Olympic 1500m Champion Matthew Centrowitz To Be Coached By Jerry Schumacher, Will Train With Bowerman Track Club

By Jonathan Gault
January 9, 2019

Olympic 1500-meter champion Matthew Centrowitz is being coached by Jerry Schumacher and training with the Bowerman Track Club, according to a source with knowledge of the situation who asked to remain anonymous. Centrowitz, 29, had spent the first seven years of his professional career, from 2012-2018, training under coach Alberto Salazar with the Nike Oregon Project before leaving the group after last season.

Though still officially a member of NOP at the time, Centrowitz relocated to Washington, D.C., for the 2018 season, before moving to Seattle, where he has been located since the fall. Earlier this week, he was photographed training with Bowerman Track Club athletes Ryan Hill, Marc Scott, and Matt Hughes at altitude camp in Colorado Springs.

Centrowitz, who last year won his fifth US 1500-meter title, will become one of the few athletes to have trained under both Salazar and Schumacher, two of the most successful coaches in American distance running. One other notable name in that group: American mile record holder Alan Webb, who was a member of NOP from 2009-11 before spending 2013 training under Schumacher.

Despite sharing facilities at Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., Bowerman and NOP, the two most prominent distance groups in the country, are rivals, and the relationship between Salazar and Schumacher has grown heated at times. After NOP’s Galen Rupp beat out BTC athletes Ryan Hill and Lopez Lomong for a spot on the World Indoor team in 2014, the two engaged in a shouting match and had to be physically separated. Now one of NOP’s most successful athletes — who also happens to be the reigning Olympic champion — has traded in the skull of NOP for the red and black of Bowerman.

A call to Centrowitz’s agent, Ricky Simms, seeking comment was not returned.

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(Centro in far left in photo below with some of the Bowerman crew)

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