Pat
Porter Chose to be Excellent, Even at Forty Below Zero
By Paul O’Shea
There was no hint that it would be other
than a routine takeoff, at a quiet field in a remote part of Arizona. July 26,
2012 welcomed a lovely morning at Sedona Airport, 78 degrees, sky clear, wind
calm, visibility 10 miles. The pilot had probably done his customary pre-flight
inspection that usually takes about half an hour. He was anxious to get away,
as were his two teenage passengers. The three were on their way home to Albuquerque.
The plane was a Beechcraft Duke, six-seater,
low wing aircraft that had flown less than four thousand hours since it was
built in 1979, a relatively short airframe history, though a forty-year old
airplane is quite common.
Its owner and pilot was fifty-three years
old. He had flown 663 hours, of which
118 were in multi-engine airplanes, but just 62 in the plane registered as
N880LY. He held the necessary pilot
certificate and ratings for single-engine and multi-engine aircraft as well as
for instrument flight. His most recent airman medical certificate was issued
less than two years earlier, without limitations. The pilot’s simulator instructor had said he was
“very attentive during training, knew the airplane well, was very disciplined
and a very good student.”
At about 8:30 a.m. the plane began moving
down the 5,132-foot long runway. A handful of individuals watched its progress,
and there were conflicting reports about how fast the plane was traveling
before the anticipated lift off. What is
certain is that the aircraft never rose from the ground until too late. It may
have nicked the fifty-foot tall airport fence before plunging down into a gully.
A fire quickly consumed the plane and its three occupants died. They were Patrick R. Porter, his 15-year-old
son, Connor and his son’s friend, 14-year-old Connor Mantsch.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which
investigates each civil aviation accident when there are fatalities, determined
there was no conclusive evidence that explained why the airplane did not lift
off the ground or why the pilot did not abort the takeoff before reaching the point
of no return.
Six days before the accident Pat Porter was
named to the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Hall of Fame. It would mark one
of the last honors conferred on the athlete many would say was the finest cross
country runner America ever produced. A YouTube video from the awards ceremony
memorializes his grateful response.
Patrick R. Porter was born in Wadena,
Minnesota and raised in Evergreen,
Colorado. A run-of-the mill high school
runner, with a two-mile time over ten minutes and a mile best of 4:29, there
was some potential, but not Juilliard material.
He ran cross country in his freshman year
spent at Metropolitan State College in Denver.
Then came the decision that shaped a lifetime; he transferred to Adams
State College in Alamosa, Colorado, the NAIA school quickly gaining national
running attention. “We always got beat
by them so terribly, I figured this must the place to learn,” Porter said. As
it would be for so many Grizzly runners, the career-changer was Joe Vigil who
would go on to coach Porter for fourteen years, in college and as a
professional.
When asked about Vigil’s impact on his life,
Porter told the blogger Jack Welch: “I was a typical high school kid and Coach
gave me direction. Coach taught me about
life by stressing so much more than just running. He teaches you to apply the discipline of
running to the rest of your life.”
During his collegiate career Porter won the
l980 and l981 NAIA individual cross country titles, leading Adams State to the
team championship. He was a member of
its 1979 national title team. Then, it
was time to test himself against the nation’s elite runners.
At his national cross country debut in 1981
Porter finished 18th. But for the next decade he was the sine qua
non of American cross country. He won a
record-setting eight consecutive USA Track and Field senior men’s cross country
titles, from the Penn State golf course to the Golden Gate Park polo fields. Among
the world-class runners vanquished in those races were Nick Rose, Ed Eyestone,
Eamonn Coghlan, Alberto Salazar and Craig Virgin.
Porter was a dominant force on grass and
hills. His strategy was basic: run hard early and get a sizeable lead, then
pull away decisively when pursuers closed the gap. For these eight races
Porter’s margin of victory averaged eleven seconds; no one came closer than
three seconds. It ended in l990 when Bob Kempainen scored a twelve-second win
over the Coloradoan.
Track
and Field News recently published a retrospective of
that winning streak, apologizing for misspelling his name in early issues of
the magazine. “Everybody always gets my name wrong—especially Track and Field News. They usually call
me Parker or Potter. Maybe they’ll get
it right now,” he responded.
Not only was he the nation’s leading
harrier, but he also had success on the roads, though he shunned running for
money. In one of his few road races he recorded a world record ten thousand of
27:31.8.
There was success on the track, as well. Porter
was a two-time Olympian at ten thousand meters, placing 15th at Los
Angeles with 28:34.59. His track PR was 27:46. At Canberra, Australia in l985
he lost the World Cup track ten thousand by six-hundredths of a second to
Wodajo Bulti of Ethiopia.
But it was on grass and hills that he was
most comfortable, most successful (one early coach called him The King of
Cross). Pat Melgares, in his new biography of Joe Vigil, Chasing Excellence, writes that Porter was “perhaps the greatest
cross country runner this country has ever seen.”
