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He was born in January of 1951 in a small town in Oregon. He ran in cross country in high school and prepared to run track. He trained so hard that he was too exhausted to qualify in his sophomore year. However, in his last two years of high school, he won everything and set a high school record with a time of 8:41.5 in the two mile race. Steve Prefontaine's skills brought him to the Olympics in Munich in 1972, but he failed to receive a medal. He returned to college and set his sights on the Olympics in Montreal in 1976. Leading up to the 1976 games, he set all the American records in races at 2,000 meters up to 10,000 meters. One year before the Montreal Olympics, he was driving home in May of 1975 and lost control of his car. He died at the young age of 24.
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