He is a loser who never set a WR or won an international medal. Luckily he died before the Africans took over completely.

Lasse Viren

Go PRE

Thank you for watching!

Prefontaine set the American record of 13:22.8 in the 5,000 meters at the 1972 Olympic Trials in Eugene ! He should have done that time or better than that had he run his way !! I wonder what made him choose to lay back for most part of the race, it cost him dearly and us the Pre fans !

@@facepuller Yea but Viren had ran 13.19 and Puttemans (5th here) ran 13.13 after this race. 13.22 was not too special.

He had a hell of a gas tank but not the stride length for a sprint at the end. The other guys just out kicked him.

in the movies (both Editions) his coach told him not to front run and wait till last mile. Even though he ran to the front in his Eugene qualifier and won in American record of 13.23. ..5 seconds faster.

​@@facepullerBill Bowerman told him not to attack til the final mile so he could break the runners apart.

Agree. & besides ran Many laps on 2& 3 lane . He defenetly ran more than 5000 meters 😢

Not even close to being one of the great Olympic races. Time was slow and Viren won easy. Prefontine was lucky to get 4th.

@@RK-um9tuthis is a horrible take

There were far more better runners then Pre on this day. He hadn't been "in a war" yet or really pushed until this race. Viren was clearly better.

@cosmosrunner if Yifter ran the 5k Pre might have only been good for bronze

All those extra frozen red blood cells really assisted Viren!

He needed to 'surge to the front' a lot sooner following such a slow opening mile. He may have split the field and stood a far better chance of being one of the medal men.

Commentator.

The best of the best!

yeah was confirmed years later for blood doping...in todays testing he would have been disqualified

@@krakhour2 Please do not spread false information.

Not sure what your talking about can show you the documentation , So please show me your documentation@@PaulVinonaama

@@krakhour2 ??? OK just show your documentation then. But, frankly, I am sure that none exists, since it would certainly have been a major sensation here in Finland.

It was at the time . Finland was suspected back then and back then it wasn't illegal so that's why it wasn't headline news@@PaulVinonaama

yifter had stomach trouble and had to visit the toilet for some time - by the time he could come out his race had already started - i think that is what happened anyway.

I think I read he missed the bus from Olympic village to track, so he ran there but went to wrong gate and they wouldn’t let him in (security pretty high by this point). By the time it all got worked out the race had started. Maybe stomach issues made him miss bus initially?

Yes, he was great. Gammoudi (silver here) was also great., winning four medals over the span of three different Olympic Games. He won a gold at Mexico City (1968).

Known blood doper, freezing his red blood cells. It wasn't illegal then, but he was still a cheat.

Yet everybody talks about an irrelevant guy called Prefontain. Very weird indeed...

Or Uganda, Morocco and Algeria. Good luck trying to find a Belgian or Finn that can challenge for medals in any major track meet these days.

They didn’t show up till the late 70s early 80s and the rest is history they were more about the marathon at this time.

at these games the kenyans tended to avoid competitive races and pick easier ones (ones with lesser athletes in them in these games) - e.g. that made kip keino of kenya pick the steeplechase instead of this race (obviously a harder event outright but at these games it had weaker competitors) - it was a race which he easily won so a wise choice (i suppose olympic athletes don't owe anything to the spectators) - and i think yifter (ethiopia) had stomach trouble for this 5000m race (or his heat) - by the time he emerged from the toilet the race had started - hence he wasn't in it either.

Not quite. Kenyans had won 1500m, 3000m steeples and 10,000m in Mexico City 1968. In 1972 Kip Keino won the steeples.@@AnthonyMcqueen1987

How is steeplechase harder to win than 5000m​ for example? There is fewer steeplechase specialist but almost every long distance runner competes in 5000m and 10000m runs@@mrgobrien

yes - the problem was everyone expected david bedford to lead and set the pace (he tended to) - when he didn't it confused everyone - but as i say that applied to many athletes in the race including ian stewart - (i am british and vaguely knew ian stewart as we ran for the same club but in different eras) stewart said he felt like he wanted to throw his bronze medal into the crowd afterwards since he only wanted gold - stewart also said that when pre baulked him (see at about 650 metres left in the race - 11 minutes 48 in the race - 12 minutes 56 in the video) it cost stewart the gold - looking at it now i don't think that is true though but it is what stewart said .

still ran a 4.03 last mile...What more could he do

yep - pre shouldn't have waited a little more - easy to say in hindsight though of course.

