This is almost more interesting to me than the Salazar ban. I was running in high school during Mary Cain's reign and I'm pretty sure we were at some of the same meets. Every month for the past 4 years one of my runner friends will always ask, "What's up with Mary Cain recently?".

That said though, this really seems like more of a Nike problem than a sports problem. Obviously this situation is extreme and f***ed up, but anyone in any sport vying for an olympic medal is going to be making some kind of sacrifice for the bodies. Nike just takes it way too far. I haven't heard similar allegations from any of the other elite teams even after the Salazar ban, which is when you'd expect anyone wronged to feel empowered to come out against their own programs.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

I feel like this is a tough one, for sure it is terrible that she wasn't taken seriously when she started having negative thoughts and even cutting herself, but the weight issue seems like it is quite universal, and it obviously works. Look at Hasan who has lost a lot of weight after joining NOP and Koko who is also crazy skinny. Bekele reportedly ate 2kkcal/day in his marathon build in order to lose weight, and Jager also eats very small amounts every day. That is just how you have to live if you want to be the best, and sure a lot of people aren't going to handle that and their bodies will break down instead, but those who make it will end up faster.

With that said, I think it is crazy and awful what she went through at such a young age and wonder where her parents were and why none of the other teammates did anything to try and help.

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

i don't know that there's any strong evidence that amenorrea is a good thing in female distance runners. in mary's case it's obviously not. i always felt that this was more an alarm bell than a good sign.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

or osteoporosis.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

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No, neither do I, and no where in my post did I indicate that amenorrea was a good thing.
Just shooting from the hip here, but could be that certain athletes like Koko and Hasan can handle being low 15.x BMI without getting amenorrea, while others can't and maybe should be around 17 for their optimal performance.

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

Cut and paste article here? Requiring subscription..

The article is actually short and mostly fluff. The video is the primary story.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

If you watched the video even a bit closely, you'd notice that she is addressing the very issue that weight and performance ARE of course linked. But her point is that Nike oversaw her HEALTH via a bunch of male coaches who were Salazar fans. No nutritionist, and certainly no-one commenting on the women's health implications of the over-the-top advice of the male coaches.

This distinction is worth noting, not collapsing into a "but losing weight works" argument.

i'm just going to make an uneducated guess that you have a "weight meter" to guide you and it's not the scale, it's your cycle. lose your cycle, you're too light. but i'm not the expert. unfortunately, based simply on mary's video, i would've been the most "expert" person on that subject who was part of the nike project team, and i'm no expert! also, i'm going to hazard a guess that when your athlete starts cutting herself that's also a gauge that should tell you something about your athlete and perhaps your program.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Not just that, but things like daily mood self-assessments. Those start to crater, you have a problem. Because if you're not reasonably happy, you're not fast.

And of course performance itself. If you lose weight and go slower, that's an indication of something. And Mary was going slower.

Agreed.

This is certainly an illuminating element and opens up dialogue for a completely different discussion beyond Salazar's ban. However, the sad truth is that you don't need to make it to the elite status of ONP to find this happening. Just find your nearest division 1 university or big time high school programs, and I guarantee it's commonly happening there as well. As a collegiate athlete myself, I saw many friends who were women going through the same struggles. Random protocols, serious red flags being ignored, questions not being answered, "Here. Take this and go home and rest."-type attitude.

Many parents of student-athletes drop their kids off at college of these reputable universities thinking they are being taken care of, but many times, the university sees them as a disposable asset. (i.e., Let's bring in 20 freshman and train them into the ground. If 2 or 3 them make it and become studs, it's a success and we'll just bring in 20 more freshman next year.)

Can't speak for her parents because I know zero information about them, but I would imagine any parents would at least marginally assume being a part of something like ONP, one would have the best resources of everything including medical, nutritionists, athletic trainers, etc.

Damning.
Damaging.
Heartbreaking.
Her story could be the tip of the iceberg. History shows us the horror inflicted upon young athletes (ice hockey, gymnastics, swimming, volleyball...to name a few) and how NGBs and other organizations are slow to act. I hope the USOPC & USA Track & Field take notice.

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#swimmingmatters
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
The Doctor (#12)

Also, I heard similar stories about triathlon coaches pressuring female athletes about weight.

this is the point of the story for me, seems like it explains a lot about how children and especially girls end up abused and exploited:

“America loves a good child prodigy story, and business is ready and waiting to exploit that story, especially when it comes to girls,” said Lauren Fleshman, who ran for Nike until 2012. “When you have these kinds of good girls, girls who are good at following directions to the point of excelling, you’ll find a system that’s happy to take them. And it’s rife with abuse.”

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"one eye doubles my eyesight, so things don't look half bad" John Hiatt

seems like more of a Nike problem than a sports problem

——

No. Exhibit A: follow Lauren Fleshman on twitter. She speaks and writes about this often far before her Nike sponsorship. Mario Frioli speaks about it as a male athlete. I have friends obsess about in bike racing...at a masters level!

To say a Nike problem minimizes the issue. Its a huge issue. Weight as a driver of performance has breaking points. RED-S a big one. Eating disorders...etc...this is a Nike issue, but also a sporting issue of much larger scale.

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@rhyspencer

I've found myself thinking about this a lot in recent years and have actually been pleasantly surprised by the wave of fertility among current/former professional female triathletes. We certainly don't know the backstory behind each pregnancy. For ex: whether the pregnancy was planned (many top athletes shun hormonal birth control or BC completely) or how long they were attempting to conceive, but in general it suggests that these women are overwhelmingly healthy enough to maintain normal-ish menstrual cycles and fertility. That means that while they are toeing a fine line of pushing themselves to the edge of their physical limits, respect is also being paid to issues of nutrition, body composition and overall well-being.

Totally agree here. At the start of my tri career all I heard/read about was losing weight to raise watts/kg and to make you run faster. I had an eating disorder. Not close to as serious as many but if I had a bad meal or a bad eating day I would beat myself up. I ONLY ate salads when we went out. I obsessed about my weight and it was not healthy. And 6 years or so later I don't weigh myself often and kind of eat what I want when I want. And the great part is I am about the same weight as when I was logging all of my food but I feel a lot better mentally and never beat myself up.

I could not imagine being in her situation or having my daughter be in that situation. Weight and women is a societal issue and becomes even more heightened when athletics become involved.

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Twitter - Instagram

 


Here you go:


https://www.letsrun.com/...nd-endorsed-by-nike/



.

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Once, I was fast. But I got over it.

Well Cain didn't drop out of High School. She graduated from Bronxville High School and then moved to Portland to train full time and attended University of Portland. During her Freshman year at Portland she dropped out to "focus on running".

Although many sports coaches can be "predatory" in individual sport, htf did her parents think sending their 17 yr old to a professional environment with no support system was even a good idea? Human brains continue to develop until we're about 25 for most of the population. Mary Cain is 23. She got robbed of an NCAA running experience because a lot of people around her that were supposed to protect her failed. Is that because her salary at Nike was huge?

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Strongly disagree that this is a Nike problem... they are one of the more severe offenders here, but this is rampant in distance running... I remember seeing a t-shirt at a collegiate meet back in the early 2000s on a hammer thrower warming up stating "I'd rather throw and eat, than run and chuck...", hinting at the pressure that many collegiate coaches put on their athletes to be as thin as possible and to win at all costs. I was lucky that I raced for a school where we never had those pressures (it's far worse in women's track/XC, but you see it in men's running as well, the obsession with thinness, because that's what the kenyans look like), and we focused on developing to our potential while being healthy. I didn't realize how rare that was at the time (although we did have a few transfers on our team that had run with other programs before and had to red-shirt a season or two to recover from the damage they had done to their bodies at their previous schools, from coaches with that mentality).

