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MICHAEL DUNNE: I'm Michael Dunne. Derek Jeter is synonymous with New York. Michael Jordan is synonymous with Chicago and right here in our little corner of the world, Steve Prefontaine is synonymous with Eugene, 2025, marks the 50th year of the great track and field stars passing but of course, Pre, as many call him, was more than just an athlete. Today, on the show, you'll hear from a local author who's written a new book about the legend called: The Front Runner, The Life Of Steve Prefontaine. He discusses how the man was very different from the myth in many substantive ways. Then at the end of the show, we'll check in with Eugene Weekly about the latest twist in their saga to finally find justice from an internal crime. Brendan O'Mara, who is a Eugene based journalist and author and the author of the just released book, the front runner, the life of Steve Prefontaine. Brendan, thanks so much for taking some time to chat with us.
BRENDAN O'MEARA: I'm thrilled to be here.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Obviously, the 50th anniversary of the death of Steve Prefontaine. Why don't you start with this - you tell us why you wanted to write this book, and what was it about Pre as we’ve all come to know him, what was about his story that really captivated you?
BRENDAN O'MEARA: Yeah, just as an athlete growing up, I was always aware of who he was, and the 50th anniversary of his passing was occurring to me about four or five years ago, I was just thinking about the anniversary, because that's a good hook on which to potentially sell a book or a long article or something. And it gave us a sense, or gave us a time to reappraise him, you know, decades after, you know, he competed, and decades after he passed away, and the fact is, he's so ahead of his time, personality and athlete. You know, the original subtitles of the book was: Prefontaine The Dawn Of The Modern Athlete. And because so much of what he embodied back in the 70s, we've really seen come to pass in the last couple of decades, and definitely in the last few years in college athletics, was name, image, likeness, athletes considering themselves brands. Steve wouldn't have referred to it as a brand back then, but he was very aware of his image, how he came across in the media, and using the media to create a bond with his fans the way we see a lot of athletes today, connecting directly through social media and Instagram. So in so many ways, he was right for a reappraisal and cast, casting him in this modern light and to just bring him back to the fore and get to the humanity behind him, instead of this legendary status. We've come to know.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Talk about, sort of separating the myth from the man. Talk a little bit about that, because obviously he has reached, certainly in in in the state of Oregon, and certainly where I'm broadcasting from, Eugene, he's reached mythic status, but, talk a little bit about that kind of separating what you know might be like I said mythology versus what he really was, which was probably enough.
BRENDAN O'MEARA: Exactly. A North Star for me through this whole project, was to take Pre, and make him Steve again. And I had this, I had this quote that I taped underneath my monitor. It was from the biographer, Jonathan Ian, while he was doing his research for Martin Luther King, he wrote this quote. He had it was, you know, we had turned him into a national holiday and a monument and lost sight of his humanity. So, I wanted to write a more intimate book, and that resonated so true with me, because over the over these decades, you know, Steve has become this mythic, legendary, deified, lionized figure. And I was like, Well, you know, like, there's far more to that. And a good biography, or a biography done well, burrows below the mythology and restores the humanity and reminds people that, yes, they might have been singularly gifted and talented in an athletic pursuit, in his case, running, but he was also a boyfriend, a teammate, a brother and a good friend to so many people and an activist and someone who had a chip on his shoulder about the amateur establishment of the time. So in doing so much archival research and 1000s of articles and hundreds of interviews, you can really triangulate the person and burrow below that mythology and remind people, oh, he was just a young man who died young. He contained multitudes. And he wasn't just this arrogant, brash, charismatic runner. He was so much more.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Yeah, you know, in researching before I was going to talk to you, one thing that you uncovered and talk about, which I think does humanize him, because it obviously is such a scourge in our society, is fact that he suffered a lot of abuse at the hands of his father. Talk about that.
