Happy Anniversary Frank Shorter!

Today marks the 50th Anniversary of Frank Shorter’s win in the marathon at the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, on Sept 10, 1972. The former Gainesville resident, Frank Shorter, is sensible about his accomplishment- the first gold medal in the marathon by an American since 1908 and only the third American to win since the inception of the Olympics in 1896.

“Once I crossed the finish line, the first thought in my mind was ‘I did it right.’ In other words, the strategy had worked. It wasn’t ‘oh, I’ve won and all of this is going to follow.’ It was ‘Ok, that was how I was going to do it, I gave it a try and it worked.’ So that was the satisfaction of meeting that short-term goal and doing everything you could to do it.”

Gainesville or Bust

Shorter, who now resides in Falmouth, MA and will turn 75 on Oct. 31 found his way to Gainesville by a chance meeting.

“When I was at Yale, we competed in the Florida Relays. There, I ran an open two mile and was beaten by a straightaway or half a straight away by Jack Bacheler, who was running for the Florida Track Club,” he recounts. He and Jack warmed down together after the race and spoke a bit. A relationship and familiarity was formed with the reticent Bacheler.

After graduating from Yale, Shorter, did a brief stint at medical school in New Mexico near his family home in Taos, and another week-long stay in El Paso, TX to train with NCAA champion, Kerry Pearce, before he made his way back to Gainesville in 1970. He sought out Bacheler who was an Olympic finalist in the 5,000 meters at the 1968 Olympics. Bacheler qualified for the final, but was stricken with dysentery and was not able to compete.

“Jack was the first person I knew of who was able to train and go to graduate school and be successful,” says Shorter of Bacheler who studied and earned a PhD in Entomology from the University of Florida. “And he was married and had a kid!” he says with a laugh.

Shorter had just married in 1970 to his first wife, Louise, who he had met on a ski trip in Taos. He had always sought out mentors who were better than he was to learn from them. So after speaking with Bacheler, the decision was made to move to Gainesville. He enrolled in the law school sans Louise who was finishing up her undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

“Within six months, Frank who had joined us for our afternoon workout, adapted to the training regimen very quickly,” says Bacheler who now lives in Clayton, NC. Bacheler had been one of the first to do high mileage at a slow pace coupled with high intensity workouts and “tempo runs.”  He reaped success from the training in Gainesville, despite its hot and humid conditions. “At the Drake Relays at the end of April, I told then Adidas shoe representative, Mike Larabee, to watch out for this guy because he was going to be something special. He ran with so much ease barely touching the ground it seemed. On hot, humid days, we would all be dripping with sweat and Frank would be glistening with perspiration.”

Though Bacheler was the reason for his choosing Gainesville, Shorter said UF Head Cross Country and Track Coach Jimmy Carnes was instrumental in helping him find a place to stay his first week and subsequent years in Gainesville while attending school.

“Jimmy was a true southern man who loved running. He wasn’t a good runner, but he loved running,” Shorter says fondly with a laugh. “He gave me a key to the fire exit door of the football locker room so I wouldn’t have to go through the front entrance.  I stayed there for a week or two. One day I remember approaching the door to enter and before I could get the door open, John Reaves [then UF quarterback] came out and hit me with the door. I was bleeding from my nose all over the place. Jimmy helped me find a place after that so I wasn’t there long. He paired me with John Parker who went on to write ‘Once a Runner’ and win three SEC mile championships.” Once a Runner is a cult classic in the running community which fictionalized Parker’s time as a Florida athlete and the characters are based on Bacheler, Shorter and other members of the Florida Track Club. Parker went on to graduate from the college of law and was a speech writer for former Florida Governor, Bob Graham. Parker now lives in High Springs, FL part of the year.

The Florida Track Club

Shorter scheduled his morning workouts carefully around his school schedule. He had a break between classes in the morning and would complete his “morning run” between morning and afternoon classes. Then he’d go from the track back to class arriving a bit late sometimes taking a seat in the back of the class, he says with a chuckle. After his last class ended at 3pm, he would go run his afternoon run with Florida Track Club group led by Bacheler.

The Florida Track Club (FTC) was co-founded by Bacheler and Jimmy Carnes. Carnes had initially formed the precursor of what would be the FTC as a vehicle for his transfer track and field athletes to train before they were eligible to compete at UF. In 1966, Carnes posted an advertisement in Track and Field News encouraging post graduate runners to come to Gainesville and continue their graduate education.  Bacheler was the only athlete to answer the call. He met with Coach Carnes at the '66 NCAA Championships in Bloomington, IN. and moved to Gainesville that fall to begin his MS in entomology. Thus the FTC, initially and primarily as a distance running entity, was born. 

