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.