BRENDAN O'MEARA: Yeah, that was really illuminating, and I have to thank his first cousin, and his older half-sister, Nita Prefontaine, for being so forthcoming about sharing those wonderful insights as painful as they were. Because, yeah, he was, you know, if he spilled his milk or bumped his tricycle or something, he was subject to, you know, physical abuse both Nita and Steve and, you know, it's, it's a bit of a stretch to connect the dots like he ran with such a punishing intensity, because he suffered some physical abuse from his parents. But it, you know, it does shine a light on, you know, this is, this was his upbringing, and this helped forge and helped develop his character. And he was able to meet a certain measure of punishment on the track, yeah. And maybe that had to do with some of his upbringing, you know. And then he had a fraternity brother, John Van Zonneveld, who he was really abused by his father, and as he relayed this message to Steve, Steve kind of nodded along. He's just like, Yeah, I can. I can really relate to that. So, you get a sense that, you know, running was an escape for a lot of people who have abusive households. And it's, you know, not to say, I don't want to over index on it, but it was definitely something that forged his early character.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You also talk about the fact that, I mean, like all great athletes, but also the human side of it, is the fact that he hated losing. And you talk about, you know, the fact that he was defeated in the 72’ Olympics, and how that weighed upon him. Talk about that, and you know how it impacted him personally?
BRENDAN O'MEARA: Yeah, that was his most public defeat. And he knows he ran a brilliant and gutsy race. Maybe there was some faltering in his strategy, but he was in it, and he ran a quintessentially Prefontaine race, really trying to take it to the field in that final mile and make the field challenge the field. And they finally strung out. And when he pushed the pace and it was a magnificent defeat, in a way, because he was so gas and in so much oxygen, oxygen debt. At the end, Ian Stewart comes in and clips him at the enemy, loses a bronze medal by point eight seconds or so, but it took him a bit to recover from that. The not to be discounted was the terrorist attacks of the 72’ Games, absolutely, which, yeah, that got in his head. It really bothered him. And, you know, and Kenny Moore's wonderful book on Bill Bowerman, you know, he has a scene in there where Steve attests to, you know, if they were said, the games are over and poor gave you an option to go and put it, put you on a plane and go home, he would have gone home and then, and he gave voice in an article about a year after the Olympics, where he said it took him an entire year to get over, you know, as he called it, the Israeli thing. And it was someone his performance was very much tied to his mental preparation, and that really messed with him. When he was on the he gave voice to being at the starting line and just not having it, like just not wanting to do it. And you know, he found enough strength to compete for a little over 13 minutes and nearly came away with a medal. But he had to dig real deep into his reserves to find the metal to persevere in the face of that tragedy.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You also bring up, in some ways, a pioneer, Steve Prefontaine, especially as we're very familiar now with the idea of sports psychology and the mental aspect of competing. You talk about the fact that this was a guy, we're talking a long time ago, that mental focus and mental preparation was a big part of his greatness, wasn't it?
BRENDAN O'MEARA: Yeah, like going all the way back to high school, you know, he wrote down times that he wanted. Achieve in the mile, the 880 yards, what they would run in high school, and the two mile. And he taped that in his room and as a way to constantly remind himself, like, this is the goal I want. So, everything, all my oars are rowing in the right direction to inform that goal. And there's a, you know, there's also an element of getting in his rival’s heads, you know, Doug Crooks who went to North Eugene High School and was a rival in a mile and two miles for him, like he invited him down to Coos Bay to train. And, you know, he tapes this thing like beat Crooks in his room and, and it was just this way of always getting in someone's head. And he would, it was that visualization, but also his running style was a way to get in people's heads, because he was a front runner, meaning he went out fast, and he dared you to try to stay with him. And so, you had to make a choice. If you were his competitor, are you going to try to go out early with him and maybe burn out your reserves, or are you going to let him go out there and run free and take the race unto itself, that would get into people's heads, and he would share his workouts. He would tell you would be very boastful about his workouts. Some people are like, maybe keep that closer to your chest. But he's just like, well, if people try to copy my workouts and try to train like I do. They're gonna, they're gonna kill themselves training like I do. He was always, he was always messing with his rivals. So he was on the vanguard of that, before sports psychology was officially a thing.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Then you write about that he was a pretty big advocate for women competing in sports as well, wasn't he?
