The Birth of the Fitness Boom: An Interview with Olympic Gold Medalist Frank Shorter

By: B. Naughton American in the 20th Century Frank Shorter Instructor: Mr. Whitman February 19, 2009 Table of Contents

Release Forms 2

Statement of Purpose 4

Biology 5

Contextualization 7

(Using the Fitness Boom of the 1970’s to Look at the

Relationship between Sports and Society)

Interview Transcription 19

Time Indexing Log 55

Historical Analysis 57

Appendix 65

Works Consulted 67 STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

The purpose of this sports-based oral history interview is to examine a neglected piece of American history. Understanding the birth of the fitness boom contributes to understanding 20th century cultural history. Examining the fitness boom that was spurred by Frank Shorter’s Olympic Marathon victory allows the historian to explore the relationship between sports and society. The fitness boom touches on topics such as the corporatization of sports, the history and understanding of physical fitness in America and the collision of sports and history at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The purpose of the interview with Frank Shorter is to gain knowledge from a man who was at the center of the fitness revolution. Biography

Frank Shorter was born on October 31st, 1947. He grew up in the small town of

Middletown, New York. He attended Mount Herman Prep School 1in Massachusetts. He ran both cross-country and track there starting his junior year. As a senior he won the

New England cross-country championship. He then made the decision to attended and run cross-country and track at Yale University. In 1969, he won the men’s 10,000 meters title in track and field. Then, in 1970, he won the U.S. national title in both in 5,000 meters, and the 10,000 meters. After these victories Shorter set his eyes on the Munich

Olympics in 1972. In 1971 he won the Fukuoka Marathon, which was essentially was the

1 Mount Herman Prep School merged with Northfield, which was an all girls’ school. It is now called Northfield Mount Herman. world championship. Shorter qualified for the USA 1972 Olympic team in at the USA

Olympic track trial in both the 10,000 meters and the marathon. At the 1972 Olympics, which were haunted by the Black September terrorist group, Shorter finished fifth in the

10,000 meters. But the moment that will be remembered about Shorter the most is his gold medal victory in the marathon. He won the marathon in a convincing time of:

2:10:30. He then again qualified for the Olympics again in 1976. He finished second in the marathon winning the silver medal, loosing to an East German by the name of

Waldemar Cierpinski, though it is now widely known that the East German of the 70’s where doping using steroids. Shorter continued to race. After Shorter retired from athletics he started his own athletic clothing company. He was inducted into the National

Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1989. In 2000, he was name chairman of USADA (The

United States Anti-Doping Agency). He was chairman until 2003. Shorter still continues to run today while living in Boulder, Colorado. Using the Fitness Boom of the 1970’s to Look at the Relationship between Sports and Society

The impact of sports and fitness is an overlooked component of U.S. history. As historian David McCullough has said, the study of history has centered around politics and military events. Americans understand the historical significance of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball in 1947 or the athletic opportunities given to women by Title IX, passed by Congress in 1972. But other major athletic events and trends have influenced U.S. history as well and Americans, including historians, have failed to give them enough attention. Frank Shorter’s gold medal in the 1972 Olympic marathon was the beginning of a nationwide trend: The fitness and running boom of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

However, in order to understand Shorter’s importance, it is essential to understand the context of the times and the social trends influencing sports.

Before the fitness boom of the 1970s, exercise in America was a very different activity. Few people belonged to sports clubs. Only professional athletes trained beyond the “pain barrier.”2 Athletic products were bought to achieve a purpose, not just to follow the fashion trends.

At different times in history, sports and fitness mean different things to people.

At the turn of the 19th century, President Theodore Roosevelt challenged the United

States. He urged Americans to take part in strenuous activity, as he did regularly.

Roosevelt was a big game hunter and a boxer, went on long, brisk walks, and spoke frequently about the importance of the strenuous life. In a speech to the Hamilton Club in

Chicago on April 10, 1899, Roosevelt said, “In the last analysis a healthy state can exist 2 The point at which you are in pain but continue to train through. only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk”

(Bartelby). The intent of exercise, Roosevelt thought, was to benefit society by producing stronger, healthier individuals. He wanted to fight effeminacy and weakness in society.

Roosevelt also thought that having strong people would lead to a stronger country.

However, Roosevelt was not talking about fitness and exercise as we think of them, but rather an active and engaged life in the community. He was not talking about running or going to the gym, because few people actually exercised and for the next seven decades organized athletes were only available to school children and the rare adult.

Roosevelt had, as historian Benjamin Rader wrote, “hoped to rejuvenate his own social class, which he believed had become too soft. Once physically strengthened, the citizens could provide capable national leadership” (Rader 403). By the 1970s, fitness was thought to benefit the individual. Rader writes, “the focus of the new strenuosity has been upon the self, upon the individual rather than upon society or the community” (403).

Before the boom, long distance running was not popular and people struggled to see the point or the reason to put him or herself through the pain. But by the mid ‘80s, long distance running and fitness in general had grown immensely. A Gallup poll from the mid ‘70s found that 47 percent of all Americans said they participated in some kind of physical activity, according to a report in Sports Illustrated on Dec. 25, 1978. That number was more than double the percentage in 1961, wrote Kenny Moore, a Sports

Illustrated writer and long distance runner who finished fourth in the 1972 Olympic

Marathon in Munich. The first New York Marathon was held in 1970. Only 127 runners paid the $1 fee to run the 26.2-mile race. (In 2008, 40,000 people ran the race.) Within a few years after the

New York Marathon’s founding, running’s popularity had taken off. Marathons were starting up around the country, and according to Rader, in 1986 more than one million

Americans participated in a marathon.

This raises the question, why did running become so popular? The reasons are many. Many “baby boomers,” the 78 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964, desired to maintain a young physical appearance. Demographically speaking, there were so many Baby Boomers that whatever a lot of them did became an American phenomenon. As Time magazine reported in a story on baby boomers running marathons in its October 9th 2007 issue, “Folks in the 40-plus group are pretty much taking over the sport, accounting for a surprising 43% of all marathoners in the U.S. in 2004--up from

26% in 1980. The maturing baby-boom generation partly explains that growth. There are simply more folks over 40 out there.”

Historians and journalists suggest the boom was also fueled by new discoveries in medicine. Scientists found through research that someone’s lifestyle clearly has effects on health. This led to more people beginning to run. Kenneth Cooper, a doctor, did research on aerobics. In 1987, New York Times reporter Robert Reinhold wrote:

Dr. Cooper probably did more than anybody else to set off the fitness

craze when he published ''Aerobics'' in 1968. Written while he was an Air

Force physician, the best seller promoted the ''training effect,'' which

entails improving the body's ability to use oxygen through exercises such

as running, swimming, cycling and walking. Dr. Cooper advanced the notion that a slim waistline and bulging biceps were not necessarily signs

of fitness and good health. Rather, he argued, the key lay in a strong heart,

lungs and blood vessels. (Reinhold)

Another reason for the rising popularity of running was that the atmosphere shifted towards a more self-involved3 lifestyle than during the period of the social activism around the Vietnam War (1965-1973). Writing in Sports Illustrated, Kenny

Moore said, “As the ‘me decade’4 provided a fine excuse to soak in hot tubs, strut in discos and vote for Proposition 13, running became for many an exhilarating self- indulgence. Vigorous sport has always called to us from our genes, from our childhoods, but not, until recently, from our culture. When it finally did, an explosion was inevitable”

(Moore).

For any historical movement, it is impossible to pick one single starting point. But when people look back on the running boom, Frank Shorter’s marathon victory in the

1972 Munich Olympics is often seen as the spark that lighted the fire. “Shorter became an instant hero,” writes Rader. “No other specific event did more to encourage the running mania” (405).

The 1972 Olympics proved to be a significant for many reasons. The Olympics had returned to Germany for the first time since 1936, when Hitler and the Nazi party were in power. In 1972, once again, politics were brought back into the Olympics. The

’72 Munich Olympics will forever be remembered for the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches who were held hostage and killed by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. To 3 Self-involved: Being absorbed in your own thoughts. 4 Journalist Tom Wolfe coined the phrase the “me decade” in 1976 to describe the post –‘60s American culture. The term described citizens centered more on their own personal development instead of the political activism of the ‘60s (Wolfe). quote Shorter, in a 2006 National Public Radio (NPR) commentary, “We arrived in

Munich innocent athletes, and left the first Olympic athletes to realize competing carries a risk of harm” (“Attack on 1972 Games Shadows Olympics”).

Early in the morning of September 5, 1972, eight Palestinian terrorists with guns in duffle bags climbed the fence around the Olympic village and entered two apartments where Israeli athletes were staying. They immediately killed two Israelis and took nine others hostage. The terrorists’ demands were to be flown to an Arab country and to have

Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails. The terrorists and hostages boarded a helicopter that night and were flown to an airport. There, a German sharp shooter supposedly fired on the helicopter with the terrorists and hostages in it. There was back- and- forth shooting between the terrorists and West German police for an hour. In the end, the terrorists threw a hand grenade into the helicopter, killing all the hostages. The news was ripped across front pages worldwide. “ 11 Israelis, 4 Arabs Guerillas Die in Day of

Olympics Terror,” read the Washington Post on the morning after the attacks.

