Los Angeles Coliseum
A treasure of track & field memories

The LA Coliseum is not just about football or soccer.  It has been a special place for track and field-from state high school championships to two Olympics.

Milestones of the Coliseum:
*1932 Olympics (14 world and eight Olympic records broken)
*1984 Olympics (17 Olympic records, two world records broken)
*Four Olympic Trials- ’52,’56,’68, ’84
*Four NCAA Championships-’34,’39,’49, ’55
*62 world records
* Pavvo Nurmi, Finland’s Olympic legend, ran April 25, 1925 (31,554 attended)
*The 1964 USSR/ USA Dual, USA won 187-156 (attendance over 50,000)
*LA Times International Games, July 23-24, 1966
*USA vs. British Commonwealth, July 8-9, 1967
* USA vs. USSR, British Commonwealth, July 18-19, 1969
*Jesse Owens & Ohio St. vs. USC (June 15, 1935)…40,000 in attendance to see Owens win four events, two were Coliseum records.
*First USC dual meet loss since 1933 (104 dual wins without defeat), 75-56 to Oregon (April 21, 1962)
*Host to Coliseum Relays from 1941 to 1966 with many meets of over 40,000 spectators (LA City HS Championships were held in conjunction with the meet from 1943-55.
*Host to the first and only major track and field event in America conducted on grass. From 1958 to 1960 the Coliseum Relays had to exist on grass-the Los Angeles Dodgers had moved from Brooklyn to play their games in the Coliseum while their stadium in Chavez Ravine was being built.

Individual firsts:
*First 7’ high jump-Charles Dumas (Compton College/USC)…1956 US Olympic Trials
*First sub-4 minute mile in America…Jim Bailey (Oregon U./Australia)-special race at
the UCLA/USC dual meet in 1956
*First 60’ shot put-Parry O’Brien (USC) in ’54
*First 200’ discus throw-Al Oerter (Kansas) in ’62
*Edwin Moses (Morehouse College) extended his consecutive winning streak in the 400-meter hurdles to 90 in seven years by winning the 1984 Olympic race.
*Joan Benoit (Bowdoin College)) won the first women’s Olympic marathon (’84).
*Carl Lewis (Houston U.) equaled Jesse Owen’s Berlin Olympics (1936) feat of four gold medals-Lewis won the 100,200, LJ, and anchored the winning 400-meter relay for four gold medals at the ’84 Games.
-LA 84 Library, Los Angeles

Steve Prefontaine

January 25,1951-May 30, 1975

     A native of Coos Bay, Oregon Steve Prefontaine, and a.k.a. “Pre”, held 14 American records from 2,000 to 10,000 meters at the time of his death in 1975, at the age of 24, in a car accident. He also won three NCAA cross country titles and four three-mile titles for the University of Oregon. Two movies were made about his life (“Without Limits” and “Prefontaine”). There are memorial web-sites, races and an invitational track meet run in his honor, and a special Prefontaine running path in Eugene (Ore.). Pre was an extremely strong-willed and talented runner with immense charisma who remains a living legend in our sport. It was written somewhere after his death that Pre was track’s James Dean.

      The aura of Pre … ”It was a living legend that the clouds went away when Pre stepped on the track. It’s really true. The track meet would be going, and Pre would jog into the stadium, and in the first place, everybody would start applauding him. The minute he took a step on it, the clouds would start…clearing up. The sun would shine through. It sounds funny, but I can remember just off hand four or five times, and I’m guessing there must have been more. I can remember people turning to somebody else and saying, “It’s doing it again.” –John Gillespie, long-time Duck fan and Oregon assistant coach during the Coach Bill Dellinger era.   
-Pre by Tom Jordan, Rodale Press, 1977

    Precocious Pre… Oregon’s Arne Kvalheim accompanied Coach Bill Dellinger on a recruiting trip to Coos Bay during Pre’s junior year in high school.
    “I had just run 8:33.2 for a collegiate two-mile record.  Pre had just run 9:01. We took a ten-mile run on the beach. All the way this kid kept asking me, ‘Getting tired?  Am I going too fast for you?’ ”
–“What I’d Like to Do” by Kenny Moore, Track & Field News, June, 1995

      A rare specimen… “One of his (Pre’s) most unique records has been overlooked: In his four years of training and competing as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon, he never missed one day of training or one competition because of illness or injury.  Certainly Pre was a rare specimen.” – Oregon Coach Bill Dellinger
-Winning Running by Bill Dellinger, Contemporary Books, 1978

     John Walker on Pre… "I met Pre and he was a character. One time in Italy he was on world record pace for the 5000 in front of 20,000 people, and he just stepped off the track about 3500 meters in. The crowd just went silent. I saw Pre at the bar that night having a cigarette and a beer and asked him why he did that. He goes, ‘they only paid me enough to run 3500 meters.’ That was Pre, a man of his own making.” – John Walker, New Zealand- first man to break 3:50 in the mile
–“Looking Back 30 Years” –Competitor magazine, March, 2006