THURSDAY, JULY 3, 2025
The Daily Emerald’s new track publication
By Brady Ruth Sports Editor
Welcome to Hayward Field in beautiful Eugene, Oregon!
ONESTO WATCH
We at The Daily Emerald are excited to greet you into one of the most iconic track and field locations in the world. TrackTown, USA, is bustling with life, energy and, of course, track! We hope you are able to get around Eugene and see some of the historic sights and highlights of the town’s track history. Hopefully, it gives you a feel for why we love TrackTown, USA, so much and why we’re so honored to cover track and field in Eugene!
Being a student journalist is a privilege in itself. This year the Emerald has produced incredible content covering a wide range of collegiate athletics, but now we have an opportunity to report on the sport that truly has put Eugene on the map in our very own historic Hayward Field.
The Daily Emerald is proud to provide coverage of this year’s Prefontaine Classic. Enjoy reading the history of this iconic stadium, the present Oregon dominance in track and field, and what the future has in store for Hayward Field and the Ducks! On behalf of the Sports Desk, the editing and design teams, our photographers and everyone else at The Daily Emerald, enjoy your time in TrackTown, USA and thank you for supporting student journalism!
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Bill Bowerman: A titan on and off the track
Fifty years of magic
Sydney McLaughlinLevrone returns to Eugene
Prefontaine Classic: everything you need to know
BILL BOWERMAN: A TITAN ON AND OFF THE TRACK
How one man changed running forever.
By Beck Parsons Sports Reporter
William “Bill” Bowerman was born Feb. 19, 1911, to former Oregon Gov. Jay Bowerman and his wife, Elizabeth. Instead of politics, Bowerman dedicated his life to running and built two empires in the process.
Bowerman grew up with his mother in Fossil, Oregon. He enrolled at the University of Oregon in 1929, where he played football and basketball. As a junior, coach Bill Hayward convinced Bowerman to join the track team.
After college, Bowerman became a schoolteacher and served in World War II following the Pearl Harbor attack. He achieved the rank of major and returned to UO to coach track in 1948.
There, Bowerman became a legend. Across 24 years in Eugene, Bowerman won four national titles and coached 33 Olympians. He also developed the now-commonsense ‘hard-easy’ training method, which stressed that athletes not overwork themselves. In 1964, three weeks of ‘hard-easy’ training shaved 27 seconds off Olympian Kenny Moore’s best two-mile time.
It was as Oregon’s track coach that Bowerman met Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight, who walked onto the Oregon track team as a middle-distance runner in 1955.
“It was Bowerman who’d first made me think, really think, about what people put on their feet,” Knight wrote in his 2016 memoir Shoe Dog
“Bowerman was a genius coach, a master motivator, a natural leader of men, and there was one piece of gear he deemed crucial to their development,” Knight continued. “Shoes. He was obsessed with the way human beings are shod.”
According to Knight, Bowerman was notorious for stealing his runners’ shoes. He’d then return them days later “with some minor modification, which made us either run like deer or bleed.”
Bowerman tinkered with every aspect of these shoes, but he prioritized weight above all else. He calculated that removing an ounce of weight from a shoe would translate (the male average of 880 steps per mile multiplied by one ounce per step) to 55 pounds less lift required over a distance of one mile. By Knight’s senior year in 1959, Bowerman was making Knight’s shoes himself.
In 1964, while still coaching the Ducks, Bowerman again partnered up with Knight, this time in distributing Japanese Onitsuka
Tigers under the name Blue Ribbon Sports. While Knight handled the expansion of the company that would one day become Nike, Inc., Bowerman continued to fuel his passion for footwear, combining the best elements of existing Onitsuka shoes into what would eventually become the world-famous Nike Cortez training shoe.
Released in 1972, the Cortez was Nike’s first track shoe. The company’s popularity immediately skyrocketed when the American athletes Bowerman was coaching at the 1972 Summer Olympics were seen wearing Cortezes.
Bowerman’s subsequent development of the “moon shoe” and “waffle trainer” outsoles drove Nike’s continued ascension, paving the way for the Jordan Brand and the billions of dollars that followed.