After this horrible event, the question was raised: Should the games continue?

“The initial consensus was we should all go home,” Shorter said: “The games were over.

People had died, and nothing we were there to do was as important as human life.”

(“Attack on 1972 Games Shadows Olympics”)

But in the end, the decision to postpone the events for a day and then continue was made. “We felt the Israeli athletes would have wanted this,” Shorter said in the NPR commentary. “I had a vague feeling that if as a team, we did not try to win our remaining events, the terrorists would somehow win instead.” The terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics had drawn the world’s attention to the remaining events, including the marathon. It had been a tradition for the marathon to be the last event run since the first modern Olympics in 1896. Eric Segal, author of Love

Story5, provided commentary for the race. Shorter made the cover of Life magazine with his winning time of 2 hours 12 minutes and 19 seconds, and became the most famous distance runner in America. The average person would have no idea who Mamo Walde was. He was an Ethiopian runner who won the 1968 Olympic marathon in Mexico City.

But ask who Frank Shorter is, and many Americans will remember his achievement.

Shorter unexpected victory was pasted across the front pages of newspapers. The

September 18, 1972 issue of Sports Illustrated captured the events of the Olympics. The article talks about the horrors of the terrorist attack, but how one should not forget “the classic, almost serene, victory of Frank Shorter in the marathon, America's first gold medal in this most significant of Olympic events” (“In Disaster, Moments to Remember”

28).

After his victory in the marathon, shoe companies such as the newly formed Nike wooed Shorter. The emergence of Nike on the national stage in 1972 proved to be the beginning of the corporatization of sports. On a small waffle iron in Eugene, Oregon in the home of University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman, a shoe company—and a new way of marketing sports—was born.

Before Nike, the soles of sports shoes provided little traction and support. In his book, Taking to the Air: The Rise of Michael Jordan, Jim Naughton wrote, “Bowerman had this last problem in mind when he stuck a piece of rubber into his wife’s waffle iron

5 A New York Times’ number one best seller, written in 1970. one morning and guaranteed the company’s survival. The new ‘waffle soul’ may have reduced Mrs. Bowerman’s breakfast repertoire, but it established Nike’s reputation as a technological innovator in an ever more competitive industry” (84).

Nike provided comfortable performance shoes to athletes. The first world-class athlete with a popular following to wear Nikes was Oregon track star Steve Prefontaine6.

According to Naughton, Nike co-founder Phil Knight said, “The secret to the business is to build the kind of shoe professional athletes will wear, then put them on the pros. The rest of the market will follow.” Soon, many other popular athletes were wearing the Nike swoosh (84).

Nikes became “must-have” athletic wear, although many of the products’ buyers wore them more for fashion than for athletic purposes. According to Naughton, in 1972

Nike had $3 million in sales. In 1983, Nike had sales of almost $700 million.

Runners before the 1970s would just go out and run in their “sneakers.” Once the

Nike era began, runners would wear their Nike shoes, their Nike shorts, their Nike tracksuit, their Nike everything. Sports had been corporatized. For example The New

York City Marathon became the ING New York City Marathon in 2003 (ING is a financial services giant, which sponsors numerous marathons). Through marketing Nike created fashion trends. Nike funded athletes, which turned them into celebrities. By doing all of this Nike helped make running cool and at the same time helped make Nike successful.

While many historians are studying sports, very few are researching the fitness boom in particular. Historians approach the fitness boom from different perspectives. 6 Steve Prefontaine was a track star at the University of Oregon. Bill Bowerman, co-founder of Nike, coached him. Nicknamed “PRE”, he was thought of as the best US track runner at the time and possibly ever. Benjamin G. Rader looks at the history of fitness and exercise and examines it from a social and cultural viewpoint. He starts by examining Teddy Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s ideas of the importance of “strenuosity” for the country. Roosevelt believed that a strenuous life would help produce stronger citizens. Rader’s perspective on this is that

Roosevelt saw strenuosity as something that was good for the country, but during the ‘70s and ‘80s it was about self. Rader is not talking about economics, racial or political history, but personal motivation. He examines body image as a motivation for being more strenuous, as well as fitness clubs becoming a meeting place for single people. He touches on the fact that baby boomers were obsessed with trying to look younger.

“Indeed, they employed fitness as a part of a larger strategy to gain status, power, and greater control over their personal relationships” (Rader 403).

Pamela L. Cooper addresses running through the economics of the marathon, in particular the New York City Marathon. She writes about how the NYC marathon executives got sponsors and marketed the race to appeal to a broader audience. The executives computerized the finish line, which allowed more people to run in the race.

They produced apparel such as t-shirts for anyone who ran in the marathon or worked on it. They got highly recognizable athletes such as Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers to run in the race, “both attractive men in their late twenties and graduates of highly regarded universities, they were fine examples of marathon runners for affluent earners in their twenties and thirties (Cooper 392). Cooper is interested in how the managers of the NYC marathon “united athletic achievement and economic production” (397).

People do not think, Oh, I’m buying these Nike Pegasus running shoes or running the Steamtown Marathon because millions of other people do it, because Frank Shorter won the 1972 Olympic marathon, because sports has been corporatized and Kenneth

Cooper wrote about aerobics. People do not think this way because these are experiences they take on by themselves and do not associate with history. The fact is that sports and fitness do have a major impact on the everyday lives of people. Looking at sports in society, it would be impossible to say that sports do not affect the military, political and economic. Sports effected the Black September movement. Sports affected Teddy

Roosevelt’s desires for the country. Sports affected the economic rise of Nike.

Nobody should say that sports are more important than wars or presidential elections, but it does influence military, political, and economic aspects of history.

Interviewee/Narrator: Frank Shorter Interviewee: Ben Naughton Location: Frank Shorter’s house, Boulder, Colorado Date: December 14, 2008 This interview was reviewed and edited by: Mr. Whitman

Ben Naughton: This is Ben Naughton and I am interviewing Frank Shorter as part of the

American Century Oral History Project. This interview took place at 1:00 p.m. on

December 14th, 2008 at Mr. Shorter’s House in Boulder, Colorado.

As a kid growing up in the 1950’s how would you describe the culture of fitness and running?

Frank Shorter: There was no culture of fitness when I was growing up. Although in the schools there was always recess twice a-day and then gym class at least once a-week, and it may have been more. So in a sense there was more going on in the schools. Much more than there is now. And then getting into high school, I went to a prep school. As you know the prep schools in particular are very good about having sports. In fact I went to a prep school called Mount Herman School, which is now called Northfield Mount Herman

School. They combined a girls’ school with it. That made it mandatory to be on an athletic team every semester. So fall, winter, spring you had to be doing some kind of activity, in an athletic manner. Whether it was club, junior varsity or varsity it had to be some sort of physical activity. Again in retrospect I thought that was very good. Now I think, what I can also tell you is once you got out of college, and I got out of college in

1969, so you can say I was there in the 60’s. Once you get out of college there was absolutely nothing for the population at large. Health clubs didn’t exist. The gym culture just wasn’t there. And so in terms of staying fit as a life time activity it just didn’t happen.

That’s a very recent occurrence. BN: And then when you ran cross-country in high school, who did you look up to at the time?

FS: I was very lucky, the prep school that I attended Mount Herman, Northfield Mount

Herman, had a history in New England of having very good cross-country teams. And actually there were two of the runners on our team my junior year had actually transferred to the school specifically to run cross-country. And one of them was a fellow named George Bulman. Was one year older than I was. He was the person I looked up to because he was the New England Champion in Cross-Country. And that first year I finished fifth in the New England Championships. I didn’t go out for cross-country until my junior year. And I was fifth in the entire New England prep school league. Which included: Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s, and Groton, and Choate, St. Mark’s. Then the small schools like Cheshire and all of New England. And so it was a pretty big deal. I was lucky that I just happened to go to a school where cross-country was such a big deal.

BN: And was it the same for track as well?

FS: And in track it was good but it wasn’t the same kind of situation. I can’t even remember if our track team was the best in New England. But we always did very well in the running events. We had very good running teams.

