Interview ­ Kenny Moore

By Michael Musca, Special to MaineToday.com

Copyright © 2001 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.


This article orginally was published in Runner's World and has been published with permission.

For even the casual fan of distance running, Kenny Moore really needs no introduction. A two-time US Olympic marathoner and 4th place finisher in the 1972 Munich Olympic marathon, Kenny was a close friend of the late Steve Prefontaine and co-producer of the film "Without Limits" about the life of Prefontaine. Kenny is now in the midst of writing the biography of another famous Oregonian, his coach Bill Bowerman. Moore lives in Kailua, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, with "the love of my life, Connie Johnston, organic greensgrower and triple gold medalist in the world sprints of outrigger canoe paddling." Moore plans to rent out the Hawaii house and move to Eugene until the Bowerman book is done. We caught up with Kenny just as he returned from a brisk six mile run.

Michael Musca: Numerous young athletes cite your file, "Without Limits" as the film that inspired them to begin running. How does that make you feel?

Kenny Moore: Young athletes often tell me they were inspired by Without Limits. Last week it was a girl who won Oahu's private high school cross-country race as a freshman. Her face can stand for many others. It was so shining with excitement and resolve that I found myself warning her against burnout. There can be no greater testimony to a well-done film. It moves people to be better, shoot higher, and go harder. By making Pre and Bowerman live for posterity, the film became a great relay baton, passed from generation to generation. I cannot be more gratified by that.

MM: You have a cameo role in Without Limits. You play another character at the party where you last saw Pre. How did you feel re-living that that fateful night in the film?

KM: Billy Burke was the actor playing me in the movie. I was just another guy at the party losing Monica Potter's attention to Pre. In fact, you hear me nattering on about knee bones and tendons, because I was imitating the great Eugene orthopedic surgeon, Stan James (the guy who did Joan Benoit's knee those 17 days before the '84 Trials marathon), who was at the original party.

MM: What is the meaning of the film's title - Without Limits? Are you telling your audience - "There are no limits"?

KM: I wouldn't boil it down quite so far as; "There are no limits." There are limits, as Bowerman pounds into Pre's chest outside the tavern. An athlete and his or her coach work from human clay and that clay has physiological limits and psychological limits. The great thing is they're not permanent. Great running doesn't come from some "disembodied act of will," it's what you do when you work patiently to toughen and strengthen the clay we are all given. The greater the coach and runner, the more clearly they see and work within those limits, toward ever better performances. It's compelling because it's so excruciating. The thing in the human spirit that made the Olympics sacred to the ancient Greeks is our astounding drive to suffer in order to overcome. The real reason to run a race is to test the limits of the human heart.

MM: Tell us about your latest work-in-progress, the Bill Bowerman biography. I would imagine it's a labor of love. Were you asked to write the book or did you take on the project of your own volition?

KM: I can't speak to when the book will be done, let alone publisher, quite yet. I'm in the fortunate position of not having to approach (yet) a publisher for an advance to support the research and writing. That gives me complete independence to produce a work up to the standards Bill Bowerman himself urged upon me.

The book project has a far longer history than the movie. Had life worked out as expected, the book would have come first. Bowerman was the central organizing factor of a lot more lives than just Pre's. In 1990, Bill Landers, who worked with Bill at Oregon and was a dear friend, and I were commanded by Bowerman to present ourselves on his deck above the McKenzie. There, we happily swore to collaborate on the book of Bowerman's life and teachings. Landers spent years taping Bill and all his acquaintances. In 1993, I'd started transcribing tapes and roughing out a structure, when, wham, interest in Pre as a screen subject mushroomed and we had dueling Pre movies.

Those are now long behind us. So last year, Bill Landers and I resumed, and I spent the spring and summer in Oregon, getting cramps in my note-taking hand, especially when debriefing the indefatigable Barbara Bowerman. She's magnificent. She speaks in complete paragraphs that could stand unedited in The New Yorker. She's one of many reasons why I'm confident we will have a book of substance and narrative force.

So, yes, the book is a labor of love, but it calls to me on a lot of levels. Bowerman helped start masses of people running by bringing jogging from New Zealand and then helped start Nike to put cushiony shoes on those people's feet. A lot of those people went on from the regeneration of their own bodies to do regeneration of all sorts.

MM: Just recently, your competitor and friend, the 1968 Olympic marathon gold medalist Mamo Wolde, was released from a long prison sentence in his homeland of Ethiopia. (Moore finished 4th to Wolde's 3rd at the 1972 Olympic Games marathon.) You were one of the few Westerners allowed to visit Wolde in 1995, when he was incarcerated. Your article in Sports Illustrated about the prison visit brought widespread attention to Wolde's plight. What subsequent effects did that yours and other's pleas for Wolde's release have upon the Ethiopian government?