Bowerman retired as Oregon’s head track coach in March of 1973, but stayed on Nike’s board of directors until June 1999. He died in Fossil on Christmas Eve 1999 at 88 years old.
However, over 25 years later, Bowerman’s legacy remains. Nike has been a Fortune 500 company since 1995. Meanwhile, Oregon’s track and field team has won six outdoor national titles since his retirement, and another 13 in indoor competition since 2009.
Eugene’s Hayward Field bears several tributes to Bowerman. A statue of Bowerman — installed in 2000 and preserved in Hayward’s 2018 to 2020 renovations — stands in the northeast corner, facing the track with a stopwatch in hand. Bowerman is also depicted atop Hayward Field’s 10-story tower, offering his legendary coaching to an unnamed Oregon runner.
The history behind one of track and field’s most beloved meets.
By Lily Crane Sports Reporter
The fans at Hayward Field slowly got up for a standing ovation as Kenyan distance runner Beatrice Chebet began her final lap around the track.
Chebet trailed the favorite to win, Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay, for most of the 2024 Prefontaine Classic 10,000 meters. Chebet lapped several runners coming off the belt, then crossed the finish line at 28 minutes and 54.14 seconds — a new world record. History-making performances like Chebet’s — the only world record from the 2024 edition — are what the track and field world has come to expect from the Prefontaine Classic.
The meet honors Steve Prefontaine, a former University of Oregon and Olympic dis-
tance runner. The start of the meet can be traced back to 1973, but it operated under the name of the Hayward Restoration Meet.
Bill Bowerman, the legendary Ducks track and field coach and Nike co-founder, and the Oregon Track Club started the meet to raise money for the renovation of the West Grandstands at the old Hayward Field.
The inaugural event was highlighted by former Olympic gold medalist David Wottle defeating Prefontaine by 0:01.3 seconds in the mile. Wottle wowed the 12,000 fans in attendance as he recorded what was at the time the second fastest mile ever by an American man, doing so while running in his signature golf cap.
The Hayward Restoration Meet was renamed the Bowerman Classic, but eight days before the 1975 meet, the track and field world lost Prefontaine in a tragic car accident. Bowerman and the Oregon Track Club decided to rename it again to the Prefontaine Classic that year.
Since the first Prefontaine Classic, the world’s top track and field athletes put on a
show every year in Eugene, with world records broken on multiple occasions.
While this year’s meet is the 50th anniversary, one of its most prestigious events — the Bowerman Mile — is in its 25th year. The Bowerman Mile began in 2000, shortly after the passing of the former UO coach.
Two-time Olympic gold medalist, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, recorded the fastest Bowerman Mile in 2023 at 3:43.73. Almost every year, it has taken less than four minutes to win the event.
“Always excited to race at Hayward Field,” Ingebrigtsen said to the media ahead of the 2022 Bowerman Mile, which he also competed in. “The Bowerman Mile has always been special, as everybody knows. That’s how I felt when I raced here the first time.”
Ingebrigtsen will be joined by Cole Hocker and Yared Nuguse, the reigning Olympic gold and bronze medalists, respectively, in this year’s Bowerman Mile. Hocker himself left the UO track and field team in 2021 to go professional, signing with Nike and continuing to train under
his former coach, Ben Thomas.
Track and field athletes relish the opportunity to compete in the Prefontaine Classic. The 2023 100-meter World Champion, Sha’Carri Richardson, spoke about the thrill of competing at Hayward after her first-place finish at last year’s edition.
“It’s exciting that the stadium here has the magnitude, has the magic and embraces the sport and the love that we as track and field athletes deserve,” Richardson said. “It’s always magical running here.”
Every Prefontaine Classic has taken place at Hayward with the exception of 2019, when it was held at Cobb Track at Stanford. Hayward Field once again underwent renovations ahead of the 2022 World Championships. In 2020, the meet was cancelled due to COVID-19.
The 2025 Prefontaine Classic is set to be held on July 5 at Hayward Field. (ABOVE)
(Julia Massa/Emerald)
BEST OF THE BEST
Here are the top five athletes to watch at the Prefontaine Classic.
By Joe Krasnowski Sports Reporter
With the best athletes in the world taking the national stage at this week’s Prefontaine Classic, it would be easy to get lost in the sheer amount of talent competing at the University of Oregon’s Hayward Field.