BN: Once you went on to high school and college what were your major highlights? FS: Well in high school my major highlight was I won the New England championship in cross-country, my senior year and in the fall of 1968 in then in the spring I won the two mile at the track championships, which were held at Andover that year. I’ll never forget that. So I was the New England Champion in two events. And so that really was the highlight. And actually I hadn’t decided to really focus on track, until the winter of my senior year. Because I was also captain of the ski team, I was a three-way skier: downhill, jumping, and cross-country as well. And so my choices in terms of college were to go to one place and become a skier, or to go to another place and pursue running. And the choice came to go to Williams College because they were a part of the New England

College ski winter carnivals, or to go to Yale and run, and I actually choose to go to Yale because the track coach there when I arrived in 1965 had also been the Olympic team coach for the 1964 Olympics. And this shows how again how your heroes and mentors can help you, because this fellow George Bulman I mentioned who was a year older, who was a year older then I was, Yale was were he wanted to go and he wanted to run for the coach Giegengack. And there was all the reason he should have gone there but he wasn’t admitted, he went to Brown instead. Even though his father had been a professor in the

Yale Law School. He didn’t get admitted. But I sort of applied to Yale because the fellow

I admired one year ahead of me had decided that’s where he wanted to go. So it is interesting how you make those decisions. And my idea was and the advise I’ve always given kids, younger athletics in particular is: use your athletic success to help you get into the best university you possibly can. I mean that’s what you should do because at that time, in particular, there was no exception to pursue your sport past college. And for me, even while I was in college, I was Pre-Med. And I didn’t decide until my senior year that

I would be running after college, and by that time I was already on my way to med school. And so that’s the advice I always give. I think in our society in particular, sports are held out as a way to success. But what’s never mentioned is the percentages involved.

And the percentage in any sport is of making it to the top; your chances are very small.

So in a way the best use you can make of your athletic success is to try and make it so you can make a lot of money for, and to lay the foundation for what you really want to do for the rest of your life.

BN: In the 60’s how did the Vietnam War movement and the Civil rights movement have an effect on your life?

FS: Yeah, very interesting question because I think even then when I was 18, 19, 20, and in 1969 was really the height of the protests against the Vietnam War, I always stayed apart from that because even then I had a slightly cynical point of view towards it, questioning why people were really involved in it. In simple terms, I guess I could put it this way: My feeling was a lot of protests were there so you could go and meet girls, who had the same idea and then perhaps something good might happen. There’s a cruder way to put it, but a lot of that was the raison d’etre (reason for being) for a lot of the movement. And the other thing I recognized, and I think which panned itself out, which panned out through historically was the sort of demigods can come at any age. And I sensed that some of these “student leaders” in a way were no different then Huey Long7

7 He was a radical Politian during the late 1920’s and 1930’s. in Louisiana. You could be a demigod and be using this movement as sort of a means towards your own sort of power. And so I never joined that, and I’ve never been a joiner in that sense. But if you fast forward and later on in the interview we’ll get into the

United States Anti-Doping Agency, and my work on anti-doping. The reason I was able to be so affective in the formulation of this agency, in the formation of this agency, and the formulation of the outline of this agency, was that I wasn’t a joiner. I’d been so independent that creating an independent agency was easy for me. And so that movement had no impact on me. And in a way it also showed me how I could focus on something, and not be distracted by other things. In other words I had decided very early on that the academic and sports success were more important for me at that point in time. And the desecrations just weren’t worth it. I’m a very liberal person, but I think I took, I took a very kind of conservative view of the protest. Because I truly felt that my reason for being at Yale was to learn. And to not do that and to give it my total commitment was really squandering opportunity. And I think that is just part of my nature, that’s the way I am. I don’t do something as well as you can. And conversely, and don’t do something and try and hold out if that’s not really why your doing it.

BN: Do you remember where you were when you heard Kennedy was assassinated, And same with Martin Luther King Jr.?

FS: Yes Martin Luther King I don’t remember, exactly were I was. But when Kennedy, when John Kennedy was shot, I was in the locker room at Northfield Mount Herman, having come down to run a workout additional to practice. I use to train on my own. And I was the only person in the locker room. And the equipment manager was there and he was listening to the radio. And it came across on the radio. So I know precisely where I was, and it was a very kind of eerie place to be. It was almost like being on a submarine.

Down in the bowels of the gymnasium all by yourself with one other person there. And the radio comes on and it says: “The President has just been shot.” And that really was spooky because it came right on top of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which had happened I think the year before. In the fall of 1962, I had also been away at this school. So for me I was in very isolated circumstances, you know, and felt very isolated because the school itself is isolated. Way up near the Vermont -New Hampshire Border in Western

Massachusetts. So yep, I remember.

BN: So you said you ended, up choosing Yale because of the running.

FS: I chose Yale because of the running, but also because it was the best school, for me to got to, and also at the same time be pre-med, so I could go to medical school. And I ended up going to medical school, then dropping out when I found out when they would not let me change my schedule so I could train full time. So the decision there, after I did that, I went to Law school because I could be in control of my schedule. So I went to law school full time, and trained full time.

BN: When did you set your sights on the 72’ Olympics? FS: You always set your goal incrementally, you know reasonable, incremental and attainable. And that’s sort of the motto for setting goals for me. And initially when I was in college it was to do well in the Ivy League, the Heptagonal League. All the league schools, plus Army and Navy are in a league called the heptagonal league. And then once

I was able to be the best and win championships in that league, I went to the national championship in my senior year and actually won. I won the NCAA championship in the six mile my senior year, and was actually second in the indoor two-mile, and second in the outdoor three-mile. They ran in miles not meters then. And so I wasn’t that I felt I would then try and make the Olympic team. It was more I should see how good I can get.

Because this enabled me to make teams that the US used to have that would travel in

Europe. You didn’t go independently, you went as an entire track team. And it enabled me to do that. And so for me it was to see how good I could get, and to travel. It was a way to travel that otherwise that would not have been available to someone like me, you know, at that time. So once I started to have more and more success then after about a year that

Yes I would commit and this would have been in early 1970. That I would take the two years and really train hard and see if I could make the 1972 Olympic team. So that is how the progression went, but I don’t think really there’s any other way you can do it. You can’t make the incremental steps too large; the goals have to be realistic. And the other thing I found I was willing to find where I leveled off. You know there was never for me this all or nothing. If I don’t make the Olympic team then all this time is wasted. Because you see I was also going to law school full time at the same time. So that was my method of dealing with that particular stress. So that if I didn’t make the Olympic team I had not really lost anytime with regard to my future. And again that is something I try and tell younger athletics, which is why I think the education part of it is so important. You know just as an aside, the best example of someone not doing that in recent years is Alan Webb

Who is the last high schooler to really run under four minutes. He dropped out of the

University of Michigan to turn professional and the minute I heard that I knew he had made a mistake I knew he had made a big mistake. And I think I sometimes, I think it a very silly thing to do.

BN: Today running is a featured sport, especially around the Olympic times. What was the coverage back then?

FS: The coverage in the media in the 1960’s and 70’s of track & field was actually much greater than it is now because of the Cold War, because the highlight of the year was always the US-Soviet track meet. Then it also meant that in the Olympics we were competing against the Soviet Union and then the East Germans in the 1970’s, so it was actually a very big deal and the TV coverage was much more extensive. And it was just as big a deal on TV as it is now. The marathon on the other hand was not a big deal at all.

And until about 1976 or 1977 the major marathons in the world were Boston and then one in Japan, which was called the Fukawoka Marathon, which was December of every year when all the eastern block countries would also come out and compete. So it was a de facto world championships. But other than Boston and Fukawoka there were no major marathons. And so the difference is now it’s a huge deal what they call a “big city

Marathon.” But track & field was much bigger than it is now. BN: Knowing the AAU and the small budget how did you get by?

FS: We were lucky that we could form enclaves. And I was in the enclave that was in

Florida; there was one in Oregon. And essentially what you did was survived on very little. But the Florida Track club, the club I belonged to, Jimmy Kearns who was also the

University of Florida Track coach, he was very very good at sort of scrambling and getting help for us. He actually found some condominium developers that were over build and we got free housing. And then what you would do was if you ran on a weekend you would get some per diem or if you ran in a day you might get two plane tickets. And you basically lived on plane tickets and per diem, cashing a plane tickets and getting per diem. And there was some appearance money; it started in the early 1970’s. But to get the appearance money you would have to go to Europe, because there was no sort of professional or professionalism here. What you did was you ran in Europe for the summer and got enough money and tried to live off the entire year on what you made in the summer. But all of the indoor track meets you went to in the United States, and indoor track was a huge, huge deal, lots of major indoor meets: Los Angeles, San Diego,

Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Toronto, Ottawa. And there was a whole circuit. And so you could get some money from the per diem aspect of that. They were allowed to give you 75 dollars a day per per diem. And that’s what you lived on. You just didn’t eat very much.

BN: Can you describe the Olympic trials and what emotions were going through your head when you first made the team? FS: Well, again I always to hedge. I’m not a betting person, but I hedge in terms of planning. And I was also very good at 10,000 meters; I was the national champion in

10,000 meters. And I only started to run the Marathon in 1971. And only then because it was a hedge against not making the Pan American games team on the track. Because in

1971 the trial for the marathon in the Pan Am games was at the end of May, and the track trials were the second or third week in June. So it ran my first marathon as sort of insurance of getting on the team. I didn’t know I was that hard. And then when I began to have success in the marathon in 1971, in particular at Fukawoka, which I won, which essentially made me the world champion for that year. The hedge shifted and so the track race became my back up. And in the Olympic trials in 1972 the 10,000-meter final was the first final of the whole track trials. Because they set up the Olympic schedule and they actually had the trails according to the Olympic schedule. So it was over the course of a couple weeks. And so I ran the 10,000 and won that trial. So I already knew I was on the

Olympic team when I ran in the Marathon. So that took all the pressure off in that perspective. The other advantage I guess of the way I competed was I was a front-runner.