I suspect with her stepping forward around this, we might start to see more athletes come forward as well, and can hopefully start a dialogue than can start to shift things in this regard... Ammenorhea is not a positive thing for female athletes, and certainly not osteoporosis (and I suspect this would highly correlate with the incidence of stress fractures in young runners...). There's a difference between being lean and strong, and just being skinny, but it's a fine line for an athlete to find, especially with social and coaching pressures around this (a classic example of this mentality in coaches was the famous quote "a distance runner should look like a skeleton with a condom stretched over top", which I believe was said by Mark Wetmore).

htf did her parents think sending their 17 yr old to a professional environment with no support system was even a good idea?
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Probably the same thought philosophy that is used by thousands of parents annually who send their kids away at the age of 17/18 to go to college and participate in sports programs.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

The support systems in NCAA athletics at the power 5 level are immense. There's Sports Psychs, Docs, Nutritionists, Strength Coaches, teammates, professors...the Oregon Project? Salazar and his goons.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I am a dietitian in collegiate sports and a graduate researcher focused on RED-S. This is absolutely not just a Nike problem or just a running problem.

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http://www.extramilenutrition.com

Eff that. If I'd been offered a spot at NOP out of high school there's nothing my parents could have done to stop me.

Quote:

Is that because her salary at Nike was huge?

Win the Olympics, dude.

For what? $1 $2 $100k?

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Winning the Olympics is more about being the very best at something. Which is what many people strive for.

Winning the Olympics would be great. But you're still not answering the question. How much? $1 $2 How much to give up a full ride at a top running school. It needs to be something otherwise this isn't a rational conversation.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

may i rephrase? because i phrased it badly. she dropped out of HS sports. i always think this is a mistake, in running. whether you're mary cain or alan webb or anyone else, there's plenty of time to become a great runner. becoming a pro while you're still in HS - which as i recall is basically what mary did - katelyn tuohy is the counterpoint to that, and i suspect if mary was to talk about her career path she'd endorse the katelyn tuohy approach. and so would mary's parents (in retrospect).

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

It's just an awful, awful story. I'm glad she's speaking out.

How insane is it that they didn't have a certified nutritionist on staff? No sports psychologist? You're talking about the "top" running team in the world and it really was just Salazar and some coaches just trying shit (like illegal drugs on coaches, staff, his son).

Interesting twitter posts from Steve Magness (former NOP coach and whistleblower):

In 2011-2012, I witnessed many instances that confirm @runmarycain and @yoderbegley's accounts. It was the norm. It was part of the culture. It was abhorrent.


Change doesn't occur unless it comes to light, here are some of those instances:


In 2012, I sat in a boardroom with Alberto Salazar and the team sports psychologist, Darren Treasure. We were discussing the performance of an athlete who had just run at a world championship. She’d performed well for herself, beating athletes with much faster personal bests.


That didn’t matter to Salazar. “Her butt is so big, she can barely lift her knees,” was the comment that stung. I countered by showing him the athlete's body fat testing results that we’d had done in a performance lab shortly before.


It stated 12.4% body fat, about the lowest she could get while still maintaining her health. “I don’t care what the science says! I know what I see! Her butt is too big!” I refused to tell the athlete to lose weight.


It was getting heated. Darren stepped in and said “Maybe, instead we provide a model. Someone to look to and emulate. How about Jenny Simpson.”


Salazar responded. “No. Not Simpson. You know why she's not fast right now? Her butt is big too! She's way too soft and pudgy.” This was in 2012. Simpson was already a world champion.



There were other instances.
-Comments about using thyroid meds to speed up metabolism
-Comments to runners about their weight/size of body parts during/after workouts.
-Encouragement to leave meals hungry and admonishing athletes for eating things like a burger.



The point is. It was part of the culture. As I listened to Mary Cain speak, it all resonated.


Salazar was obsessed with weight. He'd 'joke' about using liposuction or removing your appendix for weight loss. He'd try to get athletes to take shady diet supplements.


I've witnessed the harm and damage that such a culture creates. It's lasting mental health issues.


That's the issue.
The culture made it where crazy was normal. Where people justified all sorts of crazy shit with mental gymnastics. They rationalized it.


I encourage all of those who witnessed or were part of this, to speak up. We all stood by at points in time. We were all blinded by the "cult", where secrecy and us against everyone else mindsets were used to manipulate us all.


But, change only happens if we speak out.


And it's time for the group "formerly known as NOP" takes a hard look at themselves. They have some difficult choices to make. It's hard to leave a cult, but what kind of sport do you want in the future? The one Cain experienced or a better one?


I get it. It's hard to walk away from $. To get your mind out of the craziness & to see clearly.


Some of you I warned about this & other stuff, and you still chose to join. I don't fault you. But the fog is clearing. See what Mary, Amy, Kara, and others are saying. That's real.

It’s very much a sports problem. I can name 3 coaches in my area that I’ve heard similar stories from parents and athletes.

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Mark Saroni
____________________________________________________________
COACHING | TRAINING PLANS
MS Kinesiology | USAT LII | USAC L3

When you look at BTC vs NOP...I can see which one is run professionally.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Completely willing to admit its more than just a Nike problem. But the NOP project is clearly an extreme. If a high school coach ignores someone who says they're cutting themselves, I would hope they end up with some serious legal problems. It is admittedly different when you're dealing with mostly adults (18+) and the best in the world. So Salazar pushed that to the bounds. Yes I'm familiar with college and even high school coaches who encourage athletes to lose weight, and that is certainly a problem, but that simply isn't on the same level as what Salazar was doing.

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Benjamin Deal - Professional - Instagram - TriRig - Lodi Cyclery
Deals on Wheels - Results, schedule, videos, sponsors

Gwen Jorgenson posted screenshots of her TrainingPeaks, specifically the menstruation monitoring page sometime either right before or during her pregnancy with Stanley and made a few comments on Twitter about how she NEVER lost her period during her triathlon training, and that she really made sure that she didn't because she knew it wasn't normal or healthy. And she's super freaking lean.

Okay seems there is now a new twist in the story, apparently Mary tried to rejoin NOP in april 2019, and didn't lift any of the concerns in which she is now going public with. Seems strange as she mentions in the video that she realized 4 years ago it was toxic but idk.

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

There was what 2 groups within NOP now? There’s a guy from Raleigh that runs for NOP but wasn’t under Salazar’s direction for that group.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

No afaik there is only one group, however it was pretty much only Rupp who got instructions directly from Salazar and the rest got them from Jacobs.

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

Craig Engels said it was a distinct 2 groups and sometimes they worked out together and sometimes they didn’t. He was never “coached” by Salazar.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Where did you learn that? She lives in New York and attends Fordham.

And I get it, regardless. If you were an elite runner in the U.S. you couldn't go against Nike. They control(ed) everything, including governing bodies. Maybe she thought NOP had changed, or could be changed.

It's a common question. Why didn't all the U.S. gymnasts being molested by Nassar go public at the time? Because there's a power differential. If you were a prospective national team gymnast, you go with the program. If you're a prospective elite runner, you stick with the Nike program. Or you end your career.

Edit: And just to highlight the power differential. Collegiate footballers who could have dropped Sandusky with one punch didn't. Because you don't go against The Program. I like to think that if some old man tried to fondle my junk I'd light him up, and call the police. But then again I was never of a storied, cult-like Program with dreams of stadiums filled with 100,000K, and possibly the NFL.

Yes but I doubt Jacobs wrote the workouts for the other “group”, pretty sure Salazar wrote all the workouts but wasn’t really close to anyone but his golden boy. Not sure how it matters though.

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Terrible Tuesday’s Triathlon

I dont think Salazar wrote the workouts for all the athletes, that wouldn't make sense off what Engels was saying. It matters because there could have been another option for Cain if she came back to NOP. You are reporting she wanted back in, I'm just showing you there could have been an alternative your not accounting for.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

True. Look at the list of previous girls Footlocker winners. A lot of them had eating disorders that ended their college running careers.

Why would anyone go back to NOP when all of the women are contracted to BTC? That makes no sense.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

So NOP has zero women on it? How long has that been the case?

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

When Cain joined the NOP she was the only woman, or that's how she intimated in the video. Since the website has already been taken down there's three women on the team per wiki: Hasay, Hull, and Rowbury...whereas the BTC has a lot of women. Also, Shalane has transitioned to being a coach within BTC...so you know, a real support system for a young female athlete.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I’ve seen plenty of athletes leave a program and come back at a later date for a variety of reasons. Your showcasing why she may have made contact to see if the culture had changed....NOP had more women in the program.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Source

ETA: NM found it. I don't use the twitter machine... it is curious she would specifically try to go back there rather than any other shoe company or BTC but then again, people who suffer from those kinds of abuse tend to make decisions that don't make sense to most of us.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

Then that would be a really stupid and naive viewpoint. Cultures don't change at all in a company or organization when the leaders are the same. There may be some cosmetic differences...but if the leaders are the same it's still shit.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Right but she never joined so what’s the issue with reaching out?