Bacheler raced in a Florida Track Club emblazoned singlet the first few years of competing for the club. Then, he sketched an orange with Florida above it to create the iconic logo and competed with it in subsequent competitions. The “FTC” as it was known was unique and became very competitive in running at the national and international level. Bacheler and Shorter won national cross country, road race and track races helping to make Gainesville a training mecca for some of the top runners in the nation and world.

“You go where there were good people. There was no pretense about it. I enjoyed that. Up here in the northeast, I knew what pretense was. That’s the way we were. I think a lot of us had the same sort of feeling. Marty Liquori and Jack obviously felt that way. We got to meet people like John Parker who was a southern man. He was a southern boy and still is,” Shorter says of the training partners who are friends he still keeps in touch with to this day.  “Byron Dyce, 1968 and ’72 Jamaican Olympian [who still resides in Gainesville] was also part of our group. He could have gone anywhere, but he chose to come to Gainesville. There was a blend of people. We all wanted to be there.”

The Training

Shorter ran upwards of 120 miles per week following the regimen that he kept for some 700+ consecutive days. He wasn’t trying to maintain a streak. He felt that he needed to train consistently at that level to be competitive against the world’s best and also for the recovery component of his training. He and Bacheler believed that the slow running he did on his easy days flushed his legs of the toxins produced on the hard efforts he did during the week. He never ran with a watch on those easy days either, focusing on recovery, not effort.

“It was part of the effort and rest cycle,” says Shorter of his and Bacheler’s training philosophy. “It wasn’t as important me to run as much as I did, but it was important to recover. I knew I had no problem making myself go hard and had no problem getting out there every day because part of my mental set was that if I could feel that I am doing as much or more than anyone else I was competing against, I liked that. That was part of the confidence. And so it wasn’t like running so many days, it was running and training at a certain level and being able to do it at a higher intensity.”

Now one would think the FTC trained together and everyone followed the same training regimen with Bacheler doling out the workouts and Carnes assisting with the coaching duties. For Shorter and most of the group, that wasn’t the case. Shorter’s penchant for coaching himself began early in his career. It was the same for Bacheler, too. In a conversation with Yale Head Track and Field and Cross Country Coach Robert Giegengack years after he ran for Yale, Shorter told his former coach that he had taken the workouts Giegengack had given him and built on that. To which Giegengack replied. ”You’ve been training yourself since your junior year,” Shorter recounts laughing.

Yale teammates, Tony and Carl Ruzicka, sophomores at the time concurred when Shorter brought up the conversation with the twins. They told Shorter they used to wait for him to get off the bus so they knew what the workout would be for the day.

“I felt insecure and anxious about a lot of stuff, but not really that, “said Shorter of his training plan. “In a way, there wasn’t a fear of failure, there was this curiosity about improving because as I said, I used to run before I was on a team, to and from school, because it was stress relief. I loved to do it. I loved being out there. I just enjoyed being out there figuring out what I was to do.”

That running back and forth with his school books were imprinted Shorter’s running technique. His left arm rarely moved when he ran as that was the arm that he would carry his books in those non backpack days. Something similar to what Haile Gebresalise, the famed runner who won the World Championships in the 10,000 meter four times and the Olympic 10,000 meter twice, did with his left arm. Gebresalise is considered one of the greatest runners of all time whose dominance stretched over a 10 year period from 1993-2003.

In Bacheler, Shorter found the mentor he sought. Everything continued to go well with him and the FTC group. It was just what he was looking for.

“That’s why it could work,” says of the relationship with Bacheler and the others. “I didn’t want to tag along with every workout they were doing I just wanted to be around and every once in a while, we could train together. It was more we’d do the easy runs and do the recovery together. And be around each other if we were at the track. If we were each doing a different workout, it didn’t matter. Both Jack and I knew, he was at a point where he knew what was best for him and I was learning what was best for me. It wasn’t about duplicating. The good coaches will tell you, you’ll always go a little better when you are around other people at the track and they don‘t even have to be watching you. The mere fact that they are doing what they are doing and you are doing what you are doing, there is an energy that is there. It’s common effort at a distance. We would run our easy runs together and talk about the hard stuff.”

Shorter and Bacheler fed off the energy the FTC group provided. Bacheler was self-coached and Shorter learned from him. The camaraderie and the training goals were simple; Just get better.

