By Mark Wang
The Prefontaine Classic has had a lot of historic races and great moments in its 44-year history. Saturday’s international mile added two more milestones:
Luke Matthews won the race in 3 minutes, 57.02 seconds, beating Drew Hunter by .27 and running the 400th sub-4 minute mile in the history of the Pre Classic, and Riley Masters ran 3:58.12 seconds, good for sixth place and the 500th sub-4 minute mile in the history of Hayward Field.
In addition to that, 12 of the 13 men in the race went under four minutes.
Matthews said that getting the 400th sub-4 at Hayward Field meant a lot and that he is “living the dream.” This was his fourth race on Hayward Field, and he’s also watched a lot of races there, calling himself a “track nerd.”
He compared the race to the 800 meters at the Commonwealth Games race in Australia in April, where he finished third. In both races, he was in a bit of trouble heading into the last part of the race before he got free on the last straightaway.
Next up, he said, he’s heading to Europe and is still working out what he’ll race there with his coach.
Masters said he was disappointed with his race but his focus is primarily on the 5,000, which he will run at U.S. nationals, June 21-24 at Drake University. He also said that he thought the race went out slow, but that he thought of it as a tune-up race for nationals. He also said that next he will be heading straight back to training to prepare.
While he said it meant something to get that 500th sub-4 mile at Hayward, he would have liked to have won.