BRENDAN O'MEARA: Yeah, that was one of those serendipitous things that you come across and you do deep newspaper archival research. And I was just you type in his name in the daily emerald archives, and you get however many hundreds of articles that mention him, and I'm just reading every single one and cataloging them. And then in this one article from 1974 it mentions these Eugene runners Deborah Ross Meryl Barker and Carolyn Walker, these young women that he coached. I didn't know he coached anybody, let alone women who were just starting to realize that they had a seat at the table athletically, and the fact that the most popular track and field Athlete of the time, the most famous person in Eugene and one of the most popular athletes in the country, and he carved out time for his own day, to draw workouts for them and to oversee their training and to push them and to help them through their races. He didn't really attend their races, but he would help them think through their races and, and Meryl, to her credit, she still has all the workouts he drew up for her and, and it's wonderful to look at those into accessing like, Oh, this is from the left-handed pen of Steve Prefontaine, drawing up workouts for people, just because he wanted them to fulfill their, you know, their goals into manifest the best version of themselves.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I imagine a lot of people who are going to buy your book are fans of Steve, Steve Prefontaine and, you know, remember his career fondly, but I also imagine this book is for people who never saw him run and weren't even born when he was ascendant. It's, it's kind of, you know, perhaps a bit more for the next generation of athletes. Is that a fair assessment?
BRENDAN O'MEARA: I think that's really spot on, Michael, because a lot of people I talked to, like, in my excitement for the book, I would say, like, Yeah, I'm writing about this, this very iconic runner from the early 70s is deep free Fontaine. They're like, who? And I would tell them, it's hard for us to believe in Oregon, that no one outside that everybody, that there are people who don't know who he is, because he's just so prevalent. And it's hard for us to imagine that nobody knows who he is in this area, but yeah, across the country, especially if you're not steeped in running culture, he's going to be introduced to a new wave of people. And in talking with people who are in track town, USA and tied to the pre classic at the 50th anniversary, they're really leaning in to this idea of introducing his story to an entirely new generation or two. And so, yeah, I think people are going to pick up this book like, Wow. I never realized that there was this incredibly charismatic figure that was really meant for the modern day, and so ahead of his time back in the 70s and there, I think they're gonna be like, Wow. I'm so glad I I got to know this guy now.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I encourage everybody to get the book. It's a great read. Brendan O'Mara, who wrote the front runner, the life of Steve. Steve Prefontaine. Brennan, thanks so much for carving out some time and talking to us.
BRENDAN O'MEARA: Michael, what a pleasure. Thank you so much.
MICHAEL DUNNE: We're going to check in with the Eugene Weekly, whose story about seeking justice is a remarkable and strange news story in and of itself. Camilla Mortensen, the editor of the Eugene weekly, thanks so much for coming in and chatting with us.
CAMILLA MORTENSEN: Thanks for having me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: You know, I think, I think few things are aptly described as a saga, but certainly what you've gone through is a saga. And I just had you in just a few weeks ago, talking about the person who was arrested for the embezzlement charge. Pick up the story from there, please.
CAMILLA MORTENSEN: It has been a bunch of ups and downs. Yeah. So she was arrested in Ohio, and we were kind of breathing a sigh of relief that this whole thing was, you know, coming to some sort of conclusion and resolution. And I was looking at the I believe it's Franklin County Ohio jail, and I noticed that she was no longer in custody, and I thought, well, that's interesting, and maybe it's because the extradition has begun, and then, because I'm a journalist, I couldn't help myself, so I checked some court records, sure, then I was seeing that she was out on bond, and that seemed weird, so I reached out to the DA Chris Parosa and to Eugene Fauci, who'd been, you know, on the case, and just said, you know, what's going on? Is she being extradited? Because I do know sometimes, when they're transporting someone for extradition, that they will sort of try to keep it quiet because they don't want to, you know, call attention the fact that someone is being transported sure dangerous for themselves or the person, sure, and that's when they responded and said, to our surprise, the governor's office said no to the extradition, and they'd been working on it behind the scenes for a couple days trying to get it reversed. That's why it took a couple days to fill me in. And I was surprised. My staff was surprised, and I think also hurt is the correct word, but it does hurt, because it just felt like a bizarre reversal that we didn't see coming.
MICHAEL DUNNE: And were you able to ascertain the reason why the extradition was either not started or canceled?