“Jack would do more intervals. If I would do 6, 800s, he would do 8 or 10. And he would run them a little more slowly, but do more. That worked for him. The theory was the same, but the execution was different. I think when you get a certain level, you want to have it that way. I’m never really talked to Jack about it, but I think he would agree that you want feel that you can do certain training and maybe even one workout that you think there aren’t many people around who could do it this way. It doesn’t mean it’s the fastest. It might be the recovery, it might be the number. It’s the particular workout that you like doing it that way and you are getting the most out of yourself.”

And the workouts became mythological. For Shorter, he says smiling, “You never want a good myth go to waste.” He allowed people to believe what they did. Most came from the “Once A Runner” book John L. Parker had written chronicling arduous workouts and mileage of Bruce Denton and Quentin Cassidy. But Shorter reveals a bit of truth to the stories. The mind set was cast and again the goals were simple; do what you were best at and get better at it.

Shorter sets the stage on just what a typical workout goals were.

“In 12 by 400 workouts, the first one, you want to feel rested by 30 yards into the recovery, but you wait until the 100 meter rest is over. By the last one, you want to be 1 yard from starting, before you feel good enough to go. You run that one faster than you’ve run any of the others. If someone comes up after you have done that one, and puts a gun to your head and asks you do to one more, you say ‘shoot me.’ You try to find those workouts that you are good at. You try to become the best you can at that particular one. I think that is what you can develop when you are around runners who are doing the same kind of intense running. And then you socialize on all the easy running.”

At his best, Shorter tells of the amazing recovery he developed after coming to Gainesville.

“I got to the point where if I did 12 repeats of the 400, I would jog 100 meters between each one. At altitude, it was 200m. I could run about the same speed. I got to the point where I could average about 61 or 62,” he says.

As Shorter relates, his mileage build up was gradual and he did not ramp it up in one fell swoop. With the help of Bacheler, it was a gradual, logical progression.

“I found that the faster I got in my intervals and training, the more miles I needed to do to recover. It just didn’t just go up to 120 miles per week. My last year of college, it went up to 60 or 70 miles per week. Then gradually I moved to Florida and started training with Jack. We were both doing about the same mileage. Jack is the one who taught me about recovery. He was the best and taught me what he did to recover. I said ‘that sounds good to me.’”

Shorter and Bacheler toiled with different training methods. One that Shorter struggled to recall because he and Bacheler never really named it was the “tempo run” that so many distance runners use today. They actually developed that style of training through experimentation.

“We would run 20 miles on a Sunday and not time it. We had loops, but we didn’t worry about every Sunday running faster than the previous Sunday. Every once in a while, we would do a lactic threshold run, though we didn’t call it that. We’d be out and if we both felt good, we’d both go harder. And we had a certain loop and we would go harder that day on that loop. I modified that when I was in Boulder, CO after 1972. I had a loop around campus and if in the first 2-3 minutes I could tell I was having a good day, I would do a lactic acid run for 40 minutes. I could measure the success of that run by where I would finish on the bike path. That’s how I would measure my improvement.”

Shorter ponders that idea at great length. He’s had many years to think about and arrives at the reason for high mileage- one that is not intuitive to many- and one that arrived at by coaching himself for all most of his successful years.

“You run more miles the fitter you get. Even when you are starting to get fit. On an easy day, you go out and run four miles. You get to the end, you say, I think I’ll go further. Why do you do that? Over time, I’ll go a little farther increases. I call it sort of an exercise quota. I think coaching myself freed me up to that. I wasn’t being told to run 45 minutes. I would start out thinking I would run 40 minutes. That is one of the indicators that you need to do more to recover. I was pretty good at knowing when to be at my best and really focusing on that. A lot of that involved making myself run more easily and recover more and work on the speed leading up to a race.”

Shorter cites the group setting as also being beneficial in so many other ways. In training and races, he felt an obligation not to let him teammates down. It was the culture of the group.

“Once you get into that group setting, you notice that you start to improve much more quickly than on your own. And the other things that helps you in races is that you can get into a race and your running in a group and especially cross country and you aren’t having a particularly good day. You can tell. But then your teammate who you’ve been training with is five yards up in the pack to the right and they are going pretty well. Then you go, well, Jack’s there and he looks pretty comfortable. I can do this because I run with him. And it’s a teammate thing too. You don’t want to let your teammate down. That’s not only in terms of cross country or in a track meet where you are scoring points. That’s having to do with not wanting to let them down in terms of training together. That includes in training, sharing the lead. You link up and you aren’t feeling that great, but you still share the lead because you do. And some days, it means that Jack and I both get out ahead and Jack may beat me, but we both got out ahead. And not worrying about that.”