So I would always know early on in the race how I was doing and where I stood. And in that particular trial, race Kenny Moore who also made the team, and finished fourth in the

‘72 Olympics, he and I ran together as a team. Essentially by 20 miles we were far enough ahead we knew were going to qualify. So we just kind of jugged in from 20 miles. And in a sense it made it very easy, it made it like a long training run. Which is what you want to do, you want to take as much pressure off as you can. And I always like having the race be over in a sense before the finish line was reached. I was always more comfortable out ahead. So the feeling when I made the team was, it’s almost a feeling of unreality. Because there’s so much visualization going on leading up to it, and at that time they didn’t use the term but that’s what it was. And so when you finally achieve the goal, and you’ve been visualizing yourself, you hope in a reasonable manner trying to get to that goal. I never visualize myself as having won the race. I always visualized myself doing well in the race where it was certain I was going to win. There’s a difference, there and so when I had crossed the finish line and it was done, I realized it had actually happened. It was sort of like the culmination of all this visualization, kind of the closure on the visualization, all the sort of dreaming you’ve been doing. And then the second time around in 1976, it was much more of a psychological competition from a position of strength. Because not only was I the fastest person going in on paper I was also the person that every one was looking at. And once again I had won the 10,000-meters in the track trials and had done it pretty convincingly over a pretty good field. The field in that

10,000-meter trial in 1976 was very good. Craig Virgin was second, Gary Bjorklund was third, and Bill Rodgers was fourth. And I think I ran 27:56 and I think Bill ran 28:03. So we had four people within seven seconds, all of whom were very good. And Bill went on to win the Boston Marathon four times. And no, no, he had already won the Boston

Marathon twice at that point. So you know he was good. And then in the Marathon trail

Bill and I ran together, the whole way. And Don Cardon finished third. So that was a very strong team, in the distances. I don’t think US has had as deep or a team on a world level since then. So the second time it was more like something I had to get through to get to the Olympics. I was almost like a semi-final, and that’s kind of how I viewed it. BN: When you went to Munich did you go by plane?

FS: Yeah we went by plane. We went by plane to Oslo first and trained there. And even then I had a sense of altitude training going in. And I convinced Bill Bowerman the coach to take me, Steve Prefontaine and Kenny Moore and I think John Anderson, who was in the 10,000. We left Oslo and went to one of the ski areas at which they had the Olympic games that was about 4,000 feet. And we went up and trained at 4,000 feet north of Oslo.

So we got to get used to the time change and actually did training there. And we got to

Munich early. We were there about a week and a half, two weeks before the games. And in a way I think athletes today could take a lesson in that I think there is something to be said for living in the Olympic village, and sort of getting lost in the crowd whereas now, with the entourages and the agents and everything, no one seems to want to go in the

Olympic village any more. But the Olympic village is a great experience. So we had a lot of fun staying.

BN: Nowadays in the Olympics you see the US basketball team staying on a ship off the coast of Athens.

FS: Yeah and the other thing in China every ones staying outside Beijing and flying in the day before their events. I don’t know. For me, again, I guess, it dated back to the fact that

I thought one of the benefits for staying on running after college was I got to travel and go places. And invariably I would be the person on the team who would be out doing stuff, while every one was sort of staying in the hotel and their rooms. I found it very interesting that here you could be in Stockholm and no one wanted, to go out and look around. And so I think the other thing about that, and the reason I bring it up is, I think you have to be able to take your mind off the important aspect of why you’re there. And what better way to do it then to be a tourist? And so that’s one of the ways I took the pressure off myself and forgot about, you know, the intensity of the situation. I was always the tourist. So I always kind of looked around. Now the other good part of it, living in the village, was that all the distance runners were together. So we had all the

10,000-meter runners, all the marathon runners, all the steeplechasers, and the 5,000. So the 5,000, 10,000, marathon, and steeplechase, we had just about all of those guys in one room. They had a series of bedrooms it was in one apartment. So we were all rooming together, it was fun.

BN: Was there any tension, since it was the first time the Olympics returned to Germany since Hitler was in power?

FS: Right. There was tension, but I sensed a real effort on the part of the Germans to show, yeah, that they weren’t Nazis. And the Olympics were the perfect way to do that because everyone is predisposed to be friendly; it’s just the history of the games. And so very quickly, it was really not an issue. And I think you can confirm that the because the press coverage of the issue faded very quickly. Even the press, which would really want to sort of egg that story on, found out that the story really had no legs. And I think that’s one of the great things about the Olympic games. I think that just putting them on was all that was needed. You didn’t really have to do anything other then provide a good venue for people to come and have their sporting event, and for the other people to have a good time. And so it never really was an issue.

BN: When did you and your teammates first hear about the attacks?

FS: I was actually sleeping; I dragged a mattress out side the room. I was rooming with

Dave Waddle8, and it was nice outside and it was an overhang. And the room was kind of hot, and the whole apartment was kind of crowed. So I dragged a mattress from my bed out on to the balcony of this apartment. And it was just about the same floor as the building the massacre took place; this building was right across the courtyard, so about

50-meters away. And I heard the shots; I heard the shots about 4 am. And I remember waking up thinking those are gunshots, and then I went back to sleep. And then I woke up about 7:00 or 7:30. And the best way to describe it is when there is a jungle when there is a predator. There’s no noise, and I woke up and I said, “it’s silent.” And usually by then, the noise of the Olympic village, people walking around talking and everything, you could hear. And I looked down there and there wasn’t anyone walking around or anything. So I went inside and there we had a black and white TV and there was the

German television describing what had happened. And Steve Prefontaine was actually fluent in German because his mother’s German. And so he could translate to what was going on, so we knew right away. And then over the course of that day we kind of just stood out on the balcony and looked over at the building, and then looked at the TV. At one point we saw one o f the terrorists out on the balcony, which I’ve always realized it

8 Won the 800 meters at the 1972 Munich Olympics. was so silly because if this guy had an Uzi and wanted to spray over there, he could have just shot us, you know. It was first time that anything like this had happened. And so we watched, and then at a curtain point we had to go out there and run. And guess what the

Olympic village was locked down. So we went back to the back entrance of the village where we normally went. And there were the guards that were normally there, expect this time they had guns. And the gate was closed. And we sort of made eye contact with them, and we climbed the fence. And they just sort of watched us climb the fence. And we went over, ran our workouts twice that day, climbed over the fence, you know. I mean that’s how it was. But then when the helicopters flew in, which was about dusk and flew out to the airport, and I remember everyone on the balcony breathing a sigh of relief. And I was standing there with Kenny Moore and I turned to him and said “Kenny, I don’t think this is over.” And then we found out the next morning that they all died. They had all died at the airport. And our feeling at that was “We’re all going home.” The Olympics are over.

Nothing is worth human life, and that the initial shock and empathy. And I always thought, in a way that how wonderful it was that everyone felt that way. No one was running around running. But then when the decision was made to keep the Olympics going, by then we had kind of come through the shock and the depression. Then we were in the defiant stage. And after the memorial service for the slain athletes we had all decided, “yeah it was right that they go on.” Again that’s when I think I really realized if don’t try your hardest then terrorist win. And terrorism is physiological fear, and control through fear and what they might do. And so you don’t. I told Kenny, we talked about our race because the marathon was the only race where the terrorist could have possibly done anything else. So I thought about that right away. And I said to Kenny “You know, I’m not going to think about it, because if I do they win. ” And so I ran the whole race and didn’t think about it. Never thought about it. Never even once thought about. And that’s why, when you see the terrorism now, and 9/11, then Mumbai, you realize that once it’s in motion it’s going to happen. The atrocities are going to happen. But you cant then let that affect how you go on from there. And if you do then they accomplish their objective. And if you think about it, and I knew even at the time, it was the only control I had in a situation that in any other respect is helpless. And I think what you have to do is latch on to something that you can do, in over which you have control. And so for me the only thing I had control over were my thoughts. And my thoughts were knowing I’m not going to think about it. So that’s what I did.

BN: What were your emotions when you first entered the stadium knowing that you had a pretty good lead?

FS: Oh that I had won. Well it was silent because there was an imposter who had running on the track ahead of me. And so I thinking, it’s amazing what sort of weird thoughts that go through your head. I was thinking, Jeez, I’m an American but give me a break. For some reason I thought there was this anti-American sentiment, that it was an American winning, even though it wasn’t as extreme then as it is now in many parts of the world.