To discredit her in some way? To show she was potentially hypocritical?


ETA: Irregardless of what she's done in the past, I think it's a sad state of affairs that an athlete was at this depressive of a state and the reaction of her coaches was what it was. That's sickening to think about just how "performance" focused you have to be to essentially shoulder shrug at an athlete in that situation (reportedly).

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I'm not blaming her. She's obviously psychologically damaged from the episode. A stable person is never going to go back to something that abused them. But most people also get programmed to think that this is the only way: Stockholm Syndrome type stuff. And again, this is where your support system (parents) should step in.



Got a link? Ah, her own thread: https://twitter.com/.../1192787552647942146

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

It's definitely not just a NOP problem. Or a USA problem.
Take a look at all the shiiiite that's come out in the past 2/3/4 years about British Cycling's culture, the bullying mentality, dominated by male coaches, some stuck in the 1830s 'you're too fat, go have a baby' etc).
And some of the doping allegations are still being looked at by the BMC vs the Doc

(## oh and the irony - when I type the word 'THE' it keeps coming out as 'TUE' 🤔🤣 ##)

Yeah the team Sky stuff is insane.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I saw a triathlon coach destroy young women. One young girl used to show up for masters swim in the morning in tears. It was just too much for her. Because of the power differential she couldn't refuse to do a workout, but it was too much too fast. She did not make it a year with that coach.

I have seen young swimmers get over worked, over coached, and given no real nutrition advice. They burned out, or worse ended up seriously injured.

This happens everywhere with young athletes There are usually power imbalances and egotistical coaches. The coaches only look good if the athletes win, and they just push too hard.

That video is horrifying, but it is also good to see her stand up and speak her truth. That should be required viewing for all young athletes. Young athletes need to understand that they can tell a coach to jump in a lake.

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"Remember: a bicycle is an elegant and efficient tool designed for seeking out and defeating people who aren't as good as you."

--BikeSnobNYC

 Young athletes need to understand that they can tell a coach to jump in a lake.

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I would say that they need to be able to talk to their coach about anything without judgement or pressure and if they can't they need to re-evaluate. Of course that can be hard with the whole coach/athlete power/control dynamic.

So it's not about the coach or the athlete being able to tell the other to take a hike....it's about respecting each other, understanding each other, and that's what is needed for the relationship to be strong and to get the most out of the athlete.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

But why argue about what someone else's experience is? Yeah, Salazar is extreme, but he's not THAT extreme. There are Salazar clones from club teams to Div I sports who are maybe not quite as sleazy, but I can assure you they are doing much more than just "encouraging athletes to lose weight." Maybe YOUR experience didn't confirm that, but that doesn't mean you have to shoot down others.

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http://www.extramilenutrition.com

Huh? There are plenty of women in the "group formally known as NOP"

Hassan is light years ahead of anyone at BTC

EXACTLY THIS. Even in high school athletics (and younger) parents get too caught up in pushing their kids in hopes of getting a scholarship to college for sports. Mary Cain is just one example of a kid that is pushed way too hard to conform to some ideal that somebody else has defined for them. Fortunately for Mary, this didn't end the way it ended for Maddy Holleran. There are dozens of stories just like these.

So what’s the general lessons being learned here, other than the NOP group being sh!tty? If it’s so prevalent, why aren’t we doing more about it, and it keeps happening?

I've heard eerily similar stories from three girls that used to train under a very well known tri coach.

It will likely come out, eventually.

either it was a professional environment or it wasn't. Predatory coaching and abuse and pushing drugs on people is not professional.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

What is grooming?
Grooming is when someone builds a relationship, trust and emotional connection with a child or young person so they can manipulate, exploit and abuse them.
This is why people in abusive relationships come back, or can't leave.

There's no way Nike, a billion-dollar wholesome All-American Company (TM), could be involved in something so terrible. I'm sure their funding of USATF is totally on the level and not indicative of systemic rot in American sports. The company of Jordan, LeBron, Lance, Carl Lewis, Cristiano Ronaldo, Mo Farah, Tiger Woods, Flo Jo, Bo Jackson, Salazar, Marion Jones, et. al. is pure.

Mary Cain is lying.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

I think that was my point. Either we agree that all high-level coaching and teams and shoe companies are doped up psychological abuse factories and that everyone including her parents should have known better, or we agree that these behaviors are wrong, illegal, and that there are good people, athletes, coaches, and companies out there and that Mary Cain and her parents are in no way "at fault" for what went on.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Can't speak for her parents because I know zero information about them, but I would imagine any parents would at least marginally assume being a part of something like ONP, one would have the best resources of everything including medical, nutritionists, athletic trainers, etc.


There is for sure some or a lot of that here. Prior to the recent bad news for Salazar, if you go back a few years, he was having Best Distance Running Coach in the world honors bestowed upon him. Ditto for Nike - being a little naive you would think they would have the best of the best, of everything available to an athlete like Cain. So you kind of assume, that everything is all good, right?

However, here's the other thing that rarely get's talked about, and this in NO WAY excuses the awful terrible, behavior of Salazar, with the linkage to Nike, in any way. Time and time again, we see this pattern repeat itself, it's VERY rare in a sport like running and track &field that when at athlete is THIS good at age 16/17 and breaking national records, that they ever go on to true, sustained international success.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

?????

Salazar is pure ?
His team of coach is pure ?
NOP was pure ?
Nike CEO is pure ?
The pressure they put on governing body through all the money they distribute is pure ?

Not ALL Nike is shit, but clearly some significants parts are shit. Clearly some coaches went too far, regarding doping, weight, ... financed and protected by some big boss of the company.

It is never a good idea to say all is pure or all is shit.

Let's make clear what is pure and what is not.

Whatever it is within Nike, or Sky/Ineos, or whatever company, or local hero, same way it was done for, and around, a multiple winner of TdF.

Or within governing bodies such as IAAF not applying their own rules, or FINA ignoring blood smashing f***ing doper, and associated bribes...

A bit like the #metoo effect, hopefully this could only be the beginning of some serious cleaning wave ?

Not ALL Nike is shit, but clearly some significants parts are shit. Clearly some coaches went too far, regarding doping, weight, ... financed and protected by some big boss of the company.

It is never a good idea to say all is pure or all is shit.


Agreed.

Nike shoe design and engineering with the Vaporfly 4% and Next% - cutting edge, ahead of the curve, genius! If the independent 3rd party research is right, the shoes DO make runners 2% - 3% more efficient. The science backs up the Nike hype/marketing! Nike has been exceptional with this over the years, with game-changing shoe technology going all the way back to the original Nike Waffle Trainers.

Nike turning a blind eye to Salazar's shady practices of coaching and awful treatment of athletes - that's terrible! And should not be tolerated in any way. The same was most likely going on in the Lance Armstrong days, BEFORE Lance admitted to doping, there must have been people at Nike who knew what was going on, and just turned a blind eye to it all.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Sarcasm

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

OK
Was wandering...

You can ignore the first 5 lines, then :-)

This happens everywhere with young athletes There are usually power imbalances and egotistical coaches. The coaches only look good if the athletes win, and they just push too hard.


There is a completely and totally unhealthy situation that has developed in kid/youth sports across North America in my view - I don't know who exactly is to blame, but coaches and parents are the most likely suspects.

If a kid is good at any sport these days ( the team sports in particular), they are pushed into almost a full-time commitment to the sport by age-10. So you have these 10 year old's training like Professional level athletes almost year round. It's telling that you have sports medicine clinics and physiotherapy clinics that focused on youth sports injuries for pete's sake!

It's no surprise that many kids are done by the time they are 14 - 16, at exactly the time that if they were to get serious, they need to start to ramp it up to the next level. But they have been training, and competing at a very high level by that point for 6+ years!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Culture culture culture


Someone asked what’s the big takeaway and for me that’s it. What culture are you surrounding your athletes with. What philosophy is driven you to success?

