the technical advisor for Prefontaine. Like Fire on the Track, nomention was made of Pre’s drinking and driving or his reputation for womanizing.Indeed, the film works hard to establish Prefontaine’s monogamous relationshipwith girlfriend Nancy Alleman. The Prefontaine family consulted on this film, andmuch of it was set in Prefontaine’s boyhood home of Coos Bay, OR. Bowerman’srole and, particularly, his involvement with Nike were central to the story, againsimilar to Fire on the Track.

Without Limits: Nike and Pre’s Shared Spirit

Without Limits (Cruise et al., 1998), a Warner Brothers film, was directed by Rob-ert Towne with executive producers Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner and enjoyed alarger budget ($25 million) than the $10 million budget of Prefontaine (Smith etal., 1997). This movie, written by Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996)writer Kenny Moore, along with director Robert Towne, takes a different tack thanFire on the Track and Prefontaine. Whereas those productions try to portray thefacts and reality of Prefontaine’s story, Without Limits is more concerned withportraying a certain impression. As Donald Sutherland, playing Bowerman, notes in avoice-over at the start of the film, “I won’t say this is the truth, but it is a likely story.”

Again, Nike can be heard whispering loudly. In Without Limits (Cruise et al.,1998), Prefontaine is more subtly connected with Nike. In the beginning he is aself-proclaimed “Adidas freak.” He wears Adidas and also gives them out to vari-ous female fans because he is apparently getting them for free. In the end, however,

78 Walton

he is realigned with Nike, competing in a Nike-sponsored Athletics West singlet inhis last race and approving the Nike shoes Bowerman makes for him.

The consultants for Without Limits (Cruise et al., 1998) include Nike co-founder, the late Bill Bowerman; Nike executive and Prefontaine’s former team-mate Steve Bence; and former Nike employee and Prefontaine’s ex-girlfriend MaryMarckx. Nike employee Jeff Atkinson served as Kenny Moore’s assistant. Thus,Nike is well represented. In Without Limits Bowerman is again a central figure,and the relationship between Prefontaine and Bowerman serves as the main focusof the movie. The figure of Bowerman, though, is distinctly different in WithoutLimits than in Prefontaine (Smith et al., 1997). The Bowerman portrayed inPrefontaine is a crude and militant coach who is direct, blunt, and in completecontrol. In Prefontaine, Pre might have questioned Bowerman, but there was nodebate—Prefontaine was expected to do as he was told. On the other hand, theBowerman in Without Limits, a film on which he himself consulted, is a soft-spoken, thinking man. Indeed, the movie centers on a philosophical debate of sortsbetween Bowerman and Prefontaine.

The route their relationship follows is introduced just before the two meetfor the first time. Prefontaine asks one of his teammates to tell him about the coach.As in Fire on the Track (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996) and Prefontaine (Smith et al.,1997), Bowerman’s military background is presented. In Without Limits (Cruise etal., 1998), teammate Kenny Moore reveals to Pre that Bowerman single-handedlyorchestrated the surrender of the Eighth German Army in Italy during World WarII. Prefontaine asks Moore the relevance of this information and is advised, “Whenhe commands, you obey.” Prefontaine replies confidently, “Well, I’m not the Ger-man army and I’m not here to surrender.” This foreshadows the contentious butclose relationship that plays out in the remainder of the movie between the twostrong-willed men, in which Prefontaine constantly questions Bowerman’s authority.Thus, rather than focusing on Prefontaine’s more political fight against track-and-field authorities, the movie focuses on a debate over race tactics, specifically front-running, between Bowerman and his star pupil.

Many of the exchanges between Pre and Bowerman occur at the picnic tableoutside Bowerman’s house. Again Nike whispers loudly, especially to track andPrefontaine fans familiar with the Nike legend of Bowerman’s home. He contin-ued to live in the same house, which he built himself, even after Nike’s, and hencehis own, considerable economic success. Thus, his Eugene house has significancein the retelling of Prefontaine. The use of Hayward Field and Bowerman’s houseadded credibility to these scenes in Without Limits (Cruise et al., 1998).

Bowerman and Prefontaine’s relationship is used in Without Limits (Cruiseet al., 1998) to reinforce the all-male, White, heterosexual hegemony of the distance-running world. The only women in the movie are Pre’s mother, Elfriede Prefontaine;Barbara Bowerman (of the waffle-iron fame); and Prefontaine’s female fans andromantic interests. None of Prefontaine’s female or non-White Olympic teammatesare included in the movie. Sport as an all-male world is reinforced by Bowerman’seasy crudeness. In one scene he orders the whole team to get a haircut in order todisassociate themselves from student revolts on campus, including a recent burn-ing of a University of Oregon building. When Prefontaine challenges the fairnessof this because there is no set standard of what constitutes long hair, Bowerman

Hero With a Swoosh 79

replies with a standard: Everyone has to get his hair cut to the length of hisdick.