Well the first thought is that I’ve actually won this; I’m going to win this. But you don’t celebrate because any coach will tell you that you run through the finish. And that’s the one place where you’re not going to forget. So my focus during that last lap was maintaining intensity and pressure and making sure I got through the finish line because I wasn’t done yet. Once I finished I kind of realized what I’d done, and for me it was very very satisfying to know that I trained the right way and when you talk about control I had been the one in control of the race. I had initiated the move that won it, and I was the one that won it. And I had been willing to take the risk before other people had. And they let me go, I took off at nine miles and they just let me go because they couldn’t run that fast for the mile, that I ran. And I had trained to do that. I had trained to run a mile in the middle of the race probably faster then most of these other runners could run open for the mile. I think I ran somewhere around 4:33 from mile nine to ten. And it was real satisfaction of done it right. And you know that was it. Now on the victory stand, when I got the medal, I was nationalistic. Mainly because American were not seen as good distance runners, we were okay we could win the sprints. But when it really came to the

“endurance events” where you had to endure, you know Americans didn’t have it. They just weren’t good at it. And I really loved proving that false. And so there really was a satisfaction from the competitor’s point of view on the part of the American distance runners. Because I knew how good our team was, we had a really good team, and to sort of show the world. And when you think about Lasse Viren9 won those medals and stuff we were clean. And Kenny Moore finished fourth and Jack Bachelor who was our third runners, who was my training partner in Florida finished ninth. So Americans finished one, four, and nine in the Marathon…that’s good. To have three people do that well in the same day is really good. I was proud of it, I was proud of all of us. Because again it was a time when you trained with your competition. So the three of us had also trained together.

I mean I used to go on my long runs when I was in Oregon with Kenny yet we were

9 Won the 5,000 and 10,000 meter at the 1972 Munich Olympics. competitors. I used to do my interval training with Steve Prefontaine, but we were competitors. It was really one of those when one does well every bodies happy. You know you really appreciate every one else’s success. So that was again I liked the idea that we represented us, the distance runners. And that was really important to me. Because I knew we were just as good as those other guys.

BN: Did you realize how big the audience was? And Erich Seagal was doing the commentary?

FS: No, I had no idea. Erich Seagal had actually been a professor of mine at Yale. I had taken two courses from him: Greek comedy and Greek tragedy. He was a great teacher.

And his two courses: Greek comedy and Greek tragedy were in the classics department, basically funded the department. Because departments were funded by enrollment. And his two courses were the most subscribed and audited, meaning sitting in for no credit, courses at Yale. They were. And they were so popular that they had to be held in the largest lecture hall, which was the law school auditorium. One guy. So he was a very good teacher. So it was sort of fun, and I thought again kind of ironic, that my professor would be doing this commentary. But on the other hand when the imposter ran into the track he knew immediately, because he knew me. He had also come out to the indoor track in particular to do his marathon training running around the indoor track when we would be doing our training during the winter. So I knew him but I didn’t know he was going ballistic but it’s because he really knew, he knew the sport. BN: What was it like returning back to the US with both the success the team had and you had personally?

FS: You know the team success; we did very well as a team, oh and particularly swimming too, with Mark Spitz. I came back it, was a character plane from Munich to

New York. And I grew up in a little town in upstate New York about 70 miles north of

New York called Middletown on the west side of the Hudson river in the Hudson river valley at the foot of the Catskills Mountains. And the mayor, who had actually been one of my best friends fathers’ sent down a limousine and my wife at the time and I got in the car went up to my hometown. It was fun because I knew everyone because both of my parents had grown up there, lived on the same street growing up. And I knew all the families 22,000 people. So it was a fun and something of dreamlike experience to go back to where you grew up in different context. But it wasn’t as if suddenly the mayor of the city was paying attention to me in a way that was totally political. Heck it was my best friends’ dad, you know. So it put me in a different context, but not the way it might have been in some other city where I had such close ties. In a way it was like a family reunion where you’re celebrating someone’s success and it doesn’t really matter what the success was. But I also think there was a certain unreality for the town because I just got the feeling that they never thought that anything like this would happen. I mean it was just like such a total surprise. And that’s what struck me; I really was viewed by everyone as a total shock that I could do this. That connecting the two, they were doing much more processing then I was, because they were sort of trying to connect the young me with who I was here, and as someone the entire would was now paying attention. They had to make this connection and not from a point of jealousy. It was just they were processing.

They had to sort of figure it out, because again no one would have probably would have ever thought. And I enjoyed that it could happen. Because to me I then realized it really can happen for anyone in this country. And that’s what makes the Untied States so unique. Any nation in the world not like the United States. We’re one of the true meritocracies. England no still a class society, France forget about it. New Zealand, Peter

Snell won all those gold medals and he moved out to the US, and I think he is an

American citizen now. One for his education, and two for his professional life because you know what he didn’t come from the right class. It didn’t matter if he was Olympic champion. He did not feel appreciated, and America is so different that way. And look who’s going to be president. I think that’s when that hit home to me. You know that it really does happen in this country, and through the American system rather then the

Scandinavian system or the East German system, or any other system. Because again, if you think about it, we’re the only country that still has an Olympic trail, all or nothing on that day. First three go you know in track and field. There no other country like that everything else is by committee. And I think it start there and it moves forward. And I think that’s when I realized yeah this is the right system for me. Because I don’t think I was one of those people who could have made it through the other systems, because again I’m so independent in what I do that I couldn’t have done the politics necessaries to do it. So that’s when that was brought home.

BN: When and why do you think fitness and running became so popular in the 70’s? FS: I think after the 76’ Olympics even though I didn’t win, I finished second. The major marathons had started. Ken Cooper at the same time had started to do his work at the aerobic center in Dallas. Fitness was being quantified. Up until that point you couldn’t point to some research that was publishable to say being fit is good for you. And there was the Framingham study, which is this longitudinal study of Harvard graduates, which started in the 50’s, which just recently they started doing the emotional tracking, this is the same study that recently came out with saying. Well if you’re around people that are happy you could be happy. And even if they are around people that are happy that makes them happy you can get the effect on you that’s the study. That same study its preliminary results, were starting to come through on long-term effects of exercise, and levels of activity. So you had a lot of thing coming together. And obviously the Roone Alridge, the executive producer of ABC, deciding to feature the marathon and in both those Olympics had a great deal to do with it.

BN: After Montreal when running really became popular; you kind of had a duel role both as a runner and kind of an ambassador of the game. How do you think your role affected the culture?

FS: It’s a good question because what I decided to do after 1976, I had been through law school, I had passed the bar, and the decision was, you could make money you could make money. The decition was I wanted to keep running training. Again not to have any specific goal in mind, I liked the routine, I liked being fit and I liked training. So I said the only way to do that is, I’m going to have to create my own way of earning a living. Because there was no living to be made, I couldn’t hire an agent and get into some sort of system of gainful employment surrounding running, because it did not exist. So I started some retail stores and started a clothing company, and started to work towards opening up the sport. And I actually came up with the idea of, in 1981, for athletes to have there own individual trust funds. And they could run for money and the money would go into the individual trust fund. Then they could get it out for training and living, education, and medical expenses. And it passed, because the argument was well the eastern European countries are supporting their athletes, everyone knows. And we can pretty much gauge what that level of support is and attach a value to it. And I had read through the international Olympic rules and it allowed for the setting up of national trusts that corporations to which they could donate. And this money would be dueled out by the national corporations. And I said I don’t see any difference between that and an individual trust. So what happened after this got approved, in 81’, athletes could have this trust fund, they could then run for money, the money would go into the fund come out on a schedule. And then the remainder, the rest of the trust, would stay there and then when you turn professional you could have the whole thing, and over about four years that devolved, and now that the sports just open. So when you say the impact, I don’t think I was so much a promoter but an innovator. Because promoting implies that there was something there to promote…(laughter) and there wasn’t. Promoting is advertising of an exciting business, well nothing excited, because I like the idea of setting precedence and doing new things. But unwittingly I became a brand; I sort of became my own brand, if you think about it. And I did this without having gone to business school, and without the intent to do it. I had not done it according to any formula. But it just evolved because to have a clothing company you need a logo so you make a logo and I had a good logo, and then I started to do the television commentary as well I started about 1978. And for some reason I found out I was good at it, I could do it, and I don’t know why. But I think its because I am a true sports fan. I was a track nut from the time I was 15. And I also think the reason I could do it is that I truly appreciate good performances. For some reason I don’t get jealous of other people success, I don’t. And I think that served me very well.

Because you see when you do that then you can be the focus of someone else’s jealousy, and that’s what you want. (Laughter). If you’re an athletes and you’ve got everybody focused on you and what your doing rather then on them and what they’re doing then you got ‘em, you got ‘em. And so that is an instinct I had early on. But I think it’s also an instinct that ahs helped me in my commentary. But the other thing is, we didn’t get into, I was my own coach from the time I graduated from college till now. I’ve never had a coach I coach myself. Which makes me again unusual, most people have a coach. I never had an agent; I’ve always been my own agent. So I’ve always been sort of an independent operator.

BN: What was you reaction when Nike became the hot thing at the time?