Win at all costs?
Winning only matters?

Those types of things we’ve seen have driven what we’d consider “good” people to do some really bad things; either directly or indirectly by “turning a blind eye.”

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Some elite triathlon coaches are good at understanding the importance of mindset in female athletes as it pertains to weight and such, and how certain comments can lead athletes down a road of disordered eating, and some just don't. I have a feeling I know one of the athletes you're referring to, and it explains why she switched coaches.

This thread was oh so close to getting to the root of the issue but now you and Brooks are talking about youth sports and culture and OMG....

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Agreed. Wasn't replying to you specifically. I guess I was just giving it a name.

This thread was oh so close to getting to the root of the issue but now you and Brooks are talking about youth sports and culture and OMG....


Eric,

I'm sorry.

Asking for clarity - from your perspective what is the root cause?

My feeling is the obsession with youth sports, is part of the issue, yes/no?

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Mary's incentives and NOP's are not aligned.


If she's 20th in the world at 120lbs it is reasonable (not ethical, reasonable) for them to think "let's get her to 114, maybe that'll make her top3 or maybe it will destroy her, but we have no interest in her being 20th, and if she flames out there is always more grist for the mill [all her eggs are in our basket, but not all of ours are in hers]).

It's not a running thing; lots of world class programs burn through a ton of talent to produce a few stars (gymnastics, skating, cycling, etc, etc.).

It's worth asking what, if any, ethical responsibilities these programs have to their athletes.

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

The root cause is money.

Nike is a $30b corporation.
Adidas $17b
$8b to broadcast the Olympics
$9b to broadcast NCAA sports
The top salaried professional in most US states is a basketball or football coach
NFL is valued at $90b
MLB at $60b
$1b flows thru USATF each year

Obsession with youth sports may or may not be a part of the issue. But if it is, it’s a symptom or effect, not a cause. If you want to focus on the social aspect, focus on something which actually works insanely well, namely cheating.

Let’s stay on point. People are out there naming names at great risk to themselves right now. It’s an interesting era to be a sports fan. We can get philosophical about poor parenting and youth development later.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

The root cause is money.


Indeed - but how are you going to take that out of the equation?

Go back to the days of, "amatuer" sports - (even that was a sham)?

And a BIG driver with the obsession with Youth sports, is many parents think that there kid is going to get that Division -1 NCAA Full Scholarship in Sport-X, valued at $$$$ - so there is your money as the root cause! :-)

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Here is the problem with our sport

Being light is good. It's actually excellent to achieve elite performance, just like being really really stupidly heavy is what is needed to be an NFL lineman.

It's not just our sport but in any endeavour in life to be best in the world requires some crazy mental and physical transformations of human normalcy. One cannot be a fortune 100 CEO and have a normal life and one cannot be an elite world champion and live like normal humans.

The problem is the stewardship of young athletes or your people to get them to that point. Look at some of the very screwed up things wall Street does to young people to get them to do the slave labour to take financial firms to where the finance firms need to go.

I am not surprised AT all by the direction Salazar or any coach in Almaty, Iten or Tianjin pushes athletes. It's win and eat or lose and be eaten.

Trying to judge the world of hyper elite sport with normal society values is a stupid exercise in that the measures of success in normal society are at odds wit what it takes in elite sport. At the elite end in Silicon Valley, Wall Street or Shanghai you have exactly the same stuff going on. It's why the FANG companies get to Trillion dollars market caps. None of this is normal people normal world stuff.

The meat grinder to get into the NFL, is not much different.

Amen. This is the root of the problem. Excellence, sacrifice and the inherent disposability of the also rans. Ethically it is a difficult situation to resolve. When I think about how many legal waivers I sign to take my kids to a trampoline park, I'd be amazed if NOP didn't have its bases covered legally. Ethically, though, it is a different game and much harder to defend.

Its the same as Roman gladiators times. You want the glory, you end up living with do or die gladiator rules. Elite sport is not normal people stuff. Its a twisted world where the strongest eggs that are thrown against the wall stay intact. Lots of ones that break along the way. It does not matter to teams/coaches/organizations. There is an endless supply of talent to test out and see which ones survive the grind. Everyone else is also ran. Ask a VC what happens when they invest in 10 startups. One lives, the other 9 are expected to die. Those that worked at the other 9 got rewarded along the way by getting to play and having a chance, those that make it get a greater reward. I'm not sure why people think elite sport is much different than the cut throat business world. Elite sport (as you pointed out) is big business and the problem is lots of parents and athletes think they will be the next hero, which almost none of them get to. And the coaches at that level just need to produce champions. There will be casualties along the way and the winning coaches get away with all kind of crap and ethical grey and redline stuff because too many turn a blind eye.

I 100% agree with you on the "rules of the sport"....they'll "blur" the lines of many sporting rules/laws. Where I'll disagree with you is on a case of an actual well being of an athlete. And yes coaches have to push their athletes to the edge, that's how they get the most out of them. "Breaking" them in with an overuse type of injury in that context happens all the time. You then know the line etc, and should know how to fix them etc, or you just wait for the next person to fill their spot.


But "breaking them" in terms of not caring for them when they admit to you that they want to die and/or are actually doing physical harm and their response is a shoulder shrug.....F that. Get that the fuck out of elite sports.

So I think Salazar "breaking" her in terms of injuries, that's more closely tied to a cost of doing business. I've got a kid being recruited to run in college....I told the parents, "look he's going to likely get injured, shit is going to happen, to sometimes no fault of anyone...it just happens and is a reality; you just hope the program then learns from it".


But Salazar not giving a F for her actual well being when she recognized and told them all she was harming herself.......no way in hell that should just be part of "elite" sports.


But if your going to reply that you can't have one without the other, I'll just stick my head back in the sand then. There's a line that I think can't be crossed and imo it was crossed here.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Oh I totally agree that Salazar or any coach should care about her just like any manager in a tech company SHOULD care about employees.

But when it comes to NASDAQ earnings per share and reporting quarterly, when I buy Apple Stock or NVidia stock or any stock as an investor, I don't actually care about how one company treats its employees if I am not going long on that stock. I want that stock to pop after earnings and sell my shares and move on. Do you see what happens from there? Investors don't care about employees. They care about lining their pocket. Executives are caught in between investors and employees, and will thrown employees under the bus to get good results for Wall Street. Its just the way the world ends up working. A teachers pension fund that puts billions of dollars in all kind of stock is operating exactly that way, even though in their day lives, the teachers are nurturing the next generation....with their retirement money, workers are getting laid off and put on the street as fast as it takes a fund manager to more the value of cells in a spreadsheet.

Soooooo a person like Salazar is like the tail of the dog in this system. When the stock market sneezes (head of the dog), Nike or whatever corporations get swung in the middle of the dog and peons at the tail end like Salazar get swung along....the athletes are at the very very tail end of the tail (Mary Cain, Mo Farah, Rupp etc etc). They are replaceable commodities just like factory workers in Dayton or Toledo on Shenzhen or Suwon.

As soon as you look at everything in the context of how it fits into Wall street's earning season, everything becomes really crystal clear in terms of the values that those in power are operating under.

Yes, coaches should care about athletes and execs in corporations should care about employees. They really should and often they are stuck in a perpetual dilemma...but more often than not, winning, and the greenback clouds true human to human values. I wish it would not.

Just watch what Ineos does with Froome. If Froome can bounce back he'll be a hero. if the can't he's a replaceable commodity. They have Thomas and Bernal, but they too are replaceable meat. As soon as they have a career threating crash or god forbid, they gain 5 lbs and lose the edge going up Galibier the game is over for them.

  
I’ve not said they can’t fire you or not push you to a point where you break cus you overstrained.

I’ve simply said essentially “there’s honor even amongst thieves”.

But if your telling me it’s 100% savages, 100% of the time, that’s what I’ll disagree with. Even the mob played with rules. Cool to car bomb associate joe. “Business nothing personal”. Poor form to car bomb him and kill his 2 kids....that’s “off limits” and will have hell to pay.
(Your bringing in analogies so I’m going to now)

So again it’s the line they crossed with the “moral compass” that I’m pushing back on. I’m agreeing that there are very dirty cut throat rules. But when it gets “personal” and you can’t acknowledge that....that’s the issue I take. I think we’ve moved beyond savages at a basic level, even though we still act savagely at other times.