Without Limits (Cruise et al., 1998) does the most work in taming the imageof Prefontaine. Specifically, there is little mention of his rebellion against the AAU.For example, the context and meaning of Prefontaine’s last race are transformed tobe less politically charged. Thus, Pre’s main defiance of the AAU, organizing andrunning in the Finnish tour, was not included in Without Limits. Instead, the Resto-ration meet, which happened a year before Prefontaine died, served as his last racein the Without Limits version of his life. In his last race, Prefontaine wore a blacksinglet, by many accounts the only time he ever did. Once again Nike whis-pers loudly: In Without Limits Prefontaine wears a Nike-sponsored AthleticsWest singlet in his last race in the movie—white with a green circle around atree.

Prefontaine’s last interaction with Bowerman in Without Limits (Cruise etal., 1998) leaves no doubt of Nike’s connection with Prefontaine. After his lastrace, Prefontaine visits Bowerman, who is working on some shoes on the picnictable at his Eugene home. According to Bowerman, the shoes are made without aseam, as Pre always requested. Prefontaine takes them out for a run. After sometime, he returns to Bowerman, who is clearly waiting in anticipation. Prefontainechanges back into the Adidas he was wearing and comments that the new shoes are“not bad.” Bowerman appears disappointed until Prefontaine requests a couple ofpairs for Montreal. When Pre asks about the swooshes, Bowerman reveals thatthey symbolize Nike, the goddess of victory—the name and logo for the shoes.Pre’s reply is simple as he walks off, “Nike? I like it.” Once again Prefontaine isaligned with Nike.

Nike’s influence in the telling of Prefontaine’s story through video represen-tations in the 1990s provides powerful advertising opportunities for the company.Nike creates the image of Steve Prefontaine to exemplify an ideology that not onlybenefits Nike but also supports late capitalist-consumer culture. Pre, in the 1990s,represents a politically tame commodified hero. Each of the movies shows howPrefontaine pulls himself up from his working-class background to become a world-class runner by the shear grit of his determination, thus reinforcing meritocraticnotions of success. As Nike CEO Phil Knight noted, “Of all the great athletes whohave worn our products on the field of battle, we’ve made a statue of only one ofthem, and that was Prefontaine” (Hollister & Lyttle, 1996).

Concluding Remarks

Various meanings of Prefontaine have been and continue to be constructed andconveyed in the stories told in the media. Mainstream media constructions ofPrefontaine have figured prominently in answering the question “Who is Pre?”The stories created about Steve Prefontaine articulate cultural meanings that areoften not explicitly named. We learn a great deal about how culture persists andalso changes across time by examining the stories of sports heroes as they areremembered and reremembered at different points in time. A critical examinationof the 1970s print media relating to Prefontaine reveals a veneration of the Puritanwork ethic and White masculine individualism. The narratives of Prefontaine work

80 Walton

to maintain sport as a male domain and a particular version of White heterosexualmasculinity. Media accounts in the 1970s focused on establishing a certain versionof working-class masculinity—the Prefontaine of the 1970s was tough, independent,and outspoken about what was right. The media did not chastise Prefontaine forhis drinking or partying reputation. Instead, these aspects of his representationwere used as examples of how he lived life fully and honestly.

Prefontaine’s struggle itself can be understood as a conflict between culturalideology and institutional structures. Prefontaine lived on food stamps in a trailerin order to survive while training to be a world-class athlete. His people, mean-while, were working in the threatened fishing and timber industries and were alsostruggling economically. Prefontaine was successful in that he won races, but hewas not successful by capitalist standards. Therefore, in the 1970s, Prefontainefought against the elite-amateur system. He worked toward a more socialist idealof government support for track and field. In the context of Oregon’s economicsituation, however, Prefontaine’s ability to compete against the best in the world,despite his inability to earn a living from running, made him a more appealinghero to his working people.

Nike played a large part in the 1990s reemergence of Prefontaine that subtlytransformed his image from the working-class rebel with a cause, created in themedia of the 1970s, to a commodified hero. My analysis illustrates that Nike useda strategy of “whispering loudly” to create the 1990s version of Prefontaine. Al-though Nike is not exactly subtle, consumers are allowed to figure things out forthemselves. By whispering loudly, Nike tells the story of Prefontaine in a way thatmakes it seem necessary that the stories of Nike and Bowerman are central to hisconstruction.

Similar to his 1970s construction, the Prefontaine of the 1990s is a Whiteman from a working-class background on his way to becoming one of the bestrunners in the world, solely through hard work. Prefontaine’s success signifies thereality of the American Dream. Moreover, Prefontaine is also the embodiment ofthe “master” category of our culture. He is White in a culture in which Whitenessis the uninterrogated norm. He is a man in a culture that values male and masculineover female and feminine—especially in the world of sport. He would have movedout of the ranks of the working class, according to Nike, if he had lived to enjoyNike’s current financial success, signifying the economic reality of the Americandream.