FS: I was actually the second person to get paid for wearing their shoes. Pre (Steve

Prefontaine) was the first, then I was the second. And then after the 76’ Olympics, Iwent back to other shoes, Asics. I don’t know I never really thought that much about it. But

I’m not sure that Pre’s death10 had something to do with the fact that I just didn’t want to

10 Steve Prefontaine died is a car accident in Eugene, Oregon on May 30, 1975. be there. Sometimes you make decision and you don’t know why. And I just felt that you know I didn’t want to. And yet in a sense I was kind of an adopted Oregon son. I mean I was one of Bowerman’s (Bill Bowerman University of Oregon track coach, and co- founder of Nike.) favorites; he liked me and I liked him. It was almost like it was a member of the Oregon team. And so I could have very easily become part of that whole

Nike thing. But I think you can sense I’m not really a joiner. (Laughter) I just kind of had some other things I wanted to do on my own. But now and I’ve never really thought about it till now I think Steve’s dyeing took some of the fun out of it. If he lived and were still alive I think I would have been much more fun being involved with Nike, I don’t know how else to explain it.

BN: So did you feel as Nike grew and their battle with ADIDAS and Asics help promote running in a good way?

FS: I think their support of the athletes was good. In term of their athletes being free to focus on their training. The down side was they became more like bicycle racing teams.

The distaste, is the word ill use, for each other that the shoes companies have was sort of imposed on the athletes by the companies of being associated with them. If you were going to wear X companies shoes then you had to not really like those athletes wearing Y companies shoes. And I think it had a very subtle impact on the level of performance because my theory is find somebody like I did Pre or Kenny Moore who’s almost as good or better then you and you train with them and you both get better. And it shouldn’t matter what shoes they wear. And I think we went though a period, a long period where there was so much pressure on the athletes mitigating against that. And I think that had an impact. Because all of a sudden you couldn’t have these enclaves develop naturally. They were shoe enclaves rather then athlete enclaves. And I don’t think that worked. And quite honestly I think they’re getting away from that, because when you have the training centers out in California now day seven the shoe companies are acknowledging. And you got to give Nike Credit you know in the last Olympics Nike was the first Company to say our athletes can wear the Speedo, because we don’t want them to be at a disadvantage, that was really something. So I think that has come around. But in the early days of the shoe involvement they were just to focus on each other. And again to bring up the point of focus they were to focus on the other company and not on their athletes.

BN: What was you relationship like with Marathon promoters like Fred Lebow?

FS: The first Five Burrow Marathon, I always like to bring up that fact that Fred came to the airport to pick me up. (Laughter) He drove out to the airport picked me up, we got in his car, drove back into the city. Oh I loved Fred. And my relationship has always been good with the Marathon promoters because invariably people who of that time and even now put on major races do it as a labor of love. And the other thing about them is, yes

Fred was a great promoter but he had no hidden agendas with regard to what he was doing in the sport. And that’s the beauty of running I think is that, the events, everything is out there, from the athletes to the whole situation. You know, why is it happening?

Who’s getting what out of it? It’s all out there. And there’s so few things in life where that can be the case. But you know Fred did this because he just loved doing it. And I like situations where you know there not using it their not leveraging it to get to somewhere else. Their right where they want to be, doing what they want to do and loving it the whole time, and that was Fred. And so in that respect he deserved all the sort of credit that he got. And I was in the clothing business any way and I could appreciate a 7th avenue garment guy running the biggest event in New York City, talking all five burrows into co-operating. (Laughter) That’s what the sport can bring out because everybody involved, and the runners they know, they know where everyone is coming from. And each event in every city whether it’s a Marathon or a road race has its own unique character and sort of local group that puts it on. And there’s one exception there’s a group out of California Elite Racing that puts on all the Rock ‘n Roll events. But so far they are the only group that has been able to go to different cities and build races from the ground up. But its because they get along with the local running people, they get along with the local governments, and their totally open about what they do, everybody knows what they are doing. And so as long as it proceeds on the footing then I think its fine. Well then when you ask the obvious question of do you ever think I t would get this big? Of course not, but the whole point was your having fun and its so satisfying that there are all these other people who like to do the same things. It’s a far cry from where I was running around high school during the summer in Middletown, New York, that little town, where

I was the only person out there during the summer. (Laughter) I was the only person. So it’s very satisfying, and it’s fun. But again when you ask about that people always say ask about my role in it. I think I articulate it pretty well, as with anything, it’s a confluence of events all coming together at the same time. BN: Do you think that the best thing of the time and about it was that everyone, well maybe not the major shoe companies, was in it for one goal and just for the fun of it?

FS: Yeah, and even Phil Knight (Founder of Nike) at Nike. Basically Nike was conceptualized as a Stanford Business School senior project, that’s what it was. A shoe company…what? Right? Building a school company from scratch that was the senior paper. Then he went back to Bill Bowerman his old coach because he knew Bowerman had always been making shoes for him. And that’s how that thing starts. I love the serendipity of it, the idea that it can just happen that way. When it happens that way you realizes it’s probably for the right reason. Again I love situations that don’t come out of

Madison Avenue. There not marketing plans, they are just things that happen, and evolve, so that’s what make it fun.

BN: Looking back on the other on the other runners of the 70’s especially Steve

Prefontaine, why do you think he had such a big following?

FS: Well Steve was truly…He was an icon. He had a charisma even from the time he was in high school. That again goes right along with what we’ve been talking about. He was right out there, there was nothing hidden, no hidden agendas. He knew what he wanted to do. He would be very direct with you, and honest with you. And at the same time he was very compassionate and very empathetic. We were good friends. He had actually come and stayed with me here and we had trained together for a month right before he died, he was going to come back the next year and train. So we had just gotten done living together for a month. The reason it can happen is because he didn’t plan it, he had his goals; he was the person he was. And in trying to achieve those goals the other stuff happens. I can’t see it ever happening again, to have an entire state follow someone to the extent that in a dual meet in Eugene, Oregon you could fill Hayward field which was 10-

12,000 people for a dual track meet because they wanted to watch one person run. It’s just not going to happen again. You know and you can appreciate that. I don’t know why we got along so well…I know why we got along well it’s because we were very compatible in training, and we knew how to turn the switch off in competition. When we were competing we tried to beat each other’s brains out. The minute it stopped we could both totally leave it. And that’s why we trained so well together. And I think that also speaks to why he could be such a charismatic figure. It’s that his goals were so apparent, and transparent but in a good way. Other than that, you just can’t figure out just what it was. Again I keep using the word fun, it was so much fun to watch him compete. Because he was such a wonderful example in a good way of the competition where the person says “you know what I’m going to do, I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to do it anyway and I’m going to beat you.” And yet he could do that in a way that was endearing

(laughter). So I don’t know how he could do it but he did.

BN: Nowadays a lot of high school track runners and fans see him as this legendary figure. Do you think that is part of his personality but also how Nike has portrayed him?

FS: No, I don’t. I think Nike has tried. But the ironic aspect of it is Nike was behind the first Prefontaine movie called “PRE” and it was lousy. The second movie, was a movie where Kenny Moore wrote the screenplay, Bill Bowerman endorsed it, and it didn’t have the backing the perimeter of the Prefontaine family or anyone. So you had the Nike camp and you had the people trying to get it right camp, that they way I look at it. And I think I can speak to this, I’m the only person who worked on both movies. Everybody else got signed up contracted paid money to be on one side or the other. And my thought was:

Steve’s looking down on this going “What the bleep is going on here?” and saying: “Why can’t these people get together.” But the second movie “Without Limits” is a much better movie. It is much more accurate. And so in a way you can say that even though Nike tried to perpetuate Steve’s image that’s not what did it. And I worked on both movies. And I like the fact that the young athletes see him as an iconic figure, because he was. You know he wasn’t a James Dean type character because he wasn’t self-destructive. But all of us at the time we had to be rooks. But I like the fact that young kids can view that kind of character, because it just one that says you work hard. The secret is you train hard you work hard. And for me it helps me because I can have a connection with them. Because they see me as having known him, having being connected with him. And I like that because it show to me that it doesn’t change. The young kids now are just the same as when I was their age. It doesn’t change. You go out for cross country you find out you like it, you train, you like the individual aspect of it, you find out your not as team sport person. You train hard you have success. It hasn’t changed. Cross-country is still the vehicle every body starts out in cross-country. And the sort of progression is the same.

But to have a connection with these kids and to see they want to do it the same way, it’s great. So I really enjoy that to. BN: What are your thoughts on the current status of running, and be professional and the professional runners and the Olympics?

FS: Well, having created the situation I guess I can’t be too down on it too much.

(Laughter) It might have happened eventually but I helped make it happen sooner. I think again you have to go the adjustment period. And just as with the shoe companies coming involved had an impact. I think the money and the agents also had an impact. I think it gave people every more reason to be on the drugs. Of course if you want to look at it that way, the East German’s had the reason in the early 70’s because they went on the drugs and won the Olympic medals and had a sinecure, the rest of their life was assured. And so why should it be any different in the west? The only difference is money rather than life style. And if you think about it the Kenyan making 200,000 dollars in two years is no different then the East German of the 70’s. Because they go home buy up the land get the cows put up their relatives through school, and become the patriarch of a miss-ended family, rest of their lives fissured. Same deal, its just money rather than Olympic medal, but it’s the same thing. Unfortunately what that does is introduces the drugs. People are much more likely to rationalize the drug use. And so I think the money has done that. It’s made it much easier for athletes to convince themselves its okay to cheat. And that’s something that’s my other passion at this point. And I can’t compete with my legs anymore but I can certainly try to out think the drug cheaters.