He performed well at what many have called
the most competitive race in the running world, the World Cross Country championship.
In l984 he finished fourth, and ultimately helped Team USA win three team
medals. From l982 to l989 he finished
twelfth or better five times.
Kenny Moore, the world class runner who
finished fourth in the l972 Olympic marathon and wrote lyrical prose for Sports Illustrated, profiled Porter in
the magazine. Of Porter he said: “He does not seek the relative ease of
tactical victory, of merely outsprinting a weaker man. He displays the full
extent of his superiority. ‘As nice a guy
as he may be the rest of the time,’ says former Athletics West teammate, Sue
Addison, ‘in a race, well…he changes.’”
In 2016, on the fourth anniversary of
Porter’s premature death, Andrew Boyd Hutchinson, (The Complete History of Cross-Country Running) called him “cross
country’s forgotten hero.”
“Porter wasn’t a headline grabber,”
Hutchinson wrote. “His shy and
cloistered life away from the spotlight bellied his fiercely competitive
behavior on race day. And it was in
cross country running, a sport that was often appreciated but never celebrated,
where Porter made his biggest impression.
(“I like cross country. Most guys
hate it,” he’d later say).
Porter’s domination was helped by a
graceful cadence, said Craig Virgin.
“His stride was longer than normal and he was real springy. If we ran in the snow or sand, he probably
had 12 or 14 more inches to his stride than I did. And he floated. He was real light, real thin, real wiry, and
just seemed to float through the mud when we got to those European courses.”
Kenny Moore agreed. “But it is over rough,
hilly, sloppy courses that his stride and wind and nature move him far out in
the lead.”
Porter was also renowned for his dedication
to training miles, even in Antarctic conditions. He tells Moore that it never
gets so cold that he can’t train. “If it’s 40 below, it’s too cold for the wind
to blow. You throw on a layer of polypropylene,
some sweats and a windbreaker, and go on out.”
Training for one of his USA national races he ran seven times a mile in
4:16 on grass, with a three-minute recovery, at 23 below zero. The terrain lay
at an anaerobic seven thousand five hundred feet.
He tells Jack Welch: “The ‘secret’ is just
hard work. That’s the secret with most
things. I remember when I first started
running 100 miles, I thought I would die. When I cut back from 120-130, a 100
seems like a holiday.”
Porter married U.S. Olympian Trish King, a
member of the l988 team who competed in the high jump and was also a
heptathlete. They were married for twenty years. After retiring from the
running world, he was a new homes salesman in Albuquerque.
In 1998 there was one final homage for
Porter. He played four-time Olympic gold medalist Lasse Viren in “Without Limits,” the well-received film
biography of Steve Prefontaine. The
script was co-written by Kenny Moore.
A few weeks after the tragic accident at
the Arizona airfield, a celebration of the lives of Pat Porter and his son,
Connor took place at Calvary of Albuquerque church. Hundreds of neighbors,
former athletes, coaches and family members attended. Joe Vigil told the guests:
“We have many choices in life. He chose to be a runner, and he chose to be
excellent. He was one of the greatest
distance runners of the past 50 years.”
Trish Porter’s last text message to Pat
was, “When are you coming home?”
Paul
O’Shea is a lifelong participant in the track and
field world, as competitor, coach and journalist. After retirement from a
career in corporate communications, he coached a girls’ cross country team and
was a long-time contributor to Cross
Country Journal. He now writes for
Once Upon a Time in the Vest from his
home in northern Virginia, and can be reached at Poshea17@aol.com.
George:
I really appreciate the article. One of my great joys I life is that I call Joe Vigil my friend. WE were both NAIA coaches when I got to know him. I had a pretty good runner at Hillsdale, named Gordon Sanders.
He was 3 time runner up at national championships to Pat Porter. His sophomore year, he was 2nd to Pat in both the 10,000 and the 5000 run in Abilene, TX. Joe and I were NAIA representatives to the TAC convention representing the NAIA. He also got me involved with the TAC/USATF Coaches Education program in 1984. He was one of the original developers of the program and wrote the distance curriculum for Level 2.
We both were instructors and I was put on the sprint committee with Gary Winckler, Loren Seagrave, Victor Lopez, and Vern Gambetta. Pat was truly a fine young man and Joe’s physiology background added to his
Understanding of training. He also had the advantage of altitude and mountain training to strengthen his athletes. Plus many who came to him had incredible potential.
The loss of Pat to the terrible plane accident is so similar to the story of Kobe Bryant. Unfortunately, runners don’t quite get the national attention of NBA players. However, Pat was certainly as talented in his sport
As Bryant was in basketball.
All the best.
Joe Rogers
ed. Joe coached at Hillsdale College, Ball State University, US Military Academy ret'd.
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