Because he was scared. Also, a best of 13:22 which was 8 seconds off the world record is hardly "bloody damn good."

Least he wasn't blood dopping like several of the Europeans and the Europeans paid to have their athletes train only while USA makes Prefontaine live off food stamps and work part time in a pub while trying to train. Yes he was great runner but had a lot of stuff caused by the AAU stacked against him. Now big shoe companies pay for runners to train only like the Nike Oregon project.@@RK-um9tu

@@RK-um9tu World record was set in '65 and was 6 seconds faster. Prefontaine had the 4th fastest time that year. Viren didn't break the world record until after this race. Idiot.

@RK-um9tu How far away is gold medalist Mo Farah's 5k PR from Cheptegei's WR 5k time? Does the fact that it's about 18 seconds mean your logic sucks?

@@RK-um9tu At the time of this race, the World Record was held by Ron Clark with a time of 13 minutes 16 seconds. So Prefontaine's PB was 6 seconds off the World Record, not 8 seconds.

Which is not typical of him. He made sme bad decisions too early in the race and paid for it. He knew he couldn' t outkick these guys at the end after running so much farther than them.

7 years is not a short amount of time when you are 21 years old.

Yeah, but interestingly Viren (23 years) also wasn't terribly experienced.

4:15 per mile for the three miles, plus 30 seconds for the 200 metres would have given 13:15 and the gold medal plus a world record. He was capable of it but just didn't seem to push for anything like that.

viren had run the 10,000 heat and final so that helped pre rather more i think.

@@mrgobrien Viren had ran the 10k with a new world record.

@@467076 thanks - i didn't know that.

??? Schul WON the Olympics in '64, Pre didn't even medal. Not even best American distance runner of these Olympics, Shorter won the marathon. Great talker though, said he would run 4:00 for the last 4 laps and put crap in the competitors legs. After beating him for the bronze Stewart asked what made him think he was the only one who could do that,

@@aldopedroso6212 I know all that. I still think pre’s legacy is superior.

@@wesleytwiggs7687 So America's greatest legacy, not greatest 5000 runner... marketing not talent. Got it.

@@aldopedroso6212 dude who gives a fuck. Relax.

@@wesleytwiggs7687 Who gives a fuck about Pre? No idea.

Hardly gold. Look at what happened in the 10,000m in the same Olympics.

@@PaulVinonaama You mean a world record performance where Bedford led off the first few kilometers averaging less than 64 seconds per lap? The 5000 averaged 67 until the last mile. That's ready to order for a kicker.

@@wvu05 In the 10K, the "less than 64" laps were only the first four. Twenty slower laps (mostly above 67) followed, giving plenty of time to recover. And wouldn't the fast last mile in the 5K also have burnt some of Yifter's kicking abilities? What I have seen of his kicks lasted only for the last 300m or so (moreover, I don't know if he was such a phenomenal kicker already in 1972). Of course we shall never know, but I think he might have been a medal contender here but not for gold.

@@PaulVinonaama The fast final might have burned some of his kick, but the 10K burned his kick because it was a longer race that literally set a world record. The 5K was ten seconds slower than the world record. The amount of oxygen debt in each of the races makes it clear that 67-second 10K laps are much more difficult than 67-second 5K laps. For elite runners, anything faster than 10 mile or half marathon pace will involve some oxygen debt, and there is a limit to how much you can handle. With those first few laps in 61-64-64-64-64, you don't recover when you're still building more debt. Yifter's chances for gold in the 10,000 were destroyed in the first mile, but it never got that fast that early in the 5000.

I hear no dislike.

@@PaulVinonaama I agree. David Coleman actually called him 'an athletic Beatle.' That is a compliment right there for his popularity.

huh ....They said he was cocky and totally believes in himself. Just a cult runner. Sounds like a insult to me@@PaulVinonaama

I found this at my parents house while going through old videos.

@@PivotalRunning WOW! This is a spectacular find! Thanks for uploading it in such a high quality. I would have loved to have had this when I was making my documentary on Ian Stewart! You've filled in my knowledge gap on the first 4 laps!

@@PivotalRunning I don't suppose you have the two heats of the 5000 metres? They would be very interesting to watch.

@@PivotalRunning Thanks for the share. Prefontaine made that race

@@rundreamachieve Your Welcome Nate! Totally agree. I hope you enjoyed the splits as well. Thank you for your service to USA. All the best!

He started his sprint 200 meters too soon, he went empty into the 3rd turn. If he held pace thru the backstretch he would have had his all give vs Viren over the last 200.