That’s where The Daily Emerald comes in — with a list of the five top athletes competing at the Pre Classic.
Faith Cherotich
Women’s 3000-meter steeplechase
Kenyan Faith Cherotich comes to Hayward as one of the top steeplechase athletes in the world. The 20-year-old won the bronze medal at the 2021 World Athletics Under-20 Championships before making her Olympic debut with a bronze medal in the 3000m steeplechase at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Now ranked No. 2 in the women’s steeplechase by World Athletics, Cherotich will come to the Pre Classic ready to show her progress on the national stage, and look to make history while doing it.
Ryan Crouser
Men’s shot put
Portland’s very own Ryan Crouser is the only three-time Olympic gold medalist in the shot put and has clearly established himself as one of the greatest athletes still competing today. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Crouser has dominated at every level of competition, besting the field at the Olympics, the World Championships, and the NCAA level. Of note, Crouser comes from a family of Olympic throwers including his father
and both uncles, who competed in discus, javelin and shot put, respectively. His two cousins are also javelin throwers according to teamusa.com.
Faith Kipyegon
Women’s 1500-meter
A late June story titled “What it would take for Faith Kipyegon to become the first female sub-four-minute miler,” published in The Athletic, tells the whole story for Kipyegon. The Kenyan is, simply put, one of the best in the world at what she does. Kipyegon is the current world record holder for the 1,500 meters and mile among all women and is the former world record holder for the 5000-meter. Kipyegon looks to drop nearly eight seconds on her record-setting 4:07.64 two years ago in Monaco but enters the Pre Classic at peak condition. Last time out, Kipyegon came up 6.42 seconds short of a sub-four-minute mile when competing at the Stade Charlety in Paris on June 26 — but still ran under her previous world-record time. Few athletes in the world have the same “wow” factor as the 31-year-old, and the world will be watching to see if she can make even more history.
“That is why I was coming here to, you know, try to be the first woman to run under four minutes. But I’ve proven that it’s possible,” Kipyegon said to NPR after her race in Paris. “It’s only a matter (of) time. I think it will come to our way. But if it’s not me, it will be somebody else.”
Jakob Ingebrigtsen
Men’s mile
3000-meters and two-mile competitions. Most recently, he dominated the competition at the 2024 Paris Olympics, winning a gold medal in the 5000m at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“As an individual athlete, I want to be recognized as the best runner to exist,” Ingebrigtsen said in an interview with CNN. “The goal is to compete as much as I can. I really enjoy testing myself and trying to run the fastest (possible) is a part of that test … I think my chances are good for running fast.”
Cole Hocker
Men’s mile
A University of Oregon alumni, Cole Hocker returns to Eugene to compete for the first time since earning a gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Since that historic run in Paris, Hocker also ran the second-fastest indoor 3000m time in history with 7:23.14 earlier this year.
“World champion,” Hocker said in an interview with NBCSports. “That’s, without a doubt, the goal. To go back to back in what I think is one of the most competitive eras that the 1500m has ever seen, that would make it a success without a doubt. Obviously, fast times are always in the cards, and I want to run fast, but most importantly, I want to win.”
After competing at the Pre Classic, Hocker will set his sights on back-to-back gold medals at the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo this September. Hocker will also be competing against Ingebrigtsen, who was the favorite entering the 2024 Olympics and competes in the same event. Time will tell if Hocker will be able to best Ingebrigtsen again, or if the Norwegian can bounce back and add another captivating chapter in what has been a young rivalry.
Faith Kipyegon celebrates after winning the women’s 1500m at Hayward Field.
(Will Geschke/Emerald)
Former Oregon Duck, Cole Hocker, basks in the Eugene as he is showered with cheers in his old college competing ground.
(Jonathan Suni/ Emerald)
Faith Kipyegon cruises past the finish line with a three second lead to break the meet record for the 1500m run. (Jonathan Suni/ Emerald)
SYDNEY MCLAUGHLINLEVRONE RETURNS TO EUGENE
A reigning gold medalist looks to add to an already historic career at the 2025 Prefontaine Classic.