The Marathon and the Foretelling of the Olympics

Shorter recalls that the Olympics came into focus early on in his career after watching Billy Mills and Bob Schul. Mills won the 10,000 meters and Bob Schul won the 5,000 meters gold medals at the 1964 Olympic Games when Shorter was a senior at Mount Hermon School in Gill, Massachusetts. He had joined the cross country and track to relieve the academic stress he faced. His efforts earned him entrance into Yale in 1965.

At Yale, his coach was 1964 Olympic Track and Field Head Coach, Robert Giegengack, who would tell stories of the Olympics which Shorter enjoyed.

“I came away from watching the 1964 games realizing that Americans could compete at the world level,” says Shorter. “And that you could come from anywhere. Schul was from Ohio and Mills was from South Dakota. That had an impact on me. I really did think of it in terms of nationalistic terms. The social fabric and geography. There was a spirit there. And Bill Dellinger [another American] was third in the 5,000m and would have won had he kicked a little sooner.”

Shorter’s first try at the marathon came at the 1968 Olympic Trials in Alamosa, CO. He and his brother drove 110 miles from his home in Taos in a pickup truck with a mattress in the back that had a camper on it. They camped out in the Alamosa City Park.

He knew Amby Burfoot at the time and sought him out.  Shorter had met Burfoot as a sophomore at a cross country meet at Yale in 1966. Also in the race were Bill Rodgers, a freshman and Jeff Galloway, a junior. He set out to find Burfoot and went to the office of Buddy Edelen, the marathon record holder who taught psychology at Adams State coincidently. Coach Joe Vigil was becoming one of the great distance coaches and he was there too. It reinforced that idea Shorter saw of the 1964 Games- great people could come from and be anywhere. 

In that visit, Shorter learned that there was no qualifying time and the entry was $3.  “Even I could afford the $3 so I entered the race,” Shorter says laughing.

Shorter had arrived there with shoes that were worn completely through the soles, mid soles and even into his socks- something he always did.  He had never run more than ten miles between his junior and senior year at Yale. Burfoot had a dorm room right near the finish line and Shorter found him there. He borrowed shoes from Burfoot who had won 1968 Boston Marathon. Burfoot, injured, and Shorter ran together for about the first five miles. Kenny Moore was way out in front. George Young was in the back running with Billy Mills, his training mate, who had told George Young that he would be better marathon runner than Mills.  Shorter was in the group with five or six people. Bill Clark who had won the 10,000 meter trials, but finished fifth at the altitude trials, denying him a spot[Shorter says that the rules had stated Clark would qualify based on his win at sea level granting him a bye. However, the rules were changed after the altitude trials leaving Clark off the team] turned to Shorter and said, “Who are you?” says Shorter. His response was “I’m with Amby,” he says laughing.

The shoes Burfoot had given Shorter were size 9.5 and Shorter’s normal shoe size was 10.5. He and Burfoot got to about 16 miles on the three loop course, Shorter had to stop because of the shoes. Burfoot retired because of an injury.  They both stop and waited, when winner, George Young came by, followed by Kenny Moore and Ron Daws who finished second and third to make the ’68 Olympic team. Moore would go on to finish 14th and Young 16th in Mexico City. Burfoot recovered from his injury and went on to set the American Record of 2:14:28.8 in the marathon at Fukuoka on December 8, 1968.

It was a great experience for Shorter. He was invited back for the 50th anniversary of the race in 2018 in Alamosa. It was the last time he saw Kenny Moore healthy and mobile. The shirt given to the “alumni” of that race is one he cherishes. Sadly, Moore passed away on May 4, 2022.

“I wear it all the time,” says Shorter. “ I have it hanging in my closet.”

It was Moore who suggested Shorter try the marathon once again at the 1971 AAU Championships. Moore’s pitch- it was a month before the track championships so Shorter would have time to rest before the AAU Track and Field Championships [Note: There were actually 21 days between the marathon and 6 mile races].

Shorter never contemplated being a marathoner. He was more focused on the 5,000 meter and 10,000 meter distances. He figured that his high mileage gave him a chance of doing well in the marathon. So, he followed Moore’s suggestion and entered the 1971 AAU Championships in Eugene, OR.  “It was a hedge,” he says of his second attempt at the marathon. At that time, athletes had to pay their travel to the National Championships and Shorter didn’t have the financial means to get to Eugene. So, he entered a 5,000 on Saturday, June 5, in Berkeley, California which offered to pay his way. He used the money earned there to fly to Eugene afterwards to compete in the marathon on Sunday, June 6.