NFL players will actively try and hurt each other and he’ll even head hunt. But what’s the first reaction when they knock a guy out?

“Oh shit is he ok” and they’ll walk up and fist pump or kneel. None of this “shoulder shrug” or “meh”. That’s what I’m calling out of Salazar.



Hell cycling has a “code” to not take advantage of a crashed rides etc many times. So don’t tell me it’s savagery all the time.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

This simply is false. Rowbury joined NOP in late 2013 and had been there for several years when Cain showed up. Turning down a full ride at a Stanford to race for a year was a truly horrible decision and I blame her parents. Moving out of your parents home and into a college dorm is an extremely valuable growing experience that she never had. Running in college is so much more than racing. It’s also about growing up as a person and being independent for the first time ever. Going from eating mom’s meals every day to being a full time professional athlete with no real friends and nobody experiencing the same things is too much for just about anyone. The women at NOP also were cut throat mean people who had absolutely no interest in nurturing her along, the way Shalane has done for money. Rowbury viewed her as competition and someone to crush in workouts.

There’s so much to be gained by going to college for at least a year and then going pro if you want or you are crushing everyone. That’s what Webb did. Same with s McLaughlin. Hopefully they learned from Cain.

Hey, I am just saying this is often how the cut throat world works. In the case of athletics, athletes are replaceable meat. Look what Mag900 wrote....the other women would see her has competition and would want to crush her because she's coming to take her glory. This is how it unfortunately ends up working. The coaches are only awarded for nurturing if that's an input to the output of wins. Otherwise the coaches at that pointy can have their moral compass reading clouded. Salazar would not be first nor last. This is why in most national sports federations (at least in Canada) we have a full blown ethics module and that is introduced at the community coaching level (where it is needed most since it affects the most people).

But look at Salazar's own career. He threw himself against the wall hammering himself with harder and harder workouts with more and more volume and the wins came, until eventually they no longer did.

The coaches are only awarded for nurturing if that's an input to the output of wins. Otherwise the coaches at that pointy can have their moral compass reading clouded.

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Except at the end of the day not every situation needs to be evaluated that way, whether at the pointy end or at the community level. It's why I said the culture sets every decision and expectation; it's the foundation for how you respond and behave. Elite level anything isn't 100% cut throat, nor needs to be. That's some bullshit explanation that you keep writing, and if you are telling me that's an "accepted practice" that's shit.

And Salazar won't be the first nor last coach that behaves this way, just like Sandusky wont be the last coach to rape kids, etc. (Where I live alone in Raleigh, we've had 2 swim coaches have "relations" with underaged swimmers in the last 3 years). It happens in all sports seemingly, it's also why you again have to set the culture which determines pretty much every decision you then make. If your setting a culture that competition is game on every single set and workout, and using it to let the cream rise to the crop, that's fine. You also need to then be able to handle the aftermath, etc. You don't just get to shoulder shrug when your part of the reason why an athlete "wants to commit suicide". You need to take some responsibility in the process, and that's when "human decency" needs to take over. Again I'm not suggesting coaches dont push their athletes to get the best out of them. I'm suggesting they deal with the aftermath too, because they bare responsibility. So if your in a situation where it's "win at all costs" you simply see time and time again how the castle is going to crumble from a fair play rules issue to an human decency issue.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

I believe we are in agreement that the system should not work the way things end up sliding at the the very pointy end where athletes turn into meat and its win at all cost. The problem is when international competition is on, the competition is against other countries/teams who don't care. Coaches and team with perhaps more advanced set of morals slide the wrong way. Mainly I am pointing out how the economic framework takes things the wrong way and morals are messed up in the process. Eric Reid was getting to the same points with the dollar figures..

How do you fix it? Well that's why in my country they introduce ethic modules at the earliest stages of coach training. This way coaches get introduced early and parents of athletes who may also be coaches get exposed early and can share with other parents so it gets gradually part of the cultural mainstream. When we were athletes in college in the 80's it was a different world. Coaches would shame us for being "soft" and fellow athletes would rip into each other if there was too much food on someone's plate....something like, "we're going to lose the provincial championships because of all the crap on your plate....go back and get some celery only". Coaches just slammed us with intervals and volume daily...get up and repeat. By the end of the season, most of us where hobbling and nearly broken, but the kids that did not break where winning championships. That was a different world. But that world still exists in dark places (vs being mainstream in every club and every college campus).

I'm with you. The culture needs to change. It took me a long while to get over my formative years of being an athlete literally connected to a weighing scale to the point that you knew exactly what number on the scale equated to what mile split. Even in my late 30's, when I decided I wanted to break three hours in Boston, I took the easy path to break three hours. I just lost 7 lbs in a month because I knew I could not gain the fitness fast enough and broke three hrs. It was relatively easier to fix my body composition and run run 70-80km per week rather than train 120 km per week for the same result. I just ate less.

Sadly it works exceptionally well for running and also for biking. This is a big problem with two of our sports. Coaches end up preying on it.

Mainly I am pointing out how the economic framework takes things the wrong way and morals are messed up in the process. Eric Reid was getting to the same points with the dollar figures..

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Saying money is the issue is missing the whole boat. Cus this type of stuff happens all the time and will happen til the end of human nature, at the world class elite level where millions and billions of dollars are on the line, all the way down to small town USA with scenarios that never make it to ESPN news or publications in NYT. As I said Salazar wasn't the first and he won't be the last coach that we hear of these types of situations with athletes. It's not money, it's power. Just that in this case big time money and results was the obvious outcome goal.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

You wanna know why it has nothing to do w/ money and everything to do with power?


Here's an athlete what 4 years later after all that abusive issues still reaches out to the coach "excited to be working with you again".......Again her likely own smarts, against likely her family's wishes......she's still reaching out wanting to be accepted by Salazar.


You guys talking about the money are missing it completely.

It's why you brought up the whole answer....All these federations and companies across the world are setting the "culture" by instilling rules/regulations to coach by. You said yourself your Canadian federation is instilling procedures. Guess what the result of the USA Gymanstics abuse issues....USAT has created stricter "coach/athlete" communication guidelines, most especially at the junior level. It's all dealing with the power dynamic here, that's the issue.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

We live in a world controlled by Wall street. There is no power without money at the top of the chain. This is what Eric was getting at. You may not see the money directly, but the power comes with having money behind it somewhere in the pyramid.

There's power in the most basic levels of human nature. So again the money isn't the root of the problem. That's simply a by product in this particular case.


Again this isn’t even an Salazar issue. It’s being reported that the asst coaches knew of things and did nothing. So again it’s a culture thing to accept “anything to win” and everyone behaves that way. It’s why generally these are usually “good” people who simply act inappropriately. Yes some are monsters etc with repeated actions but most people allow their own “moral compass” to be blurred and we generally accept them as good people just going bad. But it’s why it’s so important to coach to whatever creed you want...just in this case it seems to be a true “win at all costs” matra.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Can we agree that this is a "chicken or the egg" issue?

In my town, there is a youth club sport with a volunteer board of directors that is defending the coach's behavior that is nearly identical to Cain's complaints against Salazar. It's turned into a power struggle and about "winning" this fight, the only money involved here is the chase for college scholarship dollars. And that money is minimal in the sport we're talking about here.

At the top of sports, money is king. Look at how it took companies threatening to take away sponsorship dollars from the almighty NFL before they started taking domestic abuse allegations against players seriously. Dudes aren't being suspended because the NFL all of a sudden found their morals!

I don't think this has to be so binary, there can be multiple issues at the core.

I’m happy Cain came out and shed light on this issue in pro running and specifically Salazar. However I do have a couple of problems with the opinion piece... the opinion article implies that Parker the CEO of Nike is stepping down because of Salazar and Cain... which is not the case. Usually when there is a “scandal” the CEO doesn’t stay on to be the new CEOs boss (Parker will be the chairman of the board)... two, in my opinion this is a Salazar issue, it seems like every controversy comes out of the Project Oregon (Salazar) and not the also Nike funded Bowerman Track Club. Three like many others have stated this is a distance running issue, look at Ryan Hall when he was a top runner vs. now. Doesn’t take a doctor to tell you that he was definitely suppressing food intake to remain at 130 vs his physic now... and as we all saw it hurt his performance and like he’s stated effected his testosterone levels.