In effect, the 1990s video productions of Prefontaine’s life serve as exten-sive commercials for Nike. In order to effectively produce Prefontaine as a hero inour current cultural climate, Nike has tamed his image. Most important, his causein the 1990s is no longer to change the system so that everyone benefits (as was thecase with Finland’s socialist athletic system, which Prefontaine admired in the1970s) but rather to work the system to benefit individually.

Whereas cultural readings are not definitive conclusions, it is important toremember that, as McDonald and Birrell (1999) point out, “narratives matter be-cause they do ideological work which has material consequences. Andcounternarratives matter because they offer resistant visions while creating spacesfor mobilization of political action” (p. 295). Critical readings point out the degreeto which media narratives are constructed and the underlying power relations thatthey support. By revealing hegemonic forces and interrogating unquestioned norms,

Hero With a Swoosh 81

this type of work helps open up possibilities of differing narrative truths and, mostimportant, their accompanying material realities.

References

Amdur, N. (1975, May 31). Prefontaine, 24, killed in crash. The New York Times, p. 19.Andrews, D., & Jackson, S. (2001). Sport stars: The cultural politics of sporting celebrity.

New York: Routledge.Armstrong, E. (1996). The commodified 23, or, Michael Jordan as text. Sociology of Sport

Journal, 13(4), 325-343.Arthur Ashe and the problems of growing up Black. (1975, June 8), New York Times, p. 3.Birrell, S. & McDonald, M. (2000). Reading sport: Critical essays on power and represen-

tation. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Boyd, T. (1999, June 11). Amerikka’s most hated. Sportjones. Retrieved June 11, 1999,

from http://www. sportjones.com.Bryson, L. (1987). Sport and the maintenance of masculine hegemony. Women’s Studies

International Forum, 10(4), 349-360.Conrad, J. (1975a, April 4). Pre and his decisions. Eugene Register-Guard, p. C1.Conrad, J. (1975b, May 30). ‘Most popular track athlete’: His friends remember Prefontaine.

Eugene Register-Guard, p. D1.Conrad, J. (1975c, May 31). Pre’s last one a good one. Eugene Register-Guard, p. D3.Cruise, T., Wagner, P. (Producers), & Towne, R. (Writer/Director). (1998). Without limits

[Motion picture]. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers.Davis, L. (1971a, February 2). Track meet tames the savage beast. Oregonian, sec. 3,

p. 1.Davis, L. (1971b, March 21). Comfortable genius. Oregonian, p. C4.Davis, L. (1975a, May 31). Track world mourns death. Oregonian, pp. C1-C2.Davis, L.(1975b, May 31). Leo’s lines: Pre’s people run out of time. Oregonian, p. C1.Goldman, R., & Papson, S. (1998). Nike Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Hall, J. (1975, June 2). Around town. Los Angeles Times, sec. III, p. 3.Hartmann, D. (2000). Rethinking the relationships between sport and race in American

culture. Sociology of Sport Journal, 17(3) 229-253.Hendershott, J. (1974) The summer odyssey of Steve Prefontaine, Track and Field News,

27(10), pp. 4-5.Hollister, G. (Producer), & Lyttle, E. (Director). (1996). Fire on the track [Motion picture].

Eugene, OR: Westcom Creative Group.Jordan, T. (1997) [1977]. PRE: The story of America’s greatest running legend, Steve

Prefontaine. Emmaus, PA: Rodale (Original work published as Pre! 1977).Kardong, D. (1991). “Pre.” Runner’s World Online, May 26(1). Retrieved April 10, 1997,

from http://www.runnersworld.com/pre/predk.html.Katz, D. (1994). Just do it: The Nike spirit in the corporate world. New York: Random

House.Kesey, K. (1964). Sometimes a great notion. New York: Penguin Books.Leonard, D. (2000). The decline of the Black athlete: An interview with Harry Edwards.

Color Lines, 3(1), pp. 20-24.Lipsitz, G. (1998). The possessive investment in whiteness: How white people profit from

identity politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Lipsky, R. (1981). How we play the game. Boston: Beacon Press.

82 Walton

McDonald, M., & Birrell, S. (1999). Reading sport critically: A methodology for interrogat-ing power. Sociology of Sport Journal, 16(4), 283-300.