CAMILLA MORTENSEN: Sort of. I reached out to the governor's office. There is an office that handles extraditions
that Governor Tina Kotek reports to. Governor Tina Kotek, and I asked them, first of all, I wanted to know what the objective criteria was for turning down the extradition, because there has to be some sort of criteria. And like, did this, did five felony counts not meet that criteria. I also asked what the cost of an extradition is, and I asked for actual extradition data going back to 2023 so I could see what extraditions had been granted and which hadn't. And I also asked them to explain to the community that had put so much emotion and effort into bringing Eugene weekly back, why they had turned this particular extradition down. Yeah, so they did respond to me with a statement, you know, on the extradition, and then said they could not get me the information before the deadline. Okay? I let them know I wanted the information still and then several more days later, they said they wanted a public records request. So I think it's been almost two weeks, and I haven't gotten that information yet, so I still don't have the objective criteria for why.
MICHAEL DUNNE: I don't want to put you in a position to have to assume, but I am going to ask you, does it seem like it's just a matter of cost?
CAMILLA MORTENSEN: I was guessing. It's a matter of cost and a matter of it not being a violent crime, okay, but that said Financial Crimes aren't violent crimes, but they do have, there are crimes with a lot of repercussions. And so, if, if an extradition in our particular financial case was turned down, then what other small businesses and you have someone not being held to account that and you know, you don't know if this person is going to go and, you know, do the same thing to another business elsewhere, with all the repercussions. You know, laying off an entire staff of 10 people at Christmas time is a pretty big repercussion of financial crime. So yeah, I would guess that's basically the reason the Oregonian reached out as well, and that was when it also came to light, they hadn't extradited one of the folks who had been implicated in the string of burglaries targeting Asian, American factored families. So, I'm definitely, really curious to find out what other crimes.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Where does all of this stand now?
CAMILLA MORTENSEN: So, we gave the governor's office, like, I think, a week to get back to us, and then we ran a story on it, and that story was picked up by here at KLCC, aforementioned Oregonian TV stations. And it's kind of been pointed out, I think, that, you know, as a newspaper, we have a certain megaphone to call attention to this issue, and I'm looking forward to sort of continued reporting on extradition, because it wasn't something kind of like embezzlement. It wasn't something I knew about. So, a lot of people called the governor's office. A lot of people actually called the DAs office and offered to fundraise. They also called us and offered to fundraise. I got dozens of phone calls and emails, and I had to say, Well, I'm a newspaper. I can't fundraise for law enforcement. Reports on law enforcement. I'm like, but you can talk to the DAs office, and the governor reversed her staff decision, and now the extradition is on. That means, however, that a nationwide warrant has to be reissued, and she has to be picked up again, arrested again, and then the extradition moving forward. The basic thing being that it was a cost. So, what the governor's office basically told the D A's office is we were not going to pay for it, but if you guys want to pay for it, you can. But the D A's office hasn't historically had to do that, and then didn't have that in the budget. So, I do know that the DA and the police were talking about figuring out a way, okay, but in this sort of cash to have budget time, having this rise the level of the state doing it is a huge thing.
MICHAEL DUNNE: It kind of feels like this is a real, you know, crack in the system. What do you think about that?
CAMILLA MORTENSEN: Absolutely, because I'm looking at the recently announced homes for good embezzlement, which was $500,000. And I think you know, one of the things the role of the media is to be that megaphone for these other businesses. And one of the things that I have hoped with us talking about our embezzlement is for businesses to be more comfortable saying, hey, this has happened to me and going after it.
MICHAEL DUNNE: Camilla Mortensen, it's always great to talk to you. You've been through so much. It's, it's, it's great to see you in one piece. Thanks again for coming in.
CAMILLA MORTENSEN: Thanks for having me.
MICHAEL DUNNE: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the record are available as a podcast atklcc.org. Tomorrow, on the show, we're going to check in on the psilocybin industry in Oregon with one of the state's largest providers. It's not all sunshine and roses for this nascent industry. A quick note, yesterday, we ran a story about how U of O professors are fighting to preserve and protect the First Amendment, and we want to hear from you. What are your concerns about how the Trump administration is going after the media, and what do you want elected officials and media organizations to do about it? Send us your comments to questions@klcc.org, and we'll read them on the air. I'm Michael Dunne, and this has been Oregon On The Record from KLCC. Thanks for listening.