Don't think it is fair or accurate to place blame on the parents. No one will know what conversation took place at the "dining room table" over Mary's decision to bypass college and turn pro and join NOP. They could have been 100% behind it or 100% against it.

Not sure if it has been noted in all the conversations about power and money but Bronxville is one of the wealthy communities in the USA. I live in Westchester County, close to Bronxville. While my kids are older and did not participate in or around Mary sporting activities, I am well familiar with the "scene" and followed her career while in HS

So while Dev, keeps bringing up Wall Street. Bronxville is an epi-center to Wall Street Power Brokers, movers and shakers

So there is a ton of pressure (internal and external) on these kids and certainly over-acheivers to succeed and surpass their classmates. So her classmates are going non-scholarship, no student loans to Ivy League, she could have went against all advise to "one-up" her classmates in turning pro

if it is not fair to criticize the parents, it is at least a cautionary tale for parents. mary did not only forego the rest of her HS and all of her college running careers, she (for reasons she acknowledges were due to her own broken psyche) sought earlier this year to rejoin the same program she now decries. her parents spectated all of this. i place all the blame on the salazar team that they deserve. but the tuohy family has taken a different approach than did the cain family. at some point it would be helpful to other families if the cain family acknowledged those points where their left turns might have retrospect been right turns.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

but the tuohy family has taken a different approach than did the cain family.

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Seems like a sound approach, is she going to go the college route or straight to pro after *finishing* HS?

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Thanks for the clarification. As I did not get that impression from her testimony that there were many if any women involved at the NOP at the time. Seems clear that one of the teams works pretty decently at nurturing athletes and the other just is a meat grinder. I don't follow running that much and had no idea who Mary Cain was before this.



It is completely fair to criticize and even blame her parents for part of this. She was 17/18 when she moved to Oregon and had zero support system.

I know all about Bronxville. A friend of mine attended Bronxville High School with Roger Gooddell!

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Pretty valid point that “her parents got her on the next plane out” but then sat back and were like... yeah join Salazar again in April. Feels a little off... now don’t get me wrong, Salazar is to blame but again seems a little off, to say it’s a Stockholm syndrome if her parents have just sat back and done nothing. Also seems odd to me that for the last 6 month and in November post she’s still wearing Nikes on Instagram.

it's valid, but not pertinent.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

This kind of behavior will happen more often in system where coaches/administrations have most of the power.
Just look at how HS and NCAA sports are organized.
You can even see the same system in what Americans call professional sports.

And a system like this makes it easier for horrible people to have a career, or even keep a job.
Why? The athlete has so little power.


UW rowing had an awful coach for years without anything happen.

What is the alternative?
Have a club system where a coach cannot block or sabotage an athlete.
Get rid of sexist coaches.

This has nothing to do with parents or money.
This kind of behavior will more easily happen where the organization is more important and/or more protected than the athlete.

I used Wall Street figuratively to encapsulate the financial system power center, but it could equivalently be in London, or Shanghai or Mumbai.

Salazar, Johan Brunyel etc etc are all just cogs in a much larger machine. Coaches, and athletes are really just that...just a piece of the overall system. Does not make what coaches or team managers do to "win at all costs" right, but just like the athletes are replaceable, if anyone coaches and management are the ultimate replaceable commodity when they don't win and bring home championships. So its really really easy to see how the system gets skewed in favour of "win at all costs"

i think it's the difference between blame and responsibility. salazar is due all the blame. all the blame, based on what i've so far heard and read. he might become the only person i've ever heard of who's banned both by USADA and safesport. but both the athlete and the parents have a responsibility, and i don't see (so far) any acknowledgement of this. i think that would be helpful going forward. parents can be abusive, neglectful, venal. they can also simply be naive. my guess is that they were just naive, and perhaps overly trustful. but they're not in that place now. it wouldn't surprise me if her parents eventually spoke out. i would welcome that.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Hi slowman, but would this be any different than naive or overly trustful parents in a variety of sports where their late teenage kid is making the transition from kid to adult and from hopeful amateur to trying to make it big on the pro stage. We've seen this happen all the time in the ice hockey system in Canada where kids move away from home to play for a junior hockey team (essentially a semi pro stepping stone), living with billet families and hitting the road with abusive coaches who hold the entire future of the kid in their hands. The kids are powerless, because if the coach benches them, their chance at the NHL is over, and they have the isolation of losing their very real network inside the team with peers when on the road (half the time) and when at the home town (they are not with their own family and may have no friends).

Naive is the right word. How many parents in the world have first-hand understanding how it works at elite levels of sport? You have a prodigy kid approached by one of the world’s most well known coaches backed by by the biggest sports company in the world....you’re not probably going to ask many questions. You’re going to make a lot of assumptions and place a lot of trust that the right things are going to happen. Maybe something tickles your spider sense, but even then...this group is turning out Olympic and World Champions.

I like Dan’s words...”cautionary tale for parents”. For all parents with prodigy kids. Look beyond the tantalizing results. And even better, and harder...be prepared to walk away if it just doesn’t smell right.

But that’s easier said than done. I hope the recent news around NOP changes tome things long term, but I suspect it won’t move the bar as far as it needs to be moved.

Incorrect. This is all about money and all about parents. No parent will ship their kid off at 17 fresh out of high school to run in a "professional" environment and skip everything that should have gained from just one year of college. Perhaps when Salazar recruited Cain he made a lot of promises...but it sounds like her parents weren't around that often in Oregon and again that comes to money. Did some digging around and it sounds like Cain was on over $100k/year from Nike...which would be convincing to a parent.

Then you talk about power only resting with coaches...again, parents have power with youth coaches. Should any of this happen? No. Yet her parents bear some of the responsibility here.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I don't follow running much so I have to ask: how good of a coach was Salazar? If he made one of the best H.S. runners in the country actually slower (not to mention destroying her) that seems like a fairly big blunder. And why was he so against big butts? Surely he must have known that not all women are the same and that too much weight loss is detrimental to performance.

Haven’t read the thread fully. Here’s the YouTube link of the video...

I've seen a few young women who go amenorheic (sic) secondary to running/getting too thin via athletics. It is basically a body going into survival mode IMHO. I currently am taking care of a national class runner who has a bmi of 18. I told her under no circumstances do I want to see her any thinner. How often do we see girls/women go from very promising to low achieving when they jump from highschool to university? Or even while in highschool. Lots and this low bmi stuff is a common cause. The other one is burnout. A kid shouldn't be burnt out before they go to college.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

This has been a problem in all endurance sports. Here in Norway it has been on the agenda since the 80s. But it is still an issue.
Maybe not so much pushed by coaches, but the athletes can easily see how skinny the top athletes are and will start losing weight as an attempt to get better.

The introduction of sprints have open up for other athletes than just the tiny and skinny one.

This is the American Jessica Diggins from ESPN https://www.espn.com/...ng-disorder-recovery

i can't believe that you guys continue to give her parents a free pass. yes, AS was the root of the problem but her parents deserve a TON of blame here. it's not like they are some poor clueless people -- her dad is a doctor. AS was also coaching her remotely by AS starting in 2012 (she graduated high school in 2014) with henwood holding the clipboard in person so it wasn't like she got a call from AS right before graduation and he hoodwinked her. at the time, i couldn't believe that she would turn down a full-ride anywhere (particularly stanford) to pack up and enroll at a weak academic school -- portland (it has a 75% acceptance rate) -- just so she could train with the OTC. she had nothing in common with her classmates and was working anyway. who cares that a 17-year old wanted to do it? you don't know what's best for you at 17 (what 17-year old does?) and that's on the parents for not steering her to enroll at a normal university for at least a year to go through the normal growing process most kids in america go through. you always can turn pro after a year or two (like webb and mclaughlin so successfully did) and you have the entire life experience of moving out of your parents' house, meeting new people your age, and hopefully success on the track.

the crazy thing is that everyone is treating her like she is some old washed up granny. she's 23. she definitely could make a comeback if she wanted to but i don't know if she does.

