Pat Porter: 1959-2012

 In 1984 the U.S. Cross Country Championships were held at Franklin Park in Boston. Several runners from my club were volunteers, helping to set up and then monitor parts of the course. There are two things I remember clearly about that day: before the races, everyone was talking about Saturday's football game and how BC's Doug Flutie had beaten Miami with a Hail Mary pass as time ran out. After the races, everyone was talking about the dominant running of Pat Porter.

Yesterday I read the sad news that Porter, along with two others, had been killed when their small plane crashed shortly after taking off from an airport in Sedona, Arizona. Porter was 53.
 
Pat Porter was one of the most impressive cross-country runners I have ever seen. The normal challenges of maintaining pace over rugged terrain didn't seem to apply to him. He was tall and thin, with immensely powerful strides that created the illusion of barely touching the ground.

Porter was known as one of the toughest competitors in U.S. distance running history. He attended attended Div II Adams State in Alamosa, Colorado, where he trained with Coach Joe Vigil. He graduated in 1982 and in the fall of that year, won the first of what would be eight consecutive U.S. cross-country championships.

At the World Cross Country Championships, Porter finished in the top ten five separate times, including a 4th place in 1984.

Porter made two Olympic teams (1984 and 1988), but his most memorable "Olympic" experience might well have been playing the great Finnish runner Lasse Viren in the film "Without Limits." The film depicts the final of the 5000m at the 1972 Munich Olympics, where Viren (Porter) outkicks Steve Prefontaine (Billy Crudup) and the rest of the field to win the Gold Medal. As I watched the clip below, it seemed to me that Porter's most difficult acting challenge was not making that winning kick look too easy.

Jampol on the 10 Most Memorable Moments in (Recent) Olympic History

NNHS alum and featured columnist Noah Jampol does a fantastic job giving us his Most Memorable Moments in Olympic History on Bleacher Report this week.

From Michael Johnson's WR in the 200m at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta to Derek Redmond's heartbreaking completion of his 400 semi-final on a shredded hamstring in the 1992 Games, Noah captures the drama and the lasting impact of these indelible moments.

Among these stories, none dates from before 1968, but that's not a criticism. There are too many stories to tell, and it must have been hard to pick only ten from the last 44 years.

We'll have to wait to read Noah's retelling of how barefooted Abebe Bikila outran the world's best marathoners through the streets of Rome in 1960, how Billy Mills pulled the upset of the century in the Tokyo 10,000m, and how Jesse Owens demolished the myth of Aryan supremacy in Berlin in 1936. 

We'll try to be patient.

Hope as Big as the Sea

Ruben Sanca winning the 2011 New Bedford Half-Marathon

I've made no secret of the fact that I have -- shall we say -- a strained relationship with media coverage of the Olympics. As the vast machine kicks into full gear, and as the official sponsors begin their relentless assault on my weak and impressionable mind, I adopt a defense of  mocking cynicism. Mindful of past Olympiads and remembering how I was manipulated into watching hours and hours of commercials to see a few seconds of over-promoted action at the end of an otherwise forgettable broadcast, I adopt an attitude of casual apathy. Sure, I'll follow the Olympics -- if I have nothing better to do.

But I also know that deep down, hidden away where the advertising executives can't get at it, there's some small part of me that wants to believe that the Olympics is more than a media mega-event and money-making machine. That part of me says, "If the Olympics are to stand for something, let them stand for the ideal of human aspiration -- the idea that striving with others against one's own limitations is more important than conquering." It's a principle always in danger of being lost in the inevitable sea of money and hype as well-known, well-supported athletes representing their shoe companies as well as their countries "go for the gold."

So I was delighted to hear Bill Littlefield's Only a Game profile of Ruben Sanca, who will be representing Cape Verde in the 5000 meters at the London Olympics. Even for those of us who have admired Ruben since his high school days at John D. O'Bryant school in Boston, and followed him as he became an All-American distance runner at UMass Lowell and, after graduation, one of the top road runners in New England, hearing his story is an antidote to any cynicism about the value of the Olympics.

http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2012/07/14/ruben-sanca
 
As reported in Littlefield's story,

"Sanca, now 25, moved from Cape Verde to Massachusetts when he was 12. He has dual citizenship, but when returned to Cape Verde to compete in the 5000 meters at the national championships, his welcome was muted. "Several of my friends from home had forgotten about me, because they never thought of [me] as a runner," Sanca said. "I was born with asthma, and the first few years of my life was a hardship for my family because I was in and out of the hospital at all times, and I was sort of known as the weak child of the family, so after I came to the U.S. and went back home and won a national championship there, people were very surprised."

Now Sanca is an Olympian. He has a 5000m PR of 13:56.46 (indoors). He holds eight Cape Verde national records at various distances. He says he is running to inspire the next generation of Cape Verdeans to dream bigger, and to follow where he has led. Does he stand a chance against the best in the world? It's not the right question. The right question is does he belong in the Olympic stadium on the starting line with The Kenyans, Ethiopians, Rupp, Farah, and all the rest? Without a doubt.

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the winners at the Olympics, some of them heavy favorites who earn their gold medal with a demonstration of their athletic superiority and some long shots, who give the performance of their lives at exactly the right time. Watching the best athletes in the world is almost always thrilling. But for me, one of the best things about the games is cheering for the athletes who have little to no chance of a medal, or indeed, of making it to the finals. They are often the ones with the more interesting and inspirational journeys, the ones who represent -- and engender -- a hope that shines with or without a medal.