BN: When did you first decide that you wanted to pursue anti-doping? FS: Well that was after the Tour De France debacle in 98’ when they found the drugs in the car coming across the border. And then in 1999, I read that the cabinet agency called

ONDCP, Office of National Drug Control Policy, headed by Barry McCaffery at the time, was the drug Czar. You have all these Czars. Actually the drug czar was first to be a czar, now there are all sorts of czars, Car czar, Bank czar, bail out czar. But I had read the

ONDCP had commited a million dollars to try and find a test for EPO (a steroid). And I thought why would anyone there want to do that? So I wrote them a letter like any citizen. And I wrote a letter to Clinton (Bill Clinton, president at the time) whom I knew,

President Clinton. And got the nice letter back from the president and a phone call from

McCaffery, it actually was his press guy. The short of it was I got put on a delegation over to switch when the IOC (International Olympic Committee) was holding a meeting trying to deal with this whole Tour De France thing in a way public relations. And the rest of the world showed up and basically told the IOC they were out of the drug testing business.

We came and they eventually, long story short, USADA (United States Anti-Doping

Agency) got formed but the memoriam that I wrote for McCaffery just sort of shorted his learning curve and all these issues became the structure of USADA. And then McCaffery decided I should be on the board. So I got put on the board, and the White House calls up and says “put Frank on the board.” I’ll never forget sending in my bio, I had a one-page bio. And I got the CV’s (bio’s) of the other people on the board, the eight other people on the board. The next shortest CV was 23 pages. I went out, we had our corporation meeting, and I went out for a run for lunch when everyone else ate the catered lunch.

When I came back they made me chairman. So I was chairman from 2000 till 2003 when

I went back to earning a living. And my role there, early on, was going to Washington and establishing the credibility of the agency. Because so much in life is people doing thing to pretend to be dealing with a problem when they really don’t want to solve the problem. They’re very comfortable having the problem exists. Whether it’s a drug problem or any other kind of business problem. Again all these plans they’ve got to have some people in there overseeing this or its fluff, another exercise and appearing to be doing something, when you’re going to go back and do what you are going to do any way, and so I had to convince a lot of people that half the funding comes from the US

Olympic Committee, half from Congress. So I sent about three establishing the credibility, visiting with the drug companies to have them help us come up with the tests.

And then devising strategies’ on how to make it very, very uncomfortable for not only the athletes cheating but moving up the food chain and putting other people in prison. See what I realized very early is an athlete takes a drug what you do is take away his or her license for a time. But it is not a criminal act. Now it’s a felony, but we don’t prosecute that felony. We take away some ones license because it’s a privilege to be in the sport, part of the privilege is the agreement not to use the drugs and to let us test you and to take the penalty if we find you did it. But it’s not a criminal prosecution. On the other hand the biochemists putting little tags on functional groups to be like computer hackers and get status within the sub culture to prove they can beat the system, now they go to jail for six years. The doctors who write the prescriptions’ go to jail for six years. Conte (Victor

Conte owner of BALCO) from BALCO (drug company and lab) should still be in jail. So the other part of my process is to create deterrent. And in the same way I used to compete now I’m figuring out deterrent. So that has really been my role in USADA. Up until now dealing with the press, when for instance you catch someone to tell the press why I can’t tell them anything. Because up until now our policy has been not to say anything until everything is absolutely done. Which for your own edification is why you see all this extreme stuff out there because it all comes from the PR people of the people we’re going after. We don’t say anything. When Tyler Hamilton (professional bike rider) said he had a ghost twin in the womb, which is why he had two different types of red cells, you knew we wouldn’t say anything. Now I think we’re going to start saying something. We could have said of you can take a test, did you take the test? What was the result? We waited until that happened in the final hearing in Switzerland after he held out of his website for two years. They asked him do you have any evidence on this ghost twin issue and his answer was “No.” So that’s been my role as well to communicate with the press in a way that lets them know not to believe all they hear about this because its only coming from one place. And obviously the passion comes from having finished second to someone who was on the East German doping program. My view of it has always been one I never said anything until we formed USADA. And that was after the wall had come down and we have all the records now. Because the East German secret policies that over saw, they over saw the drug program. They kept all the records. And they had great computers to keep it on, and they were good. They got it all. So once that came out and I could talk and

I found like it was sour grapes then the next thing for me to say was look I’m never going to campaign for change. That’s other people’s thing. But I’ll do what I can do, and that was USADA. Work on the program of deterrent. And so that’s been the way I sort of channeled my anger if you want to put it that way. I’ve always thought rather then just get angry get passionate and do something, do what you can. And that’s why I’m still involved the drug testing. BN: What is your reaction to someone like Marion Jones who keeps denying the use of steroids?

FS: Well that’s why we work very hard. And part of it is, I talked about throwing people in jail. The other president we set was called the non-analytical positive. You can now be disqualified based on records not on positive tests, and that’s really what happened with her, and then the lying about it. But her husband Tim Montgomery we got him on, he was disqualified based on records by BALCO, not by having a positive test. And then I guess he had to sell heroin to pay for his lawyers. (Laughter) So he’s gone for a long time. But he is finally admitting. Marion Jones I think, my personal view on Marion Jones is that if she’s not a psychopath then she is very close. There are people that can look you right in the eye and lie to you and think they’re right. To this day she won’t admit that she did anything. Now I guess her current statement is “I’d didn’t love myself enough.” Okay.

And so this is what I call part of the deterrent process because the other thing we realized we should do is get the justice department and the IRS involved. Because I knew the best way to move up the food chain was to Al Capone people. You throw them in jail for not declaring the income they got from the illegal activity. And that was the BALCO hammer, that’s what got Conte to flip. And that produced people, and what we found was a whole group. These justice department people they’re not the guys who want to run for attorney general and political office. These guys are doing it because they want to do it.

And that’s what resulted in Marion Jones perjury, and everything else was the justice department getting involved. Just with an aside and the other thing is the egos of some of these people. To just comment on Roger Clemons for example, in his situation when he decided to testify before congress, he wanted to, he demanded to be able to. Henry

Waxman met with him about an hour before and said “ look you don’t have to do this.”

And he decided he wanted to. And when he did what happened was, see when I talk about policy and moving up the food chain. The justice department policy is to never go after the user, go after the supplier, move up the chain. But when he testified before congress and it got passed on to the justice department, they now had to investigate him.

Before they didn’t have to, and they weren’t going to. And now there are agents all over the place looking for stuff on him. Think about it. He had the choice. But you see when you talk about, and I use this as an example of how in this fight against the performance- enhancing drug how you can use the users’ egos against themselves. In other words you can let karma work its course and all you have to do is set up the opportunity and they’ll take it. (Laughter) And so in other wards you don’t really have to nail them, you just have to keep them out there enough they’ll do it themselves. Yep, so that’s the USADA side.

BN: Well thank you very much for this interview.

FS: Oh yeah sure.

Audio/Video Time Indexing Log

1. Interviewer: Ben Naughton

2. Interviewee: Frank Shorter 3. Date of interview: December 14, 2008

4. Location of interview: Frank Shorter’s home in Boulder, Colorado

5. Recording format:

Audio Type: Video Type: Cassette Cassette X Micro-cassette Micro-cassette CD X CD X Digital (DAT) Digital (DAT)

6. In roughly 5-minute intervals, summarize interview topics in the order they appear in the recording. Also note the tape # and tape side beginning with Tape 1, Side A.

Minute Mark Topics presented in order of discussion in recording

1 Running culture at the time, and his high school experience.

5 discussing his college decision: Choose Yale for running.

10 His view on the 1960s and war protesting.

15 Setting his sights on the 1972 Olympics.

20 Thoughts on making Olympic team.

25 Discussing the strengths of the USA distance team.

30 Tells about the day of the Black September attacks.

35 Tells how is dealt with aftermath of the attacks, and his thoughts.

40 His thoughts on victory in the marathon.

45 How he values America’s democracy and lifestyle.

50 Runners becoming professional, and trust funds.

55 Discussing Steve Prefontaine’s death and Nike founding.

60 Thoughts on America’s distance running in today’s culture.

65 Thoughts on Steve Prefontaine.

70 East German and Doping. 75 His work with USADA and what they do.

80 Thoughts on Athletes who are using steroids today.

85 THE END

Analysis Paper This interview is a first–hand account of several momentous events and a cultural obsession: The story of Frank Shorter’s gold medal victory in the 1972 Olympic marathon, the terrorist attack at the Olympics, and the birth of the fitness boom. This oral history is also a primary document of Frank Shorter’s life. It provides one athlete’s perspective on the Olympic hostage crisis. It also gives insight into an athlete who once was at the top of his athletic class.

