STANFORD — A direct line can be traced from the golden age of quarter-miling in the late 1960s and early 1970s to Michael Norman, the Southern California-raised wunderkind, who at 21 could be ready to launch his own record-shattering era, starting with the Prefontaine Classic on Sunday.
Norman continues to train under Quincy Watts and Caryl Smith Gilbert, his coaches at USC for two seasons before he turned pro last summer. Watts, the 1992 Olympic 400-meter champion, was coached at USC by the late Jim Bush, the greatest quarter-mile coach in history, and later by John Smith, who eclipsed Lee Evans, the 1968 Olympic gold medalist and owner of the world record for 20 years, as the planet’s premier quarter-miler in the early 1970s.
Yet while Watts often waxes philosophical during training sessions on the USC campus, his words of wisdom do not come with history lessons. The subject of the 400-meter world record never comes up.
“Not. At. All,” Norman said laughing Saturday afternoon. “Not at all, seriously, I think our mentality is more of really focusing on training and perfecting our race and becoming the best Michael Norman you can be as opposed to chasing history.”
Norman and his coaches, however, are just about the only people in the sport who haven’t been talking about his pursuit of the 400 world record in the weeks leading up to the 44th edition of America’s premier track and field meet.
“He’s going to be the first man under 43 (seconds),” said Ato Boldon, a four-time Olympic medalist and now an NBC analyst.
“He’s 21,” Boldon continued, laughing. “He’s 21! He can take it a lot faster than we’ve ever seen it, that’s for sure.”
Wayde van Niekerk’s 400 world record of 43.03 seconds, set by the South African at the 2016 Olympic Games, won’t be the only world record on the endangered list Sunday at Cobb Track and Angell Field on the Stanford campus.
The meet hotel was buzzing Saturday with talk of the prospect of three world records falling Sunday: the 400, Kevin Young’s nearly 27-year-old 400 hurdles mark of 46.78 seconds and the shot put record of 75-feet, 10 ¼ inches, set by Randy Barnes in 1990.
The decision to move the Diamond League meet from Eugene, Ore., the self-proclaimed Tracktown USA, was necessitated by Nike co-founder and University of Oregon uber booster Phil Knight’s controversial decision to level historic Hayward Field, the most storied venue in American track history, and replace it with a $195-million venue. Other venues, like UCLA’s Drake Stadium, would have made more sense for a sport desperate to raise its national profile. Imagine the world’s best non-Olympic or World championships track meet in the nation’s second-largest market.
Instead, the meet landed on the campus where Knight created the framework of what would become Nike while working on an MBA at Stanford in the early 1960s. Yet if Sunday’s locale was driven by necessity and corporate concerns in Beaverton, Stanford also holds a link the legacy of legendary runner Steve Prefontaine, who owned six American records between 2,000 and 10,000 meters when he was killed in car accident in 1975.
Nearly 50 years ago, Prefontaine, a cocky Oregon freshman out of the blue-collar lumber mill and fishing town of Coos Bay on the Oregon Coast, pronounced himself ready to take on the world at the 1969 Pacific-8 Conference cross country meet. In what Track & Field News editor Garry Hill once called the “greatest footrace” he’s ever seen, Prefontaine opened with a blistering 4:18 mile and then traded surges with Washington State’s Gerry Lindgren, a world record-holder and 11-time NCAA champion, like prize fighters over the 6-mile race on the hilly Stanford Golf Course.
Prefontaine’s take-no-prisoners running style was evident in the final meters, the pair leaning into each other at the finish line, literally running shoulder-to-shoulder, elbow-to-elbow, dead even to the end. While officials eventually ruled Lindgren the winner by the slimmest of margins, Prefontaine had made his point and put the world on notice.
Norman shares none of Prefontaine’s braggadocio, but the Oregonian would appreciate the sprinter’s fearlessness and quiet belief he is about to take his event into new territory.
“Of course we have goals of wanting to do special things, things that have never been done,” Norman said.
In recent months there as been a sense within track that it’s not a matter of if Norman breaks van Niekerk’s world record but when, a sense of inevitability fueled by Norman’s 43.61 clocking at the Mt. SAC Relays in Torrance in April. The mark made Norman the fourth-fastest man in history in the 400, equaling 2004 Olympic champion Jeremy Wariner. Norman’s mark was also the sixth-fastest in history. Only van Niekerk and Michael Johnson have run faster.
“Absolutely,” Boldon said when asked if Norman will break the world record this season.” No doubt about it.”
Norman followed up the Mt. SAC race by with a 19.70 world-leading 200 victory over rival Noah Lyles at Rome’s Golden Gala meet earlier this month.
Right behind Norman at Mt. SAC in 44.31 was Rai Benjamin, his former Trojans teammate. The clocking did nothing to discourage the growing belief that Benjamin is capable of taking down Young’s world record.
Benjamin, also 21, equaled two-time Olympic champion Edwin Moses as the second-fastest man ever the 400 hurdles with his 47.02 victory at last year’s NCAA Championships. It was the world’s fastest time since Young’s record-shattering victory in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona and only the second clocking under 47.25 this century, the first since 2005. (Qatar’s Abderrahan Samba ran 46.98 later in 2018.)
Ryan Crouser, the Olympic shot put champion, isn’t shy about aiming at Barnes’ world record. Crouser unloaded a 74-4 ¼ foot throw in Long Beach in April, moving to sixth on the all-time list. Other than Barnes, the four marks ahead of Crouser were produced in the 1970s and 80s, when drug testing was not as stringent as it is currently. .
“I think it’s definitely realistic now,” Crouser said. “I feel like I any time I go out to throw there’s a potential to throw that 23.12 (meters, Barnes’ world record). It’s not a guarantee, but I know I can do it at this point, so now it’s just a matter of getting out of my own way and letting it happen.”
Crouser’s presence has created some issues for meet organizers. Concerned that the stadium’s shot put area was potentially too small for Crouser’s abilities, Stanford recently expanded the event’s competition area to accommodate a 25-meter (82-foot) throw.
“I think that should be safe,” Crouser said, laughing.