In the marathon, Shorter and Moore shared the lead and reached 21 miles together. That’s when Shorter said he was credited for the quote, “Why couldn’t have Pheidippides have died here,” he says with a laugh. “Moore went off and won by two minutes on that day.” A barefoot Steve Prefontaine, one of the top Americans at the time and friend of Shorter’s, was there at the finish cheering them on. The race finished on the famed Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene, OR where a track meet was being held and Prefontaine had competed in before the finish of the marathon. Shorter’s second place finish time was 2:17:44.

“My first thought was, ‘Now I have to do another one,’” says Shorter disheartenly, but laughing at the same time. With his second place finish, he had earned a spot on the American team that would compete in the Pan American Games in Cali, Colombia on August 5, 1971. He was not won over by his success in the marathon. “Anyone who says they like the marathon from 22 miles in, has a head problem,” he says laughing.

He won the Pan American Games 10,000 meters which was six days before the marathon. In the marathon, he ran with the lead group that included Moore, but had to make a pit stop. He caught back up to the leaders to their surprise, and went on to win his first major championship. Moore suffered heat exhaustion and was taken off the course.

The win led to an invitation to the Fukuoka Marathon in Japan whose representatives were present during the Pan American Games. At the time, it was the most prestigious of all marathons- the defacto world championships.

That opportunity gave him a chance to compete against the world’s best. It also gave him a chance to test the strategy who would later use in the marathon in Munich.

“My training was geared to surging and recovering after those surges,” says Shorter. “Akio Usami of Japan was the favorite because he won the year before. Kenny Moore, the American Record Holder with a time of 2:11:35.8, was also in the race. At about 18 miles there was a hair pin turn and I surged. I built a 30 second lead and held it over the last few miles. Usami could not catch me.”

Shorter’s finishing time was a splendid 2:12:50.4 and came a week after winning the 6 mile AAU Cross Country Championships in San Diego, CA in a time of 29:19. Usami finished second in 2:13:22.8. Shorter would go on to win a total of four more titles- the most by any runner in Fukuoka history.

Altitude

When speaking to Shorter and his contemporaries, altitude was a game changer for Shorter’s progression into a nationally competitive runner.

When he was at Yale, his family had moved to Taos, NM from Middleton, NY and Shorter visited the summer between his junior and senior years at Yale. Taos’ elevation was 6,969 feet, and Shorter’s training there resulted in better finishes when he returned to compete for Yale in the fall. He finished 19th at the 1969 NCAA Cross Country Championships and then in the spring went on to win the NCAA title in the 6 mile and finish second in the 3 mile the following day his senior year.

Shorter incorporated the altitude training into his routine. When law school was done in June, we would go to high altitude. He was able to get a place in Vail, CO in the off season- and it truly was an off season in those days. No one was there once the ski lifts stopped running- and train. The training would reach up to 180 miles per week. After that week, Shorter recalls telling Bacheler, “let’s not do that again.”

“I only spent one summer in Gainesville during the summer,” says Shorter of his stints in Vail, CO. “ I trained there in 1972 before the games.”

Shorter took the 1972 spring semester off from college- March-June 1972- to train at altitude in Vail, Colorado with teammates Jeff Galloway and Jack Bacheler.

During that training period in Vail, the three would train at 7,000 feet altitude. On days when they needed to run faster, they drove two hours to Boulder [elevation, 5,318 feet] to do track workouts.

“Boulder was a good height because I could maintain the fast pace I needed to run for 10k,” says Shorter. His fitness was obvious to him. He was able to run the pace he needed to, but with double the recovery time.  He really focused on developing the recovery aspect of his running and altitude training seemed to give him the best results.

“I got good at it. I could go a little longer and a little faster,” says Shorter who noticed that his focus on surging in training was benefitting him in races. “And that kind of surge is not a continuous thing. You do it for a while, then you rest and recover. It’s like an interval. Then you surge again. What you develop is you learn how to recover more quickly at a quicker pace than what other people do.  You’re not trying to surge faster. You are trying to recover faster so that the entire field cannot run that fast for the entire race. Everybody knows that early on in the race, but what happens when this slows down? That was just my feeling. I think I also did it once I had the lead. It wasn’t a constant thing, but it was a tactic that worked. It was affirming the training. I hadn’t thought through this for a long time.”

1972 Olympic Marathon Trials

The goal of the FTC’s Shorter, Bacheler and Galloway was to make the 1972 Olympic Track and Field Team. Shorter and Jeff Galloway, who trained in Tallahassee, but competed for the FTC, made the team in the men’s 10,000 meter at the Olympic Trials in Eugene, OR. Bacheler did not. He was caught by eventual third placer Jon Anderson in the final straightaway and was disqualified in a disputable interference call by the meet referee. Afterwards, a plan was hatched that Galloway would pace Bacheler in the marathon seven days later. The plan worked to perfection as Shorter won the race in 2:15:57.8 and Galloway and Bacheler tied for the third and final Olympic team spot in a time of 2:20.29. Bacheler had earned a spot on the team.

