A SIDEWAYS GLANCE : FORMER CULT FIGURE `PRE' ON GIANT SCREEN.

The legend of distance runner Steve Prefontaine is big enough for two movies and that's how many are coming.

Twenty-two years after the death of the maverick Olympian with the shaggy golden hair and the only suntan in Eugene, Ore., Disney's Hollywood Pictures will release ``Prefontaine'' on January 24, followed later this year by ``Pre,'' produced by Tom Cruise for Warner Bros.

Two features, on top of an existing documentary, might seem excessive for a three-miler who is now little-remembered, but Prefontaine was an American original whose life story rivals James Dean's.

Dean was an actor who looked great playing other people, then crashed his silver Porsche and died at age 24, on Sept. 30, 1955. Prefontaine was a swashbuckler who starred in his own movie every day and looked great doing it right up until the night he flipped his gold MG and died at age 24, on May 30, 1975. Tests revealed that he had been legally drunk.

Prefontaine had just been named ``the most popular track athlete in the world'' by Track & Field News. Hours before his death, he had won an international race at Hayward Field, his home stadium at the University of Oregon, with fans chanting, ``Go, Pre.'' He next appeared as a corpse in a black hearse that slowly circled Hayward Field while mourners in the stands chanted, ``Go, Pre.''

``They cheered a ghost going around the track,'' said ``Prefontaine'' writer and director Steve James. ``This is one of those stories that's hard to believe unless you know it to be true.''