Touched Us All

The night before the 1998 Nebraska State Cross Country Championship, the biggest race of my life to that point, I loaded up on my mom’s spaghetti and watched the biopic Prefontaine, which had come out a year earlier. Starring Jared Leto as the American distance runner Steve Prefontaine, the film is good if not great, and I’d been captivated by its depiction of the 1972 Olympic final in the 5,000 metres.

Having dominated American distance running while representing the University of Oregon, Pre was “a sort of athletic Beatle,” as the BBC’s David Coleman put it. However famous, he was an underdog going into Munich; his competitors knew that he wasn’t battle tested on the global stage. Among them was Finland’s Lasse Virén, who had set the world record in the Olympic 10,000 metres the week before, even after falling in the twelfth lap. Only by running on pure guts could Pre beat Virén and win gold. “This boy’s got utter belief in himself,” Coleman said after he took the lead with 1,600 metres to go. “And he’s inexperienced enough in many ways not to know how good the others are.”

The “chunky” upstart set the pace for the next two laps, before the Finn passed him 850 metres out. By the time they were on the backstretch, Pre found himself in fourth place — where he refused to stay. He surged again to the front, but Virén quickly covered the move. At the bell, Prefontaine was just a step behind first, but then he drifted to third, while the defending Olympic champion, Mohammed Gammoudi of Tunisia, moved into second. With 300 metres to go, Pre attacked once more. “These are the medal men,” Coleman confidently declared as they rounded the final bend. Mere seconds later, he described Gammoudi as “bankrupt — so too is Prefontaine.”

Virén won his second gold that day in commanding fashion. Gammoudi, taking silver, was spent. But the cult hero Prefontaine missed the podium altogether, as Ian Stewart of Great Britain nabbed bronze in the final metres.

It was Pre’s heartbreaking race that I watched before running my own, which I happened to win. A year later, again before the state championship, I found encouragement in his failed quest once more. And after my VHS copy of Prefontaine finally gave out, I turned to original footage on YouTube to relive that Olympic final over and over. Each time, I was certain that Pre would somehow hang on — and rewrite history.

Pre didn’t get a chance for redemption at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. He died in a car accident in 1975, just twenty-four years old. Even without the hardware — or maybe because of its tantalizing absence — he fuelled the imagination of countless athletes like me who followed in his footsteps.

That’s what keeps coming to mind as I think about the 2025 Blue Jays, who came so close to hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy at Rogers Centre in the early-morning hours of November 2. Like Prefontaine, they had not been destined to compete with the best, at least not on paper back in March. They were the determined Davids of this year, who found a way to defeat the Yankees and the Mariners in the post-season and to challenge the defending champions at the Fall Classic. They were so fun to watch — on television and in person, at home and on the road — and they united a city and a country along the way. We are better for them.

Future generations will be too. Whether they dream of glory in baseball or softball, in soccer or hockey, in lacrosse or track, young Canadians will turn to YouTube to watch the highlights of this season and to dream. Trey Yesavage will stay prodigious. Max Scherzer will keep refusing to leave the mound with two outs in the bottom of the fifth. George Springer will hit that three-run homer against the Mariners again and again. Addison Barger will continue making history with his pinch-hit grand slam. And Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will always be born ready.

As they imagine what they might achieve — on the sandlot or on the job — those young Canadians will know what happened in the bottom of the eleventh inning in game 7 of the 2025 World Series. Yet no matter how often they rewatch Alejandro Kirk stepping up to the plate, they will hold their breath and hope that his bat doesn’t break this time, that the Dodgers don’t turn the double play, that the Fates change their minds. They will be moved by an unfulfilled odyssey that transfixed a nation.

I know because of Prefontaine’s influence on me, even though I was not yet born to see him compete in person. Because of his example, my running career took me to university, which led me to graduate school and delivered me to Toronto, where I was fortunate enough to attend game 2 of an iconic World Series. Now, as our boys of summer take their well-earned rest, I thank them for inspiring all those who will shape the country of tomorrow.