“The memory is how we truly worked together. The goal was to have all of us make the Olympic team. That was the primary goal. You hoped it would be all three. And we never thought any differently. Our performances showed that there was that possibility,” says Shorter. “and we did it.”

Shorter Prepares for the 1972 Olympic Games

Shorter had had success with peaking well for races. He always had knack for it. A lot of it had to do with his mindset and preparation.

“My feeling was always, I truly believed that nothing I did two weeks leading up to the race I wanted to compete in, was going to help me in that race. It might help me further down the road or down the track. It wasn’t going to help me for that race.  I think I developed a way of training within the two weeks before a race that made sure I was rested, but also allowed me to do some shorter, faster workouts that would tell me I was in shape,” he says.

One workout he loved to do was one he learned from Steve Prefontaine and his coach, Bill Dellinger.

“I first did this workout in 1969 with Prefontaine when we first went to Europe to race. Dellinger had given it to him and that was the one I was going to do. It was the Tuesday before the meet he was going to run against the Europeans. I was not because I was the second man on the team and only one person raced. I only did this before a race I felt was important.”

“The Tuesday before a meet, we did this step down workout four or five days before the race. It was mile, ¾, 2 x a half, and 2 x a quarter. You would take double the recovery between the mile and ¾ and between the ¾ and the half and the quarters, so you were sure you were going to run them fast. It wasn’t so much for training, it was more of doing in and out 100s on the track. It was set up so that you would do well. That was the indicator for me.”

Also, Shorter recalls doing another workout that showed his fitness before a 3,000 meter in Olso, Norway, a month from the start of the 1972 Olympic Games.

“In Oslo before I ran 3,000 meters, Coach Giegengack happened to be at the track and timed me. I did 4, 800s. I ran 4, 800s with a short rest and averaged 2:00 flat. We are talking probably 200 meters rest. Giegengack looked at me and said, ‘you are ready!” he recalls. “I said, ‘yeah.’" Again, do something that’s reinforcing, but do something for your speed. You know you are fit, you just want to make sure you stay fast. I knew in a 10,000 meters, I wasn’t going to be the fastest guy in the field, so I had to be able to go hard in the middle. If you think about that particular workout, that is what I aimed to do. In essence it was surging and recovery, surging and recovery. “

At Olso, in one of his best races and one he ran his personal best in the 3,000 meters, Shorter ran 7:51.4 to finish sixth on August 3.  Steve Prefontaine won in a time of 7:44.2. Shorter delightfully recalled the one person he did beat that day. 21 year old New Zealander and eventual 1,500 meter bronze medalist, Rod Dixon, was eighth in a time of 7:52.0.

“He still talks about that,” says Shorter of Dixon with a huge laugh. Of Dixon, he says, “He walked around saying to no one in a particular that ‘I got beat by a bloody marathon runner.’”

Some of Shorter’s fondest memories were of beating milers. Another one he takes great joy in retelling was beating Marty Liquori in Gainesville in an All Comer’s mile race at UF track. Byron Dyce won in 3:58, Barry Brown was second in 3:59 and Shorter ran 4:02. Liquori finished behind him. “I beat him,” he exclaims excitedly.

1972 Munich Olympic Games- 10,000 meters

Once he arrived in Munich, Shorter’s birthplace- his father was stationed there in the Army-Shorter, then 24, turned his focus to the 10,000 meter preliminaries and final competition on August 31 and Sept 3. Shorter’s first Olympics was marred by triumph, tragedy and triumph.

Shorter was confident in his abilities to manage the grueling schedule. Two 10,000 meter races, then rest then the marathon.

“At the Olympic Trials, I was able to run and win the 10,000 meter preliminaries and finals and then come back and win the marathon. I knew I could duplicate that in the Olympics because I had done it in the trials. It wasn’t that I thought I could win, but I thought that I could do it,” he says.

Shorter happened to be paired with Dave Wottle, the baseball cap wearing winner of the 800 meter on September 2, as a roommate. Wottle’s newlywed wife, Jan, was snuck into the Olympic Village using a forged credential Shorter had created for he and others who were promised credentials for significant others by organizers that were never delivered. She stayed in their dorm room like quarters. Shorter slept on the balcony.