Frank Shorter has been interviewed many times and has written an autobiography,

Olympic Gold: A Runner’s Life and Times, but an oral history does things a book cannot do. The interviewer hears the rise and fall of the interviewee’s voice, sees the facial expressions, and the body movements. The reader of the oral history is able to see how

Frank Shorter thinks. Alice Hoffman writes, “Another advantage of oral interview is that it is not a written document and often contains the freshness and candor which is more typical of direct conversation” (92). You can follow the progressions of Shorter’s thoughts rather than the thoughts of a writer describing him and get a sense of how the mind of a very intelligent elite athlete works.

History as defined by Carl Becker is “ ‘the memory of things said and done.’ This is a definition that reduces history to its lowest term, yet includes everything that is essential to understanding what it really is” (223). An oral history has more emotion than traditional history. Through oral history, the reader is able to partially experience what the person went through. In this interview, Shorter talks about his childhood, his athletic ambitions, and his collegiate career. He also talks about his training for the Olympics, his

1972 Olympic experience, and what it felt like and continues to feel like to be a gold medal winner. He then concludes with what it was like to be at the top of his athletic class, his experience with the corporatization of sports, and finally his time working in the anti-doping world. Because this is an oral history, we can listen to him as he works through his thoughts. The value of this oral history interview is that, as only oral history can do, it allows us to grasp Shorter’s personality and opinions without the interference of a writer. We are able to do this by, being able to listen to how Shorter re-tells the events that has lived through. This shows us how Shorter’s mind works, but in addition to giving us insight into the mind of this particular man, it also gives us insight into the mind of elite athletes. As Edward Carr writes, “In the first place, the facts of history never come to us ‘pure,’ since they do not and cannot exist in a pure form: they are always refracted through the mind of the recorder.” In this case the “recorder” is Shorter.

As oral historian Donald Ritchie, author of “Doing Oral History,” says, “Oral history collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews” (2). Oral history is a first-hand account of someone who experienced a historical event. More traditional sources such as textbooks, memoirs and historical analyses tell the reader the list of events and how they occurred. But these sources lack intimacy, the voice and the thoughts of an individual person who actually experienced the event. As novelist David Lodge wrote, traditional history is the verdict “of those who weren’t there on those who were” (Ritchie 5). The oral historian is able to ask the questions to those who were there rather than just infer what they might have thought.

“Oral history records both the purposeful and the accidental. Interviewers who allow people a chance to assess why they did what they did will most likely capture the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of the history of our time (Ritchie 5). Traditional historians filter the events through their own biases and philosophical approach.

But oral history has weaknesses too. People can forget the events as they move farther away from them. In oral history there is a clear bias of the interviewee, because everyone has a bias. As Linda Shopes says, “As with any source, historians must exercise critical judgment when using interviews--just because someone says something is true, however colorfully or convincingly they say it, doesn't mean it is true” (Shopes).

The historian must come into this process with a skeptical eye. For example, Shorter’s perspective on the fitness boom would be of someone who was fit himself. By talking only to him, the historian is not able to gain the perspective of someone who was out of shape and pulled into the fitness boom. Where the interviewee was during the event also affects his or her view of what happened. For example, Shorter gives us a very good perspective on what it was like to experience the Black September hostage situation inside the Olympic Village, but he is not able to tell us what it was like inside the actual

Israeli rooms or what happened at the airport.

Three highlights of the interview with Shorter are his thoughts about the 1972 Olympics, the role of money in sports and his work on anti-doping in sports.

At the 1972 Olympics, Shorter pulled his mattress onto the balcony of his room because his room had many athletes in it and the weather was pleasant. He was awakened at 4 a.m. on September 5 by the sound of gunshots. He shrugged them off and went back to sleep. “And then I woke up about 7:00 or 7:30. And the best way to describe it is when there is a jungle, when there is a predator. There’s no noise, and I woke up and I said ‘it’s silent’” (Shorter quoted in Naughton 14). He remembers seeing the hostages leave the Village in a helicopter, and learning later that at the airport the hostages were killed. He thought the Olympics were going to stop, but they did not. He realized the only way he could run well in the marathon was if he did not let the thought of the terrorist attacks creep into his mind.

A few days after the attack, he was running in the marathon and in the interview he describes his strategy. “I had trained to run a mile in the middle of the race probably faster then most of these other runners could run open for the mile. I think I ran somewhere around 4:33 mile nine to ten. And it was real satisfaction of doing it right.”

(Shorter quoted in Naughton 17)

More recently, Shorter has done a lot of work with the anti-doping agency USADA

(United States Anti-Doping Agency) fighting to clean professional sports of doping. “

I’ve always thought rather then just get angry get passionate and do something, do what you can. And that’s why I’m still involved in the drug testing.” (Shorter quoted in

Naughton 33)

Shorter is a highly educated man. He graduated from Yale in 1969 and got a law degree from the University of Florida while training at the international level. His intelligence is apparent in the interview, and it is clear he thinks a great deal about the issues surrounding sports. The historian knows his comments and thoughts will be sophisticated and valuable.

Historians studying the fitness and running boom would find valuable material in this interview. Physician Kenneth Cooper, author of the 1968 book Aerobics, brought a new way of thinking about fitness. He studied aerobic activity and described the “training effect,” which is how the body gets better at using oxygen through exercise. Cooper’s studies included Shorter. “Ken Cooper at the same time had started to do his work at the aerobic center in Dallas. Fitness was being quantified. Up until that point you couldn’t point to some research that was published to say being fit is good for you” (Shorter quoted in Naughton 21).

Shorter also talks about the absence of a fitness and running culture before his success.

“When you say impact, I don’t think I was so much a promoter but an innovator. Because promoting implies that there was something there to promote…(laughter) and there wasn’t” (Shorter quoted in Naughton 22).

The 1970s was the era of the corporatization of sports. Shorter was a hot commodity for the big businesses that were involved in corporatization of sports, such as Nike, Adidas and Asics, as well as the non-profit New York Marathon. Pamela L. Cooper describes how the New York City Marathon was marketed and “united athletic achievement and economic production” (397). Shorter himself was paid to run in the first five-borough

New York marathon in 1976. Marathon organizers, by paying Shorter and bringing the race to more people in all five boroughs, were trying to publicize the marathon and running in general.

Shorter’s interview is a useful source on the corporatization of running because he was one of the top runners being pursued by the big-name companies. “I was actually the second to get paid for wearing their shoes (Nike)… And then after the ‘76 Olympics I went back to other shoes, Asics.” (Shorter quoted in Naughton 23) On this subject,

Shorter’s personality stands out. “I could have very easily become part of that whole Nike thing. But I think you can sense I’m not really a joiner” (Shorter 23). A historian could only gain so much from Shorter’s interview about being attached to a shoe company because Shorter is not someone who likes to jump on the bandwagon, but rather someone who remains independent.

Shorter thinks the corporatization of sports was good for publicizing sports and funding athletes, but in some ways bad for the individual athlete:

“If you were going to wear X company’s shoes then you had to not really

like those athletes wearing Y company’s shoes. It had a very subtle impact

on the level of performance because my theory is find somebody like I

did-- Pre or Kenny Moore-- who’s almost as good or better then you to

train with and you both get better. And it shouldn’t matter what shoe you

wear. And I think we went through a period, a long period where there was

so much pressure on athletes mitigating against that. And I think that had

an impact. Because all of a sudden you couldn’t have these enclaves

develop naturally. They were shoe enclaves rather than athlete enclaves.

And I don’t think that worked. (Shorter 41)

A historian would find Shorter’s critique of corporatization useful because he is able to give the perspective of someone who was at the top of his game and being pursued by the shoe companies, but also at the same time had his doubts about the effects of sponsorship.

My personal perspective on this subject is that I am an avid distance runner and deeply emotionally involved in running. This potentially could have distorted my interview, leading me not to ask certain questions. In addition, the late runner Steve Prefontaine fascinates me. This did affect my questioning. I asked Shorter about “Pre” out of my own personal curiosity. However, I do not feel that I allowed these biases to interfere with my interview. The strengths of my interview technique were my deep understanding and knowledge of the subject. I did not interrupt him and I did not ask yes-or-no questions. Frank Shorter has had much experience being interviewed and so any mistakes I might have made, he helped me to avoid. For example, I might have asked follow-up questions in an interview with someone else, but Shorter answered all my questions so directly and in such depth I felt no follow-up questions were needed.

This project opened up many opportunities for me. I have learned how to conduct an interview, how to write a contextualization paper and how to dissect research to find what

I need. This project let me do things I never thought would be possible. I was able to research and write about a topic I was extremely interested in and I was able to interview one of my heroes. On a more personal level, I learned life lessons from Shorter. Some of the things he talked about that meant a great deal to me were using athletics to get into the best college you can but focusing on academics, learning how to carry yourself

(relying on other people but, at the same time, knowing that it is your judgment that matters), and understanding rather than getting angry you should “get passionate and do something, do what you can.”

This is the first time I have actually enjoyed a research paper. Because I came into the project with a prior understanding of my topic, I was able to really focus on the writing and improving my writing technique. This experience will be something I will remember for the rest of my life. I know I will always love telling people about my oral history project. I am truly grateful for this experience.

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