Sure they would. Happens all the time. Also, you can go to college just about any time. The window of an elite runner is pretty short.

mag900 wrote:

i can't believe that you guys continue to give her parents a free pass. yes, AS was the root of the problem but her parents deserve a TON of blame here. it's not like they are some poor clueless people

Monday morning QBing.

We know very little about her relationship with her parents. Nike and NOP had a stellar reputation at the time. It was the pinnacle of achievement. It sounds like it took Mary herself years to come to the realization of what it was doing to her, so she likely wasn't feeding back negative information. And, generally speaking, while parents can be nosy about what goes on in high school and junior sports, college or professional coaches don't give parents the time of day.

And if I'd been invited to NOP out of high school, not a damn thing my parents could have done to stop me. Maybe legally they could have tried things while I was 17, but, yeah, good luck.



And let's not treat her like a child either, even though at the very beginning she was 17.

Selectively quoting me for your own thesis is pretty non-sensical. Mary Cain had a pretty decent contract from Nike which is likely where a significant portion of the trust factor develops. "Hey, they're paying our 17-year old 100k+Bonuses/year, they'll definitely want to take care of her."

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Excuse me? Some of us might just be a tad closer to the situation than you. nike has had a terrible reputation for decades so it's painful to read that someone is so naive to think that it was "stellar" in 2016. AS and OTC's reputations were soiled by 2016 as well (when she decided to forgo a real college and move to oregon). it's obvious you are just showing up now to comment but the propublica story broke in 2015. everyone involved in track and field was aware of those allegations in 2016 and it's not like she and her family were some naive noobs. they are from bronxville, which has produced some of best female high school runners of all-time (bronxville used to own the high school girls 4xmile record) so therewas no shortage of people in their very own town who they could have sough valuable advice from. here's some outside reading for you to help get you up to speed:

https://ny.milesplit.com/...all-school-dominance

do you know rowbury? i do and i could have told you in 2016 -- and told others -- that her move to train with rowbury wasn't going to end well (i had no idea that AS was going to emotional abuse her but i assumed he was going to push PEDs on her, which we now know he did). shannon is as cutthroat and selfish as they come and there was no way that she was going to embrace this total super star high school protege plopping into her training group.

what on earth are you talking about not treating her like a child when she was....drum roll....a 17-year old child???

here's a video for you to watch from 2015:

https://www.youtube.com/...wY0M&app=desktop

anyone who was anyone in track knew in 2016 that AS and OTC were at best extremely shady.

We treat 17 year-olds pretty closely to adults in the U.S. Or at least used to. I was working, going to college. My parents, by that point, had very little control over my life.

Maybe things have changed and teenagers can be coddled more than they used to be, though. E.g. I think more young adults are still living with their parents in their 20's than used to.

On the other hand it's super easy to Monday morning QB the parenting of someone else's kid. It's practically a pasttime for some people.

you can treat them as adults all you want but the law doesn't. i'll go with the law in all 50 states over some internet poster who thinks nike and AS had "stellar" reputations in 2016.

Yup.

Many are viewing this through their parenting protective lenses with 360 degree vision then through the eyes when "we" were a 17 years old headstrong person. Combined that we her excelling in a sport, and basically every college drooling at her to run for them, she could write any ticket she wanted to.

Not really sure what her parents could have done to stop her other than given her the "I am your dad, and I say so" speech. Its not like that could withhold tuition payment, or living expenses with Nike paying for everything

Again, way too many people are speculating here to what events and conversations took place between MC and her parents, between MC and AS/Nike, parents and AS/Nike, between MC/parents and AS/Nike

A few girls on the cross-country team at my High School had issues with amenorrhea back in the 90s. Ditto when I ran in college. Similar issues in college on the girls teams as well. I think it's more common than people realize.

I have no problem with a person that has finished HS going out in the world and train.

Here in Scandinavia we have sports high schools. These are high schools where you can focus on both school and training.
You will start there the year you are turning 16 and finish the year you are 19, same as normal HS here.
The athletes will find a place to live. There are no dorms like an American university. You are in charge of buying and making your own food, washing clothes, and everything you need to do when you are living on your own.

I am sure Americans can do the same.
I really do not think the problem here is that she was on her own, since that is quite normal (unless you have helicopter parents)

I think it's sad that, instead of addressing the actual point of this thread, we've moved on to the canards of bad parenting, systemic women's sports issues, etc.... not that those aren't important issues that need fixing.

Think about it before you @ me.

E

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

So Eric some of the readers may have not read what you felt the main point is so maybe you can repeat it. They won't read you mind and scroll back thru many posts.

I’ve been very clear in my hypothesis, as well as my opinion that this “situation” is not Mary Cain’s or her parents’ fault... nor women or women’s sports generally.

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Ok you're coming on here and roughly telling the other guys that they are talking about what you think is the wrong thing, but you're not spitting out what you think is the right thing to talk about at this point in the thread. People will need to scroll back 100 posts to get what is in your head and 100 posts ago. In the time you told them they are talking about the wrong thing (your opinion, slowman did not bound this), you're not saying what is the right thing youo want people to talk about. Just say it. If its the money train, then just say it. If its something else just say it. Don't try to act smart like other posters are dumber for discussing other topics and not focusing on your smart guy topic.

Thank you for this long essay about what's wrong with Eric, and the steps that Eric can take to improve these problems in the future. It's thought-provoking and valuable insight into the problem of systemic abuse of young athletes.

My daughter ran cross country for a season at a D1 school (not one with a successful program). After seeing the video she sent me this:

"I'll never forget the first meeting with the coach, telling the room full of XC freshman women that "every single one of you looks like you need to lose weight""

(she ended up quitting after a season. One roommate developed an eating disorder. By her senior year, only one from her entering class remained on the team)

I like to think that most of our young athletes aren't exposed to this type of weight loss pressure. I know that my son's coaches trained quite a few girls to national championships wins. He was always very careful with any type of weight comment and in fact was more concerned when their weight went too low.

One of the girls that trained with us has done some interesting research on women athletes and their menstrual cycles. Dr Georgie has an app

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49426349

You hope that this caring treatment is what most young athletes get but not all the time. Another women that I trained with recall how when she was younger she was top 5 or so high jumper in Ireland for her age group. Her coach suggested she would have to lose some weight to process. She politely told him to stick it!

Fully agree that this isn't just a Nike problem or running.

I swam at a D1 university where the men's and women's teams were combined. The women's teams and a few of the men were constantly given the "you need to lose weight speech".

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blog

 
Looking at the big picture, certainly not a Nike only, or running only problem.

But on this specific case, clearly it was created, financed, pushed and protected by Nike peoples.

So on this case Nike responsibility is clear.

Would disagree with this pretty heavily. Endurance sports/ T&F, even other elite sports have really unhealthy relationships with weight/body fat %, and it seems amplified on the women's side (maybe it's just more talked about). And to think it's just Nike I think would be reductionist. If anything, Nike, with all the money in the world to buy world class doctors who know better, should be the lowest offender (in theory). The difference is it seems Salazar had a bunch of clowns on his staff. And I think there's a difference between "sacrifice" and bad practice.

On top of it you have Allie Kieffer coming out saying she's seeing it elsewhere as well. And she's been pretty vocal about that in the past as well.

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Chasing PB Podcast Latest interview with Eli Hemming on Targeting a US MTR spot in Tokyo

We are getting *so* close!!!!

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

ericMPro, I'll bite...close the loop here....the 'Sports Industrial Complex' generates billions of dollars, and we have a thread here involving an elite female high school runner who was from the sound of it, aggressively recruited by the most prestigious professional running club in the country, who by the way, is part of that billion dollar Sports Industrial Complex and in fact, opted to turn pro. Several years later, chooses to share her experience as a cautionary tale for other young female runners. Fill in the blanks for us, please.

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"one eye doubles my eyesight, so things don't look half bad" John Hiatt

It is true that you will NEVER remove the high risk of body dysmorphism in elite sports that by nature push the boundary of health and illness in the chase of world-beating performance. It's part of the deal, unfortunately.