By Max Koebel Sports Reporter
The Prefontaine Classic is headed to Hayward Field for the Fourth of July weekend — and so is reigning Olympic 400-meter hurdles champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
The current world-record holder for the 400-meter hurdles, McLaughlin-Levrone was the first track athlete to break more than four Olympic records in a single event. She first competed on a world stage at the age of 16, when she ran in the Olympic 400m hurdles event at Rio 2016 and finished as a semi-finalist. She was the youngest American to make an Olympic appearance in track and field since 1980.
There is no doubt that McLaughlin-Levrone’s exceptional athletic talent runs in her family. Her father was a semi-finalist in the 400m race of the U.S. Olympic Trials in 1984. Her older brother won a silver medal in the 400m hurdles of the IAAF World U20 Championships in 2016. Neither of them quite matched what Sydney has accomplished.
McLaughlin-Levrone attended the University of Kentucky from 2017-2018 before entering the professional world of track and field. Her first medal was a silver in the 2019 Doha World Championships.
Last year, McLaughlin-Levrone claimed two gold medals in the Paris Olympics when she broke her own world record by running 50.37 seconds in the 400m hurdles and was a member of the Team USA group that ran 3:15.27 in the women’s 4x400m relay.
PREFONTAINE CLASSIC: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW
What’s
in store for the Diamond League and World Athletics’ trip to Eugene.
By Jack Lazarus Sports Editor
52 years of history packed into one day calls for some of the best competition that Hayward Field sees each track season.
While UO’s iconic track stadium is used for conference and NCAA championships throughout the spring, no event it hosts welcomes more talent from top-to-bottom than The Prefontaine Classic.
Prior to last year, McLaughlin-Levrone earned two gold medals in the Tokyo Olympics for the same events. Her 400m hurdles time was 51.46 seconds and her team’s 4x400m relay time was 3:16.85. Outside of the Olympics, McLaughlin-Levrone has won three gold medals in the World Athletics Championships as well as a Diamond Trophy from the Diamond League – a professional track and field competition.
This will not be McLaughlin-Levrone’s first visit to Hayward Field. Her last competition was the USA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in 2023, where she recorded a personal best of 48.74 seconds in the 400m race. When ranking the top ten performances of her career in each of her events, McLaughlin-Levrone ran three of her best 400m marks and four of her best 400m hurdles in Eugene. She has broken four world records at Hayward Field alone, the first of which came in the 400m hurdles event during the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in 2021.
McLaughlin-Levrone has already defied many odds in her historic career, but the competition will never go away. Hayward Field, and other track and field venues around the world will be filled with athletes looking to dethrone her, but regardless of how big her trophy case is, McLaughlin-Levrone’s mission will never change. Her unstoppable force will once again shine high above the Willamette Valley and the other athletes competing in those events can only hope to catch her.
The Pre Classic began in earnest in 1973 and was organized by the legendary Bill Bowerman and the Oregon Track Club as the “Hayward Restoration Meet.” Steve Prefontaine ran in the opening two meets and broke the American three mile record of 12:51.40 after a historic battle with Frank Shorter in 1974.
Prefontaine tragically passed away after a car accident in 1975 while preparing for the 1976 Summer Olympics, and in his memory, the meet was renamed to the current namesake. On top of that, the meet’s continued mission has been to commemorate the life and legacy of Prefontaine by including the world’s premier athletes competing for titles and records.
No other American meet has seen as many sub-four minute mile performances, and the meet was a founding member of the Diamond League, which is an annual circuit of track and field events organized by World Athletics — the world track and field governing body.
The Prefontaine Classic was named the Diamond League Final in 2023, which was the competition that received the highest performance score of any Diamond League event.
This summer’s iteration hopes to exceed that with a field made up of the world’s best and most accomplished athletes.
Headlining the event will be women’s mile record holder Faith Kipyegon and gold medal winning hurdler Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone highlight the women’s side, while gold medal winning hurdler Rai Benjamin and a gold medal sprinter in Quincy Hall compete in the men’s bracket. The meet will be broadcast on NBC and Peacock, so the expectation is that the competition will be must-see TV.
