EUGENE (from our correspondent) – If you have even a little bit of a sporty heart, the sight will amaze you. The tower rising as a dominant in one of the corners of the Hayward Field stadium, which, even after the reconstruction and expansion, tries to blend in with the surrounding nature as much as possible.
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“It is one of the few purely athletic stadiums in the world. It’s not big, but people are used to going to athletics here, there will be a stormy atmosphere,” expects javelin thrower Jakub Vadlejch, Olympic silver medalist.
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A little further away is the Autzen Stadium designed for American football, from where the walking and marathon races will start. What do both stadiums have in common? Green and yellow, the colors of the local Ducks, as the University of Oregon’s sports team is known.
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And indeed, walking around the campus, where all the events of the World Cup are concentrated, including the accommodation of the athletes, you can feel like you are in the movie Disbanded and Disbanded. “Ducks, ducks, ducks…”
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But why did the city in the northwest of the USA earn the name Tracktown, i.e. a kind of athletic capital of the USA? Above all, its engaging history. The stadium was built in 1919 on the site of what were originally pastures for cows that produced milk for the university’s students.
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Czech milers Diana Mezuliáníková (left) and Kristiina Mäki survey the Hayward Field stadium.Photo: TIME – Soňa Maléterová
First for American football, two years later for track and field, it was named Hayward Field after “Grand Old Man”, as coach Bill Hayward was nicknamed. The coach, who led the university’s athletics team for 43 years, learned about it a day late.
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He also coached the American football players Ducks, and the ceremony naming the stadium took place during the break of the match. Hayward was in the cabin, they forgot to tell him about the upcoming tribute…
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Hayward Field gradually became insufficient for American football, which moved to the new Autzen Stadium, but quickly gained a reputation as an athletics stand. In 1955, it welcomed its first national collegiate championship, famously won by the home team under the leadership of Bill Bowerman, one of the most famous coaching figures in American athletics.
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A statue of him with a stopwatch still oversees the action at Hayward Field, but Bowerman is also famous for his business legacy. He started a company with one of his wards. It was called Nike, and the trustee was Phil Knight, today one of the richest men on the planet, who has already invested around a billion dollars in the development of the university and the sports program.
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Another prominent local figure was Steve Prefontaine, who left a significant mark in Oregon during his short life. He was a track star and the darling of the girls, but at just 24 years old, his fateful trip from a party to a rally at Hayward Field happened.
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His life ended in 1975 in a car accident near the campus. The story has become the model for several films, at the fatal bend there is an unconventional monument, to which athletes donate sneakers and jerseys in Prefontaine’s honor.
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The meeting named Prefontaine Classic was, together with the World Junior Championships, the stadium’s biggest event to date, and from Friday, after increasing the capacity to 25,000 spectators, it will also see the most prestigious athletics battles.
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