Eugene is the mecca for track in this country

EUGENE, Ore. — Runners ride its wave, finding energy sources deep in their souls. The ancient rhythmic clapping is a tail wind for throwers and a gale for jumpers.

It echoes from the wooden grandstands the same way it did almost a century ago. It pushes shot putters like no other sound. It resuscitates long-distance runners and it shocks sprinters.

There is no other place in sports quite like Hayward Field, and no city more in love with the human drama of track and field than Eugene.

In most of the rest of the country the sport is dying from ennui. Track and field long ago was surpassed by less sophisticated sports.

The drug scandals, the nagging notion that nobody in the sports is clean anymore, the 24-hour cable networks' refusal to cover it has crushed track and field in the United States. Often it is hard to find its pulse.

But in this genteel community the appreciation for these athletes is as rich as it was in track and field's glory days a generation ago.

Eugene understands.

"It's so exciting competing here," says former Washington State standout Diana Pickler, who qualified for the Olympic heptathlon on Saturday after finishing third. "There aren't too many towns in America that are track towns. There aren't any actually, so it's amazing to have all this attention on your sport that you don't get at all anywhere else in the U.S."

Every morning it seems this town awakens, puts on its running shoes and heads for the trails that wind through and past the city. Or it goes out in the backyard and tosses rocks, emulating a shot putter like Adam Nelson.

This is a town of doers.

"It's just a beautiful atmosphere here," says John Smith, a former quarter-miler and member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic team. "A culture has been set up here. The people are outdoorsy. They take their whole exercising thing very seriously.

"It's just marvelous. This is one of the few places in the world where you can come and be around people who are knowledgeable about track and field. They recognize you and they respect you here."

Melanie Reske has been coming to meets here since Steve Prefontaine was a cocky freshman. She and her husband have been season-ticket holders to meets at Hayward Field since 1973.

She says that sometimes sitting in the grandstands she feels as if the entire crowd is pulling runners past their limits.

"This is the home of track and field," she says. "This is home."

Reske is one of those people who started practicing by launching rocks like shots in the backyard, while her husband, Richard, did the gardening. Recently she competed in a masters meet in Salem. She's 87.

That's what Smith is talking about. She is the essence of the track fan in this town.

Track and field isn't just a casual spectator sport in Eugene. This is where America comes to run — and throw — and jump.

"This crowd has a lot of knowledge and I think a lot of that knowledge comes from actually participating in track and field, whether it's youth or masters, or whatever the case," says pole vaulter Brad Walker, the favorite in today's final. "They're here to see good performances and they know what good performances are."

Walker set the American record in the pole vault (19-9 ¾) at Hayward Field earlier this month. He was cheered as if he were Tiger Woods, LeBron James and Tom Brady, all in one.

This is how the sport and its athletes are treated in Zurich and Oslo, in Athens and Rome.

Through next Sunday, Eugene is playing host to the U.S. Olympic track and field trials. It should be declared the permanent host.

Even for Friday's first day of competition, almost exclusively devoted to the tedium of heats, a stadium record crowd of 20,964, sat and cheered as if they were watching a Super Bowl.

It pushed Oregon sophomore Andrew Wheating to a first-place finish in an 800-meter heat. Another Duck, Galen Rupp, decided to run in the 5,000-meter heat just to get a feel for the drama. His specialty is the 10,000 meters.

But the crowd was so loud and his adrenaline so high, Rupp won his heat and gave the roaring mavens a thumbs up as he crossed the finish line.

Remember, this is a heat in the 5,000 meters. Around the rest of the country it would have been witnessed by a few hundred disinterested parties. But in Eugene, on a Friday night, it was the party.

"This is Eugene and when you say Eugene, you're saying track and field at its finest," Smith says. "Eugene, that's all you have to say. It's religion here."

If track and field is religion, former Oregon coach, the late Bill Bowerman was its prophet. A half century ago, he began promoting the game with an evangelist's passion.

"A lot of things started here," says Becky Sisley, 69, a four-year basketball and field hockey player at the University of Washington and Oregon's women's athletic director in the 1970s. "Bowerman started the jogging craze. He came back from a trip to New Zealand and decided he wanted people in the community to be fit."

Bowerman got Eugene running. He started all-comers meets that didn't discriminate because of times, distances or ages.

"He was magnetic. He was charismatic," says Sisley, who holds American Masters age-group records in the heptathlon and javelin and also competes in the pole vault and high jump. "He had a lot of traits that would get people involved.

"We've had a lot of great track meets here, which has given the people knowledge and knowledge helps you get more excited and aware about what's going on. There's just a long history and when you combine that with the technical knowledge and Bowerman and a good facility [and] this is what you can get."

Imagine a scene around Yankee Stadium on the morning before a game, with people playing baseball on dozens of diamonds surrounding the stadium.

Or thousands of fans playing doubles on the outside courts before the start of the U.S. Open tennis tournament.

Or parking lots jammed with three-on-three games on the morning before the start of the Final Four.

That's life around Hayward Field this week — every week.

"It's refreshing to come here," says world record holder and two-time Olympic silver medalist long jumper Mike Powell. "This is the place where people embrace the sport and they give it the true feel like you would get in Europe. It's especially good for the younger athletes. They can see that they don't have to compete in an empty stadium."

Walk into Hayward Field and you can believe in track and field again. Come here and there is a belief the sport can eventually recover from its self-inflicted wounds.

This is Mecca, or at least Oslo.