The Prefontaine Classic is capped off by the famous Bowerman Mile, which has produced some of the best mile performances the world has ever seen. The event is named after legendary Oregon track and field coach Bill Bowerman, who, along with Prefontaine, created this meet to bring the best of world athletics to Eugene every year.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen returns to the field after a second place finish in 2024, but the Norwegian Olympian holds the Bowerman Mile record of 3:43.73, which he set in 2023. That same year, Yared Nuguse set the American record by coming in second place with a 3:43.97. Nuguse returns to the field for 2025.
Mixed in with Nuguse and Ingebritsen will be Cole Hocker, the surprise Olympic gold medalist in the 2024 1500-meter final and fourtime NCAA 1500-meter champion in his time at Oregon. Hocker will be a fan favorite without a doubt, as Tracktown never forgets its heroes. That being said, any of these athletes can make their mark on the track and field world with outstanding performances at The Prefontaine Classic. Whoever does has a unique chance to bolster their names in the eyes of world athletics, and what better place is there to do it than at Hayward?
More Than A Thrift Store
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REMEMBERING BILL DELLINGER
With the upcoming Prefontaine Classic, the life and legacy of Oregon legend Bill Dellinger will be celebrated.
By Jack Lazarus Sports Editor
The track world, especially in Eugene, will enter the 2025 Prefontaine Classic with heavy hearts after the sudden passing of Bill Dellinger, a former University of Oregon runner, coach and mentor to Steve Prefontaine.
Dellinger is renowned in the track and field universe for his accomplishments both as an athlete and a coach.
In his time as a cross country runner at UO under the tutelage of the legendary Bill Bowerman, Dellinger became a three-time All American, won every collegiate cross country race and won NCAA titles in the mile and 5000-meter.
In 1956, Dellinger won the United States Olympic Trials for the 5000 by lowering his own American record to 14:16.20, which qualified him for the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia, but he failed to finish in his race due to the extreme heat.
After college, Dellinger joined the United States Air Force and continued his training where he trained alone twice a day in order to continue his Olympic career.
Dellinger then qualified for the 1960 Olympics in Rome and the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. It was in Tokyo where he saw his greatest success as an athlete.
Dellinger pulled off a major upset in a stacked
nity College’s track coach, which was a position he held until 1967.
By that point, Bowerman, his old coach, wanted him to join his staff at UO, and Dellinger joined on as his assistant coach.
By 1969, Dellinger became the team’s cross country coach, which also coincided with the freshman year of the namesake for this weekend’s event: Prefontaine.
With the two growing their careers at the same time, Dellinger took over primary development of the young athlete, and the two grew very close throughout Prefontaine’s time in Eugene, which ended with the latter’s untimely death from a car accident in 1975.
Dellinger had already succeeded Bowerman as Oregon’s head coach by that point and reportedly aimed to continue both Bowerman and Prefontaine’s legacies in the sport and program.
Dellinger served as the head coach from 1973 to 1998 and in that time won four NCAA cross country championships, which included placing in the top three 12 times, and the 1984 NCAA outdoor championships. Also in 1984, Dellinger served as the U.S. Olympic team’s distance coach for the games in Los Angeles. Additionally, Dellinger coached a whopping 108 All Americans during his time in Eugene. In 2001, Dellinger was added to the USATF Hall of Fame as an ath-
Oregon’s longtime coach lends his name to the Bill Dellinger Invitational, a collegiate cross country event held every fall in Springfield.
Dellinger’s influence on the track and field scene in Eugene will be felt as a crucial part of the building of both Oregon’s successful program and the legacy of Prefontaine as his mentor.
Dellinger passed on June 27, 2025, at the age of 91 due to natural causes.
With Dellinger’s passing, the 2025 Prefontaine Classic will have another legacy to add to the story as the world’s premier athletes aim to live up to the event’s namesake at Hayward Field.
(BELOW) Former Oregon Track and Field Coach Bill Dellinger takes in the meet at the finish chute. The University of Oregon hosted the 12th annual Bill Dellinger Invitational meet at the SpringfieldGolf Club in Marcola on Friday, Sept. 29, 2017. (Adam Eberhardt/Emerald)
(LEFT) The sun shines bright over Hayward Field tower. (Kai Kanzer/Emerald)
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