Still, we all know full well of these risks now, and the onus on big institutions like Nike and colleges and pro teams is to have professional consultants that pull the athlete back from the brink, no different than they would with overtraining. These sort of mental breakdowns should have been detected early and addressed early - the problem is that Nike was ok with handing over 100% of the reins to an essentially unsupervised coach, based on his past performance and expectations of similar. Like it or not, Nike shoulders a huge burden of the blame here, as many have pointed out - even if it is 100% true that in elite endurance sports, you are by definition subjecting yourself to a huge risk of body dysmorphism.

I DO think coaches should try and get their athlete's weight to the best possible for their performance, but I also think that since this will often border on the extreme in world-beating endurance athletes, it is very important to have a component of external input (nutritionist, 2nd outside opinion, etc) to make sure they are as on-track as possible. It may be in fact better and more legally protectable to have to coach just make external recommendations and have the weight management plan performed by a 3rd party.

I DO think coaches should try and get their athlete's weight to the best possible for their performance, but I also think that since this will often border on the extreme in world-beating endurance athletes,

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It sounds like Mary Cain's issue was the lack of science for why "114" was suggested as her ideal weight by AS. Which I think was one of the bigger complaints of the whole thing...you have this billion dollar entity and they seemingly were doing it fly by night style operation with very few "experts" from what she thought. I think AS has said the opposite that there was staff on hand, but it's interesting to me that any coach would be the one telling an athlete what the weight number should be.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Do you (also) think :

1) Salazar was deliberately pushing out of the team nutritionists and doctors (not a budget problem...) in order to get full control, and have hands free to push and make experimentations as per his "genial mind" ? And far beyond ethical limits....

2) Nike management was well aware all this was beyond ethics, and happy to support that ? Doping, health abuse, mental abuse, who care ? as long as it push the brand and keep money coming in...

Personally, I won't buy any Nike related product for a few years.

the curious thing about this is that whenever i've had any intersection with a female athlete at this level, it's almost always been the opposite concern. maybe it's just coincidence, but the world class endurance athletes i've dealt with have almost always been on the cusp of too thin. when weight is ever i concern i've invariably found myself looking for creative ways to exhort them to be at a *stronger* weight. women, perhaps more than men, fall prey (in my experience) to: "if light is good, if mileage is good, then yet lighter and even more mileage is better." it's usually the obtuse, blockhead coach who tries to get elite endurance women to be lighter.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

And thank YOU also for adding your valuable input to the discussion at hand.

That said though, this really seems like more of a Nike problem than a sports problem. //

6 pages of this already, and seems like every 5th post on facebook is linking this article, so must have hit a nerve. I can remember back in the 60's when the wrestlers were going though this, probably still do. My guess that they employ more science to their extreme weight loss, as they have had a lot more time to dial in what would be optimal. But weight is a huge factor in each and every sport, some to gain as much as possible(sumo) and others to be as light as possible, without losing the strength that your sport requires. I also remember in college all the women who had eating disorders, and a lot of them were not athletes. I dont recall one guy who did, but suppose there was a few somewhere. So it appears to me that women in general are just more susceptible to this sort of thing, and good that Mary has bought some long overdue attention to this.


And a lot of you have said this already, it is an unhealthy state that the very top athletes have to reside in when it comes to weight and training. What we do is not a recipe for longevity, and certainly should not be sustained as a life long lifestyle. My doctor always told me what I did was unhealthy, but he also understood that was a requirement to be at the top of anything, so did his best to minimize any negative side affects. This is part of the game, if you are an NFL lineman, you are going to be super unhealthy, and probably shorten your lifespan by 20 years.


Until sport institutes limits according to height or some other metric, this is just how it is going to be. Anyone see the TDF peloton with their shirts off, you could swing a hose and break a 100 arms. The "ONLY" thing outside of regulation on this, is for someone to prove that being just a bit higher in weight is an advantage. But doesn't look like that is the case in the short term, so the race to be the lightest and fastest will remain in place. But good news is that it will be out in the open now for the women, and perhaps a kinder, gentler approach will be arrived at...

A former girlfriend described her D1 xc experience as “an eating disorder with uniforms.”

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Being a professional distance runner is a really, really hard job.
Perhaps - it would make sense to set an age limit of 21?

Perhaps the process should be:
1) Become a full grown healthy woman, while developing skills (both in running and in other career areas).
2) Then become a professional athlete

Child labour- not all careers are equally difficult. We might want to have additional protection for teens and young adults in certain careers.
Being a professional athlete IS a lot like being a sex worker, a stunt man, an under cover agent.
These jobs have: potentially negative long term consequences, they involve the possibility of exploitation, they demand fulltime concentration.
Who cares if a job pays well or if the job is some kids "dream?"

In many cases, it's the parent's dream.

I disagree with this. I think frequently people go too light, and it *is* an advantage for them to be heavier. You gave the example of the Tour de France. It's not at all uncommon to see complete collapses in performance or people withdrawing. I'd guess it's something like a bell curve around the "optimal weight", with some people being too heavy, some too light.

Though training is complex, Mary seems to be in this category. How do you make someone who ran 30 miles per week (reportedly) *slower*. That's really hard to do. You have to work really hard to suck that bad as a coach.

I disagree with this. I think frequently people go too light, and it *is* an advantage for them to be heavier. //

I'm not sure what you think you are disagreeing with, of course some people get too light and fall apart. Did you somehow infer from what I said that the lighter you get, the faster you are?? My point is that there is a weight that is optimal, and it appears that weight is not healthy in the long term. So "right now" performance is the driver on weight. If as a group runners go faster because they are lighter, then that is what they are going to do. I'm not cherry picking a particular person and trying to make a case for this or that. I'm just looking at pro endurance sports in the aggregate, and going lighter has been the trend for a couple decades now at least.


So you are not really disagreeing with me at all, because I think some people go too light also, and they would be better if they were heavier. But that is just some people, not the sport as a whole..

it's better to be lighter than heavier
it's better to cheat than not cheat

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Yes it is complex. A close relative of mine went from winning at the provincial level (province of 15 million people) in a track event to barely qualifying for regional championships because she got the idea she would be better if thinner. It wasn't the coach or the parents. I am changing my approach as a doctor. If I have one of these girls as a patient I am going to see them regularly rather than as needed and keep track of them.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Stockholm syndrome.

 
https://www.runnersworld.com/...dan-hasay-new-coach/

Jordan Hasay new training setup following "Nike Oregon Project" implosion....

... including some comments on Mary Cain, weight management, and Salazar.

I see some of his athletes are still in denial...the dude was banned in part for experimenting on his freakin' kids!

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

She is still sponsored by Nike.... and the ex-CEO (in the same bus as Salazar) is still in the Nike board...

So, not so surprising, even if do not know if this is more Stockholm syndrome or Sponsor politics.

I'm guess it's more genuine feeling than calculated. I remember idolizing Salazar as a HS runner in the 90's. He was a hero for the moderately talented...a guy who drove his body out of sheer will. At the time, of course, I didn't see the dark side of that win-at-all-costs mentality. An athlete choosing to destroy their own body is one thing...destroying the bodies of people who entrust themselves with you is entirely different.

I think one big mistake Salazar made was gauging athletes ideal weight by feel.

For the lucky ones with a small frame that might have been their ideal racing weight and it could have been reached with not much effort.

For athletes that were built a little stronger the weight might have been a tad below their ideal performance weight. That not only makes it much more difficult to get down to it but it also impairs your performance and well being.

That might explain why some, like Hasay or Hassan, have never felt any pressure and thrived on that system. And others like Cain broke down.

I have learnt that you'd rather be 3 pounds above ideal race weight than 1 pound below.

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10k - 30:48 / half - 1:06:40

So, Salazar was an asshole, right in the middle of Dunning Kruger effect, making decisions in areas he do no master, and pushing everybody hard like a little local dictator....

Yes, very probably.

And Nike management was so happy, encouraging him by not getting any nutritionist around, no medic around, in order not to interfere with "The Genius".

"The Genius" method deserve secret, and no dirty exterior eyes.

Aaahh.... the smell of dictatorship.... paranoia..... big money.... inflated ego of CEO and "chief dictator coach" masturbating together....

Thanks Nike to "just do it"