“Basically, it was my idea,” recalls Shorter of the forgery. At first he said it was his “rebellious” youth that caused him to do it, but then he changed his tone. “They had promised significant others passes and they didn’t provide them,” he said justifiably. “In the brochure that they gave us, there was a picture of the credential for the Equestrian events. Our significant others went and schmoozed with the photographers who had at Polaroid camera used to take the pictures of the athletes for their credentials. We got those and put them on the credential from the program that we had cut out. They were also in some plastic. The Equestrian credential gave them all access to all the venues at the Olympics. It was the only credential that allowed that. They got to see any Olympic event they wanted for the entire time we were there,” he says satisfactorily.  

“It was a great time,” remembers Shorter when asked what it was like to have his roommate win the gold. “ Once he won, we all celebrated. We were all happy for him. He left his medal right on the dresser. I got to look at it from September 2 to September 10.”

Shorter had success of his own. He set the American Record in the preliminaries of the 10,000 meters in time of 27:58.2 on August 31. Then in the final on September 3, a day after Wottle’s victory, he lowered the record to 27:51.31 for fifth place.

“I was never really in that race. I was just hanging on,” says Shorter who side stepped Finland’s Lasse Viren as he fell to the track right in front of him on the backstretch of the twelfth lap. Viren calmly rose to his feet, caught the leaders and then went on to win the 10,000 meter title in an Olympic Record time of 27:38.5. Afterwards, Shorter felt good about his chances in the marathon final.

“And then I ran under 28 minutes for the prelim and final of the Olympics. I knew no one in the marathon field could run that fast for 10,000 meters. I thought to myself that none of the other marathon runners has run a 4:30 mile in training. I had just run 6 miles at 4:30 a mile. I felt I was better prepared to surge so I would try that. It became part of my schedule. That was my tactic. To surge much earlier than people might expect and see what happened. Because I knew I could recover because I had been running the 10,000 meters that way in the Olympic Trials and in races earlier that spring. Even though Jack and I raced together, we both surged when we ran. We practiced surging together. I did it by myself. It turned out that I was able to do it better than I thought. Once I found out it was working, I figured I’d give it a go in the marathon.”

One thing Shorter didn’t speak of was the fact that he was the only one who was doubling back from the 10,000 meter final. That didn’t faze him then or now. He was steadfast in the thought that he was the fastest 10ker in the field and that’s all he needed to know.

He was also a student of the strategies used in the marathon previously. He noticed something that emboldened him to try his strategy in Munich.

“At that time, everyone would start in a group a la Abebe Bikila. And Bikila would be the last person there and everyone would drop off. It wasn’t that there was no surging. It was a race of attrition in my mind. So I said well, I’m going to do this,” he says. He also wanted to play to his strengths and not allow his weaknesses to be exposed by his competitors.

“At that time, people would say, work on your weaknesses and not your strengths. Fill that gap. My feeling was at a certain level, you work on your strengths. Compete that way. Not be able to hang in there when someone else might do something first that might probe your weakness. Use your strengths before. Because, bottom line, in all those kinds of races, everyone knows who the best finishers are. In the marathon, it’s not that last lap or 200 meters, it who is the best finisher beyond 22 miles. I just didn’t think and I didn’t want to risk or want to find out because I hadn’t run that many marathons that I was on that list. I knew I could surge. I knew I could surge and hang on. I had done that a Fukuoka and won.”

Massacre at the Games

On September 5, tragedy struck. Palestinian terrorist infiltrated the Olympic Village and took nine Israeli athletes hostage and killed two others. Shorter was awakened by the commotion that night some 100 yards from his bunk on the balcony.

“We bore witness to it all from our room,” says Shorter. “Steve Prefontaine was fluent in German and interpreted the TV reports that were coming from a small TV we had in our room. We thought that there would be no competition after that.”

“We saw the helicopters fly over our dorm quarters. We knew something was up. As the helicopter flew off, I turned to my friend and teammate, Kenny Moore and said ‘this isn’t over.’ I had a bad feeling about it.” Later all were killed at the airport in a botched rescue attempt and a memorial was held two days later. There, it was announced that the games would continue with a day delay.

As Shorter left the memorial service, he and Moore discussed the upcoming marathon. Moore decided to honor the Israelis with his participation. Shorter told Moore that he would forget the event, citing that if he thought about it, the terrorist would win. He never thought of it after that day-not during his race or after either. He wanted his thoughts to be his own, not held hostage by the terrorists and their motives and acts.

They kept their training routine despite the added security. Though the gates were locked and soldiers who manned those gates had rifles, Shorter and his teammates would scale the fence and complete their workouts. The soldiers didn’t deter them. They sat there and watched them do it.