KM: In 1974, Ethiopia's Haile Selassie was overthrown and killed by a fanatic, Marxist dictatorship called The Dergue. Wolde then was a captain in the Emperor's palace guard, and we all worried about him. It turned out his gold medal from Mexico saved his life. The Dergue just trotted him out to show dignitaries and let him coach a little. The Dergue made Ethiopia run with blood for 17 years. Death squads killed thousands they deemed disloyal. Then, in 1991, the Dergue was overthrown and the new government rounded up 2,000 officials who'd been responsible for the terror. But this sweep also caught up Mamo Wolde. They threw him into detention in the Central Prison with truly horrible people and let him sit there for three years without charge before I even heard about it.

In 1995, Amnesty International found him there, and got a report out, that they hadn't seen any evidence he's done anything wrong. So through Sports Illustrated's support, and (Kenyan runner) Mike Boit's encouragement and helping me get a visa in Kenya, I went in with a photographer, the crazy brave Antonin Kratochvil, in August of 1995. We had some adventures, but we did get in to see Mamo for about ten minutes, and he remembered me and it was an unforgettable scene. I told him he wasn't forgotten. He said these are the words of God.

I believe he was framed by a murderer trying to save his own skin. Mamo had witnesses to prove that. I poured all I had into a long piece for Sports Illustrated, and a lot happened. Dr. Phil Shinnick, an Olympic athlete ('64 long jump) led the appeals to the UN human rights commission. People wrote to tell the prosecutors that justice delayed is justice denied. The IOC got him a lawyer and delegated Kip Keino and Bill Toomey to go in and appeal for his release before the Atlanta Olympics. NBC producer Kathie Farrell went down and did a powerful piece that they ran during the Atlanta Games. Our Embassy in Addis Ababa sent a doctor to see him a lot. He's got liver and stomach problems and hearing problems.

But Ethiopia ignored them all. In 1999, my friend and Oregon teammate Jere Van Dyk spent over a month in Addis, and got in to see and photograph him, and wrote a long article for The New York Times. He developed a civil relationship with the prosecutor. But what kept happening was every time Wolde would get called to court, his witnesses and attorney would shred the government case. And every time the prosecutor would ask for more time to find new evidence. And so they sent Mamo back to rot some more in jail. It wasn't double jeopardy. It was unlimited jeopardy.

So frankly, I'd lost almost all hope. I just thought Ethiopia was too poor, too proud, and too tribal to ever let Mamo walk free. Then they finally did. I think that tough old marathoner outlasted them. Whatever else any of us did along the way pales before his raw endurance. He accepted a conviction for a lesser charge, was sentenced to six years, and freed because he'd already served nine. I learned of Wolde's release when Kathie Farrell of NBC e-mailed me on Martin Luther King day. So I celebrated with an ecstasy run, on the beach, shouting free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last.

MM: Do you have plans for a sequel to your Best Efforts collection of writings?

KM: I'd love to see to a "sequel" to Best Efforts. I think I really only was hitting my writing stride when that collection of SI running pieces came out in 1982. I did better work in the next 15 years. I'm proud of profiles of Joan Benoit in Freeport and Daley Thompson in San Diego, of Abdi Bile in Somalia before it descended into total chaos, of going with 17-year-old Joseph Kibor for Christmas with his grandmother 11,000 feet up in the Cherangani Hills in Kenya, of keeping the Ramadan fast with Noureddine Morceli in Algeria in l992 and debating the politics of Islam with Hassiba Boulmerka in Paris, and the Wolde story. In 1987, I did a two part retrospective of Tommie Smith, John Carlos and a great many of my black teammates in Mexico City, and in '92 was honored to be picked to profile Arthur Ashe when he was SI Sportsman of the year. But I've taken absolutely no action toward getting a collection published. Tell the world not to bother me until the Bowerman book is done.

MM: How is former University of Oregon college coach Bill Dellinger's health recovery?

KM: Bill Dellinger is amazing. I spent some time with him last year when I was in Eugene, up at his house and down on the track. It was good to be able to take him a page I found in one of Bowerman's notebooks where he listed the greatest thrills in his life, and Dellinger winning the 1954 NCAA mile and starting the great Oregon avalanche was at the top. Dellinger's positivism is inspiring. His mind is as cunning as ever. He has no problem coaching his runners, Mary Slaney included, because his eye is as good as ever, and from what I saw, he was improving in giving voice to it every day.

MM: The higher profile athletes of your era - yourself, Frank Shorter, Jeff Galloway, Amby Burfoot, Phil Knight ­ are major players in today's running industry. Do you still keep in contact with them and other runners from that era?

KM: I am embarrassed at how little I keep in touch with old running friends. Part of it is living in Hawaii, but Frank used to always come out here for Honolulu Marathon week, and we'd collide when we were covering big events like the Olympics, and when I put him and Charlie Jones in a movie every 16 years or so, but now he's running the antidoping agency, and he didn't even come to paddle a kayak this year. Frank Shorter, it won't surprise you to know, had the best balance of anyone I've ever taken out kayak surfing for the first time.

But aside from when Jack Bacheler and I joined Frank at the festivities for the 25th anniversary of his winning in Munich, at The Bolder Boulder in '97, we're terrible at keeping in touch. It's like George Sheehan always said. We're small-boned loners built for flight and fantasy. We don't wish our neighbor ill, but we don't especially wish him well, either. We're happy with one good friend.

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