Moore, K. (1975, June 9). A final drive to the finish. Sports Illustrated, 42(2), pp. 22-25.Newnham, B. (1975a, April 20). Apologies, apple pies. Eugene Register-Guard, p. B1.Newnham, B. (1975b, May 30). Pre’s death ‘the end of the era’: Nation’s top distance

runner killed in single-car accident. Eugene Register-Guard, p. A1.Newnham, B. (1975c, June 1). Steve Prefontaine: Bowerman recalls that ‘tough rube.’ Eu-

gene Register-Guard, p. B1.Newnham, B. (1975d, June 3). Pre’s last lap back where it began. Eugene Register-Guard,

p. A1.Pre the readers’ favorite. (1975, February). Track and Field News, 28(2), p. 58.Prefontaine: What he was really like. (1975, June 8). New York Times, sec. 2, p. 3.Roediger, D. (1991). The wages of whiteness. New York: Verso.Smith, I., Lutz, J., Doonan, M., Gilbert, P. (Producers), & James, S. (Director). (1997).

Prefontaine [Motion picture]. Burbank, CA: Hollywood Pictures.Storey, J. (1996). Cultural studies and the study of popular culture: Theories and methods.

Athens: University of Georgia Press.Strasser, J.B., & Becklund, L. (1991). Swoosh: The unauthorized story of Nike and the men

who played there. New York: HarperCollins.Theberge, N., & Birrell, S. (1994). The sociological study of women and sport. In M. Costa

and S. Guthrie (Eds.), Women and sport: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 323-330). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

U.S. track star prefontaine dies in auto accident. (1975, May 31). Oregonian, p. 1.Whannel, G. (1998). Individual stars and collective identities in media sport. In M. Roche

(Ed.), Sport, popular culture and identity (Vol. 5, pp. 23-36). Aachen, Germany:Meyer & Meyer.

Wilt, F. (1973). How they train: Vol II. Long distances. Los Altos, CA: Track and FieldNews.

Notes1Clearly the Track and Field News editor meant that the enthusiasm for Pre quelled,

rather than substantiated, any doubts of his popularity, and this reflects Newnham’s in-tended point, as well.

2Between 1964 and 1976, on the world stage of the Olympics, American middle-distance and distance men earned 10 medals in distances from 800 m to the marathon. Incomparison, American men earned only one medal at distances of 800 m and farther in the1988, 1992, and 1996 Olympics combined—Johnny Gray’s bronze at 800 m.

3Given the popularity of Prefontaine, the International Track Association felt his par-ticipation could guarantee their success. Thus, they offered him the largest professionalcontract for an American trackster at that time. First they wanted to establish a circuit in theUnited States and eventually branch out to international meets. Other track stars to sign onincluded Kenya’s Kip Keino and American Jim Ryan (Jordan, 1997).

4His German ethnicity is not something that visibly marked him as other, althoughthe media does comment briefly on how speaking German made him an outsider as a school-boy. Prefontaine’s mother spoke German at home, and he did not learn English until hewent to school. European ethnic differences are easily whitewashed, however, and erased inpublic media discourse.

Hero With a Swoosh 83

5For example, Title IX, passed in 1972, outlawed sex discrimination by educationalinstitutions receiving federal aid, and in 1973, Billie Jean King soundly defeated BobbyRiggs in a much touted tennis match/battle of the sexes.6Viren withdrew because of injury,so Pre raced his long-time friend US Olympic marathon runner Frank Shorter instead.Prefontaine easily beat Shorter that night with a time only 1.5 s off of his American recordmark of 13:22.2 (“U.S. Track Star,” 1975).

7The company that Prefontaine worked for was technically Blue Ribbon Sports. Nikeevolved from Phil Knight’s decision to create a company independent of Tiger, the Japa-nese manufacturer of the shoes that Blue Ribbon Sports sold. The first “Nike” running shoe,in 1971, was a Tiger Cortez with the new Nike logo, the swoosh, tacked on to it (Strasser &Becklund, 1991).

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION OF THESOCIOLOGY OF SPORT JOURNAL (ISSN 0741-1235), as required by 39 U.S.Code 3685:

The Sociology of Sport Journal (ISSN 0741-1235) is published four times ayear (quarterly). Subscription fees are $49 per year for individuals and $184 per yearfor institutions.

The owner of the Sociology of Sport Journal is Human Kinetics Publishers,Inc., whose office of publication is at 1607 N. Market St., Champaign, IL 61825-5076. The Editor is Nancy Theberge, Department of Sociology, University of Water-loo, Waterloo, ON Canada N2L 3G1. The publisher is Rainer Martens, whose ad-dress is Box 5076, Champaign, IL 61825-5076. There are no bondholders, mortgag-ees, or other security holders.

Average number of copies printer per issue (net press run) during the preced-ing 12 months is 1,490; number nearest to filing date is 1,401. Average number ofcopies of each issue distributed after mass mailing to subscribers during the preced-ing 12 months is 0; number nearest to filing date is 0. Average number of copies ofeach issue distributed in mass mailing to subscribers during the preceding 12 monthsis 996; number nearest to filing date is 1,047. Average number of copies of eachissue distributed free during the preceding 12 months is 45; number nearest tofiling date is 45.