Webb
Gouchers
Yoder-Begeley
Where there's smoke, there's usually fire.
Athletes of that caliber--and a whole bunch of them--don't usually change coaches without a damn good reason. With Cook, we know his brusk, old-school style was the issue. With Salazar?
This does not by itself make a drug case, but something is obviously wrong. Trevor Graham/Sprint Capital does come to mind.
Well, that's stupid.
But when people point out Salazar's successes in coaching - and he's certainly had some great successes - it's only fair to point out his many failures, especially with injured runners. He has also usually started out with very talented runners, so it's also fair to ask how much of their success comes from pre-existing talent and how much from his coaching.
Is his coaching style to throw a bunch of eggs against the wall and see which ones don't break?
A bunch of PDX elites are moving to CO SPNGS. Julie Henner has to hire an assistant.
I am surprised more marathon types don't go at it on their own. Coaches cost money, often are not in touch with athletes needs for recovery and do way more work than they need beyond the running. Marathon types are highly driven to do the work and often need to be held back. Give them basic guidance and a place for treatment and massages etc... and most are intelligent enough to do a good job at structuring their own workouts. Most of the work they do is mileage anyway and they sprinkle in tempos and long repeats... This allows them to adjust workloads better based on how they feel much more effectively day to day. Maybe they have learned something from Ryan Hall ( like it or not), that they can succeed on their own with less risk of injury.
This will be good for Amy, hopefully she realizes doing barefoot running when having lower leg problems is not a good thing. I think getting away from the Soap Opera that is the Salazar training group will clear her head. I'm not sure going off and training on your own having your husband coach you is the best thing for the Olympic trials. At this point with all the injuries she's had and loss of training making an Olympic team would be difficult. She's a tough women and had a great career on the track and probably has a lot of good running in front of her on the roads. It's too bad she couldn't have hooked up with Jerry's group and given that a try, but the drama of Nike has probably worn her out. Good Luck Amy
coach d wrote:
Webb
Gouchers
Yoder-Begeley
Where there's smoke, there's usually fire.
Athletes of that caliber--and a whole bunch of them--don't usually change coaches without a damn good reason. With Cook, we know his brusk, old-school style was the issue. With Salazar?
This does not by itself make a drug case, but something is obviously wrong. Trevor Graham/Sprint Capital does come to mind.
brusque
You're welcome.
What I Really Think wrote:
Her position:
1. She thinks her injury was caused by excessive training.
2. She thinks she needed surgery and rest to recover.
3. She thinks her future training should be less strenuous.
AlSal's position:
1. She is a wimp and needs to train harder.
2. She is a wimp and needs to shake it off.
3. See 1.
Based on what a bunch of you have said, THIS^^^smells correct.
kidz wrote:
Only Rupp seems to be avoiding problems. (Has he EVER been injured?)
I don't know...I don't know if anyone has really ever benefited from AlSal in the long run.
You put these two sentences right next to each other... try to think *before* writing, not after.
I think Salazar pushes his runners through injury and that's why they are leaving. Let's take a look:
*Dathan Ritzenhein: switched to Salazar, had a brilliant ~6mo period where he set the AR, placed highly at the WCs, and medaled at WHMC. Soon after, following aggressive changes to his running form and modification of his training shoes, he developed metatarsalgia. At some point he also developed a neuroma in his foot, and after a 7mi session of intervals on an indoor track, he developed Achilles tendonitis. While Ritz reports that Salazar was unaware that the workout was going to be done on an indoor track, an acute injury like that should heal rather quickly. Instead, Ritz was muddled by injury for months and opted for surgery in April. He also had surgery on his foot neuroma. Ritz developed complications from the surgery and had to have a second procedure due to infection. The incisions from the second surgery became non-healing wounds, which required a walking boot and use of a wound vacuum, which is usually used to treat diabetic ulcers. Curiously, Ritz reported that he could "still run" with the non-healed wound. I don't know of any doctor that'd permit that. As of today, still with Salazar.
*Alan Webb-came to Salazar after leaving his previous coach who had led him to the mile AR. Aggressive running form modification led to Achilles problems and Webb eventually opted for surgery. After rehabilitating, Webb was seemingly returning to form when he abruptly left Salazar for Jason Vigilante
*Kara Goucher-Has been Salazar's "star" female runner for several years, but barring a few "close ones" in the marathon, has not lived up to her 2007 WC bronze medal. Recently left Salazar after a femoral neck stress "reaction" (in truth, early stage of a stress fracture) scuttled her 2011 WC training. Any stress fracture above the knee is extremely worrisome, particularly in women. Recently left Salazar along with her husband Adam, who was also training under Salazar.
*Amy Yoder Begley-made a huge jump from an "also-ran" to a national champion-caliber runner soon after joining the Salazar camp. Struggled with recurrent injuries since 2009, culminating in Achilles surgery in 2010. During rehab, she strained her calf and suffered a stress "reaction" (read: fracture) in 3rd metatarsal. Now, she has injured her left Achilles and again opted for surgery. She is now leaving Salazar.