@@garyhanson638 There was no strategy nor athlete to beat Viren in 1972 and 1976. All kudos to his good friend Brendan Foster, a wonderful competitor and a gentleman.

He did not give up, he was completely spent and did not have anything left in the tank.

Appears to me that Pre ran out of gas and was lucky to finish 4th. In a time that was 6 seconds slower than his AR. And 12 seconds slower than the WR.

Gave Up? Wow dude! Have you ever been in a middle distance race before? My guess is NO. Pre gave it everything he had, he pushed it to the wall. That was a race car that ran out of gas on the home stretch.

druggie....blood dopping

At losing and duing nothing of importance on the world stage.

@@RK-um9tu😭

No, but within a week or so after these games first Viren made a WR and then Puttemans.

Impressive time for a bonk as well as four laps.

@@samhardy6319 Actually 6 seconds slower than the American Record he set at the trials. But he did bonk badly over the last 20 meters that's why Stewart caught him. He staggered across the line.

If Bedford goes between 2 and 4K the world record 13:16 (Ron Clarke 1966) would have gone down.

@@PivotalRunning Probably, It amazed me that in all of the finals that David Bedford ran, (Euro 71, Olympic 72 and Comm games 74) he never really ran to his strength which was to go hard from early on.

@@johnstirling6597 ??? He certainly went hard from early on in Munich 10,000m.

@@PivotalRunning A week after this, Virén actually made a WR. Then, after a couple of days, Puttemans made yet another (13.13).

david bedford was a "choker" (bottler) in title races (david moorcroft and paula radcliffe were similar british athletes) - so only a fool relied on him - though to be fair that wasn't universally known about bedford by this time.

He should have done his thing, front run from the start flat out ! That appalling pace was not Pre's thing, he shoukd have gone with his instincts instead of doing what he'd never done his life, run in a pack ! 😢

@@facepuller It was a great shame he didn't get a medal.

Pretty clearly you know nothing about track He was too afraid to take the lead And didn't want to get box-in

@@gunternetzer9621 No it isn't. He is a loser...

@@RK-um9tu Your logic is asinine. And by your logic, Viren must have also been afraid as he also did not take the lead until well into the race.Of course neither men were afraid, its simply a matter that championship racing at Olympic level often regulates the pace by the sheer daunting gravity of the event. It matters not how well you plan your race in an Olympic final, all bets are off when the starters pistol fires. Viren was unbeatable and Pre was as brave as a runner could be.

No, this was from a time when Arthur Lydiard was National Distance running coach of Finland. You remember Lydiard.. the guy with a bread trail of Olympic medals amongst his athletic stable (?) that spanned decades.

BS...Documents of wide spread doping was uncovered@@whahappened8398

Who the hell are you talking about?

That has never been proven.

@@smc9291 Where is the evidence? It would have required a large syringe in those days to extract enough amount of blood and the hole would have rather visible on the arm.

@@gunternetzer9621 Doesn't necessarily have to be the arm.

@@larrymant1484 Name calling. Good argument. There's a lot of that going on nowadays. Everybody is using drugs -- of some kind; at least everyone lining up for the finals. It's an ongoing battle between the doctors, pharmacologists, and athletes (and national sports foundations (if any -- hello, East Germany) on the one hand, and the supposed defenders of truth and virtue and their mass spectrometer drug detecting apparatus on the other. Blood doping likely came out of Finland about 1970. Pekka Paivarinta; remember him? He came out of nowhere to break the world record in the Steeplechase. His brother was a doctor. If you really want to increase performance to the utmost you have to use every capability. Of course you can't take a man off the street and make him a world champion, you need natural aptitude, nutrition, coaching, training, the whole nine yards. In Viren's case he was gifted with a large heart (kind of like Secretariat) and moreover was subsidized to travel all over the world to train in good weather and at high altitudes. If you want to be the best you have to do everything. One wonders, though, why anyone would want to do all of that to be the best. Certain sports, especially Olympic sports, are very big business nowadays, and records are a large part of the hype (multibillion dollars worth). So it's not part of the incentive for the governing bodies and their big business allies (and the reporting apparatus) to be too concerned about ferreting out every last bit of pharmacology. They prefer to sit back and pretend everything is fine and fall back on this "there's no proof" argument. Unless it's too obvious, like Ben Johnson and Marion Jones. It's a circus.

Correct evidently you didnt watch the lance Armstrong tapes how he done it @@Finarphin