One of the most inspiring eulogies that I’ve ever come across appears in the movie, “Without Limits”, produced by Tom Cruise, which tells the story of American’s most famous long distance runner, Steve Prefontaine. Trivia has it that Cruise considered playing Prefontaine, but decided against it citing that he was too old for the part.

The movie was introduced to me by Manogaran, who is now CEO, SINDA.

A number of things made the movie remarkable. First, it told the true story of a young country lad who lived in Oregon, who was discovered by and trained by one of the top coaches in the country (Bill Bowerman) to run the long distance race. Prefontaine, at one point, held the American record in every running event, from the 2km to 10km. He came in fourth at the Munich Olympics and was very confident of breaking a record at the Montreal Olympics when he died in a car crash. He was 24. Bowerman, Pre’s mentor, was a remarkable coach who customized his shoes and later marketed Nike as fashionable designer sportswear. Bowerman was cofounder of Nike. In his eulogy at the funeral of Prefontaine, Bowerman had this to say:

(Pre) insisted on holding himself to a higher standard than victory. 'A race is a work of art' is what he said and what he believed and he was out to make it one every step of the way … Those who saw Pre compete or who competed against him were never in doubt how much he wanted to win. But how he won mattered to him more. Pre thought I was a hard case. But he finally got it through my head that the real purpose of running isn't to win a race. It's to test to the limits of the human heart. That he did . . . No one did it more often. No one did it better.

It never fails to draw a lump in my throat each time I play back and watch the last few minutes of the movie which ends at the point where the stadium clock stopped at 12min 36 sec, the time that Pre would have had to clock to win the Montreal race.

Go to www.prefontainerun.com to look at the video of the Munich race.