1972 Olympic Marathon

Shorter lined up for the marathon only having run four marathons. He was a novice and not favored. Ron Hill of Great Britain and Derek Clayton of Australia had both run under 2 hours and 10 minutes which was two minutes faster than Shorter ran in winning the Fukuoka Marathon for the first time in 2:12:50.4 on December 5, 1971. Though Fukuoka was regarded as the de facto world championships at the time, Shorter went largely unnoticed by the media.

“That was an advantage for me,” says Shorter. “I didn’t have any pressure.”

Shorter decided to surge earlier than he did at Fukuoka. Between the ninth and tenth mile, Shorter ran a 4:33 mile to break away from the field. He was off on his own. Former UF Assistant Track and Field Coach Roy Benson had taken the year off from his duties to coach the Philippines track and field team and was there on the course in Munich for the marathon race. He was part of a Peace Corp coaching program that Benson had seen in an advertisement in Sports Illustrated. Jimmy Carnes granted him the yearlong sabbatical with the caveat that Benson return back to the program after that year. Benson secured a bike and rode along through the throngs of people lining the course to provide updates to Shorter who he knew well.

“Yes, he was key,” recalls Shorter of Benson. “At 15 to 16 miles he let me know I had a minute and 12 second lead. Then he was able to get to the 19- and 20-mile marks and give me another update. I did the math in my head. I was running 5 minute miles and the others would need to run 4:48 to catch me. I knew that no one could do that and I just needed to hang on.”

Benson recalls the events a bit differently and was more humble about his contributions. “I was able to get him some splits and yell to him at about the half way mark that he had a 1 minute and 12 second league. Then I rode like hell to stay with him, but there were so many people on the sidewalks, it made it difficult. I found an overpass and yelled for him again at 39km. He had a big lead so I’m not sure how much it helped. He was getting updates from the American reporters on the press truck.”

Though Shorter knew he had the win in hand, when he entered the stadium for the final lap, he was met with a crescendo of boos and whistles. A German student, Norbert Sudaus, had jumped into the race and arrived some 35 seconds earlier than Shorter. The whistles and boos were for Sudaus after the crowd learned that he was an imposter.

“It bothered others more than it bothered me,” Shorter says. “I knew no one had passed me and I had won.” His victory margin was by more than two minutes and his time, 2:12:19.8, was a personal best time. Karel Lismot of  Belgium was second in 2:14:31.8. Mamo Wolde, the defending Olympic Champion was third in 2:15:08.4. Kenny Moore was fourth and Bacheler ninth in 2:15:39.8 and 2:17:38.2, respectively. It was a great showing for the Americans.

For Shorter the gold ceremony was the first time the victory really sunk in.

“On the victory stand, my first thought and this goes back to Billy Mills and Bob Schul who won gold medals in the 1964 Olympic Games I had watched as a senior at Mount Hermon School, in Gill, MA. It showed the world that Americans could endure. We weren’t just a team of sprinters or field event men. I felt pride there. I did. And then I felt reverence when they wheeled out Abebe Bikila [The Ethiopian who had won the 1960 and 1964 Olympic Marathons] because he was in a wheelchair at the time. For me, that cemented the idea that I was really there. That this was really happening,” he says. “I did have the feeling of ‘where do I go from here?’ Well, what I did was I decided that these type of situations in a way it’s not trauma, but it is certainly a surprise in its way. And I was just going to let this sink in and I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to let things evolve. Again, it wasn’t like I did this and all this is going to happen. It was ‘ok, let’s see where we go from there.’ I think that’s kind of my personality. I get into a situation and I don’t expect something. I can wait and see what happens and then I can get involved in whatever is going on. I never thought before what I was going to do if I won. At that moment it was consistent with who I was.”

After the ceremony, they went to dinner with friends. There were no press conferences or interviews. He and Moore did a training run the next morning. He returned to Middleton, NY for a celebration. He was the cover of Life Magazine and received a lot of media attention, but not the kind you would expect in this day and age. He returned to Gainesville to finish school and begin training again.

“I did what most didn't," says Shorter. “I decided to continue training and not go for the endorsements, sponsorships and retirement route." 

Shorter and his wife moved to Denver, Colorado after he finished law school in 1974. His wife and he swapped places academically.

“She enrolled in graduate school to pursue a library science degree at the University of Denver,” he says. “She had supported me through law school, so it was my turn to support her.”

“I still visit Gainesville,” says Shorter. “The last time I was there in February, I showed my wife, Michelle, around the campus and met with the Florida Track Club members. It was great to see old friends and share memories of my time in Gainesville.”