For one, I am extremely troubled by the fact that three of his athletes have needed (or at least decided they needed) Achilles surgery in the last few years. I've known many runners with Achilles problems, but exactly zero of them have opted for surgery (and all eventually recovered). Why do Salazar's athletes have these recurrent troubles? I suspect he pushes them too hard in training, and has an 'aggressive' rehab program set. Salazar is highly secretive about his workouts, but from what I have gathered, his runners often do extremely difficult, high-volume high-speed workouts in spikes on the track. This type of program, coupled with an aggressive mindset when it comes to injury, could spell disaster for an injury-prone athlete, and I'm worried that is what is happening in Portland.
Of course we've seen this before with John Cook, but in that case it ended up being Cook's sometimes-acerbic personality and his inability to tactfully deal with female runners and the issues inherent with coaching them (recall Cook had NEVER coached a woman before Flanagan).
Drugs are another possibility, of course, as many athletes are jumping ship at the same time, while new recruits (Amy, Mo, Dathan, and probably soon Mad Len) show rapid and dramatic improvement, then later plateau or succumb to injury. Salazar is also known to seek out every possible legal advantage (correcting marginally low thyroid hormones, pairing thyroid hormones with asthma medicine, cryosaunas, artificial altitude, underwater treadmills, brain wave machines, etc.) for his athletes, and some at the LRC rumor mill have speculated his athletes are microdosing or are using next-generation doping agents like SARMs (selective androgen receptor modulators). Unlikely given the integrity of the runners under his tutelage, but not impossible.
While I believe it's his inability to let runners recover from injury that is causing many of Salazar's runners to jump ship, I cannot say for sure. One thing is certain, though: Something is rotten in the state of Oregon...
AlSal seems to just "fine tune"/sharpen their training initially when he gets his talent so they run a PR or close to it (Ritz, Mo Farah).
Then when Salazar hits them with a year or two of his full blown program they breakdown or hit a plateau. Rupp appears to be the only exception.
His coaching of Webb was mediocre at best whom he had to start off from "scratch" since he was coming off an injury.
He's going to get a reputation like Cerutty where he has one true star pupil in Rupp (Herb Elliott) and then brushes with talent-Webb, Goucher, Yoder, Ritz (John Landy).
Alberto's loyalty lies with Nike rather than his athletes.
That was fantastic, LRCrumormill. Excellent summary!
After reading the summary of injuries to AlSal's athletes, and the success he has had with Farah, it reminds of me of what happened with Ritz, I wonder by the time the olympics come around we'll be saying either:
what happened to Farh or 'geez too bad farah is injured..'
They do seem nonchalant about surgery, almost like it's an obvious go-to rather than a last resort. And lots of times the story after is, "While I was having this done, we went ahead and [had different surgery on different area]," as if that doesn't give you two potential obstacles to not losing several more months.
Beaverton berm runner wrote:
Actually he kicked her out for her poor performance at Nationals. Rumor is he thinks she is too big for a distance runner.
Do you mean the rumor that you are trying to start?
classof89 wrote:
AlSal seems to just "fine tune"/sharpen their training initially when he gets his talent so they run a PR or close to it (Ritz, Mo Farah).
Then when Salazar hits them with a year or two of his full blown program they breakdown or hit a plateau. Rupp appears to be the only exception.
His coaching of Webb was mediocre at best whom he had to start off from "scratch" since he was coming off an injury.
He's going to get a reputation like Cerutty where he has one true star pupil in Rupp (Herb Elliott) and then brushes with talent-Webb, Goucher, Yoder, Ritz (John Landy).
Yeah except at least Cerutty wrote some freaking books. Salazar is silent as a corpse. That's the trouble with coaches these days. Not too many of the great ones are churning out books.
As an athlete, Salazar always pushed himself to the brink - both with training and with racing. It would seem that he coaches the same way and is perhaps a bit one dimensional as a coach in that regard. What I mean is that he expects his athletes to adapt to his coaching rather than tailor the coaching to the physical needs of the athletes. Rupp seems to have the right bio-mechanical make-up to handle that style of training while many of the others do not.
Except with Rupp he isn't forcing big miles too early and is still holding Galen back from doing as many miles as many of his competitiors (at least according to interviews they have both given). It would seem with Galen AlSal learned from his mistakes of pushing himself too hard. I wonder if the difference between the way he is coaching Galen and the way he is approaching everybody else is that he started with Galen as a high schooler and he (AS) still sees Galen as a young runner and is coaching him as such, as a total outsider it seems almost like a father/son relationship with 'dad' calling all the shots. All the other people AlSal has coached have come to him as mature adult runners and perhaps the approach with them has been to put them into "year 8" of his program because that's where they were age wise, but because they didn't go through the development process that Galen has they just couldn't handle it? It will be very interesting to see how/if Mo develops going into the next year.
I am not usually one to suspect PED's, but the general consensus with Salazar's own career that he was using them. He's been quoted many times as saying that he would have tried anything to get better (faith healers, etc). And, the workouts and training he was posting during his heydey raised more than a few eyebrows.
I can't speculate on what he is giving his runners now, but I suspect that he assumes that he was able to push through his own injuries because he was tough, when really he should be giving more credit to what he was ingesting and letting his athletes heal.
Agree with some of the other posters who are puzzled by the persistent and similar injuries among different runners. He doesn't have a huge stable, and they all struggle with the same things. That's a red flag for a coach.
Excellent summary LRCrumormill. Let's state the obvious. AlSal's obsession with running form is ruining as many runners as it is helping. I wouldn't be surprised if they left because they were tired of having their form "corrected."