As such, it was widely believed that cross-country was not Bowerman’s forté. Until Prefontaine arrived, the men of Oregon had only raced at the NCAA cross-country championships three times, without any individual or team championships. With Prefontaine on board, the Ducks finished first twice as a team, in 1971 and 1973, to go with Pre’s three individual cross-country titles.

Bowerman retired as Oregon’s head coach in March, 1973 and was succeeded by assistant coach Bill Dellinger. But he remained as active as ever. After the Oregon Track Club hosted the U.S. Olympic Track and Field trials in Eugene in 1972, Bowerman was named head coach of the 1972 Olympic team, and from there the momentum kept building.

Starting in 1973, the OTC’s “restoration” track meets at Oregon’s Hayward Field helped modernize the stadium by bringing in top international competition and abundant local profits, all with Bowerman’s guidance. After holding the second restoration track meet in the spring of 1974, Bowerman then turned his attention to hosting the AAU national cross-country championship that coming fall. A foreign visitor shared:

“The local club is Oregon Track Club. It runs an on-off program of running events throughout the year…Quality of fields is excellent. I ran in a local cross-country hack event last Saturday and the personnel included Steve Prefontaine, Bob Williams, and George Conelrey plus a few college stars. This course will be used for the National AAU Cross-Country Championships in November, so I’ll let you know the results.”

With all of this came the undeniable presence of Prefontaine at his peak. 1974 was the year Prefontaine held every American record from two-miles to ten thousand meters. He ran his American 10K record (27:43) in front of a home crowd at Hayward Field in April at Oregon’s Twilight Meet. In early June he edged Frank Shorter in the three-mile at the second restoration meet, clocking 12:51. He would then go on to race in Europe, setting national records for 5,000 meters (13:21), 3,000 meters (7:42), and the two-mile (8:18). Prefontaine’s goal was to run his best in the later summer months to mimic conditions for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games; to avenge his fourth-place finish from the 5,000-meter in Munich, 1972.

In early September, three and a half weeks before the 1974 OTC Invitational, Prefontaine raced in front of a hometown crowd at Hayward and ran a 3:58 mile. The meet was a simple all-comers. Bill Dellinger would later say that Prefontaine was “in awesome shape. Maybe the best he’d ever been in.”

But Prefontaine had never encountered a race as long as the cross-country course OTC had planned. Seven and a half miles was much further than he was used to, and with the steeple barriers and obstacles thrown into the mix, much more treacherous, too.

That made this OTC cross-country invitational — the first of its kind — quite the enigma. Scott Krause described the route:

“The start by the baseball field: every cross-country race at Lane since the 1960’s has started there. So the international XC course ran this loop and as we came out of the ponds, we turned right — just at the west bank of the track — and headed across the road and into the hills. The course looped in the hills on the south side of campus and came out at Poison Oak Alley. From there began another complete loop. On the second loop, after going around the ponds, instead of turning right again at the west bank, we finished with 300 meters on the track. The water splash? It was a dry creek bed with steep entry and exit about 400 meters after crossing the road into the hills. It only had [real] water in it in the winter. The hill coming out of the woods and onto Poison Oak Alley was a very steep downhill [of about] 200 meters. I believe there were 2–3 of those [steeplechase] barriers set up between Poison Oak Alley and the ponds along 30th Avenue (a very flat grassy area).”

The novelty of the event, along with Bowerman’s and Tarpenning’s promotion, attracted about 200 competitors (about 60 of those raced in the men’s open race; more runners featured in the junior classes). Among the starters were local celebrities, like Eugene’s mayor, Les Anderson (whose son, Jon, had qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team in 1972). Other entrants included the Oregon Track Club’s Tom Heinonen, who played an influential role in the development of women’s athletics at the University of Oregon when he joined the coaching staff in 1975 as the University’s only full-time women’s track and field and cross-country coach.

Joe Matheson photo, “A large depression on the course trail.” from the Eugene Register-Guard.

Meanwhile, the race itself would prove to be as diverse and memorable as the participants.

Bob Williams, an All-American steeplechaser at the University of Oregon who had won the 1967 Pac-8 steeplechase title in 8:51, was running for the Oregon Track Club after finishing his master’s at the University that previous spring:

“The race organizers didn’t give us very clear instructions. They said, go around the pond. So Steve Prefontaine and I take off, and we go left, and we’re about 2,000 meters into the race — running together ahead of the field — and he looks at me, and says ‘Where do we go?’ I didn’t know, and I kind of mumbled a response. Steve got real angry. ‘WHERE DO WE GO?’ he yelled. I said, ‘We go straight! We go straight…’ so Steve takes off and ends up finishing on the track as I entered. I finished 300 meters behind him for second. We were still good friends and shook hands after the race, but he didn’t apologize. He didn’t need to. That’s just who he was.”

Across the board, all the competition was fast. Debbie McCann, a sub-5:30 miler who ran for Corvallis’s Crescent Valley High School under coach Lyle Fagnan, finished first in the high school girls division in 21:58 for the 5,000-meter course. The girls division was brand new for Oregon in 1974.

Five weeks later the Oregon State Cross-Country Championships featured female competition for the first time. Making their debut at that November state meet in 1974 were teammates Jenifer Bates and Kim Hills, who ran for North Eugene High School. Bates finished 13 seconds back of McCann at this September OTC event and would go on to finish seventh overall at state in November. Hills (who finished fourth in this race, 39 seconds back of McCann) crossed the line 12th overall at state.

Also of particular note was the performance of the women’s open winner, Eryn Forbes, who not only decimated her competition — beating the nearest runner in her event by nearly two minutes — she did so at the age of 13 years old. Forbes, running for the Portland Track Club in this event, would go on to have a prosperous career. She would first gain notoriety by winning the Oregon State Cross Country Championship three times in four years (setting a course record of 9:59 for 3,000 meters in 1976), while also finishing with a duo of back-to-back top-ten finishes at the Women’s National Cross-Country Championship in 1975 and 1976 (all as a teenager still in high school). Forbes would then go on to compete at the World Cross Country Championships and run well for the University of Oregon. On this day in 1974, she ran 20:07 for the 5,000-meter distance, beating not only the highly lauded high schoolers in attendance, but runners twice her age in the field representing the Oregon Track Club and beyond.