Athletics West Coach Dick Brown (Admitted to AW Athletes Being on Steroids but) told Suzy Favor she didn't need to dope

You don't understand current doping and NOP issues without understanding that Nike was pushing steroids 30+ years ago with AW.

Shoebacca wrote:

It irks me that so many people know something, but USADA won't act until in their minds they've already proven it beyond a reasonable doubt, which is extremely difficult to do.

FYI, they have no authority to do anything. They cannot open cases. Federations direct a NADO like usada to start a sanction that they approve.

Even Armstrong's sanction was a recommendation to the cycling federation.

No way usatf would touch nike... No way.

Everyone should keep in mind that there was very much a "Cold War" mentality between East and West ion the '80s, and AW reflected that, at least in part. (Get it? Athletics WEST)

Everyone knew that the E Euros were doping massively, and if western athletes decided to fight "fire with fire", LOTS of people were willing to look the other way.

kinda bring your moral standard down to the level you think your "enemies" are at. kind of fighting evil with, ergh evil. See the irony? (we humans are just very good at finding excuses)

For you younger readers....I was the charter member of Athletics West. I wore the first pair of Nike track spikes in international competition when Geoff Hollister had Dennis Vixie hand make me a pair of spikes to use in the USA vs. USSR Junior Dual Meet in Sacramento, CA in July 1972. A B/W poster of me running against the two Soviets and Tony Sandoval then came out that September without my knowledge or approval. I have the dubious honor of being Nike's first "poster athlete." I then wore Nike flats and spikes in my record setting senior year of H.S. and during most of my collegiate career when Nike was just an upstart company that most people didn't even know how to pronounce the name. I was one of Nike's first NCAA Champions and All Americans back in 1975 as well as one of their first Olympians in 1976.

After graduation from Illinois in June of 1977... Hollister flew me out to Eugene and I met with Phil Knight at his office in Beaverton and then spent a couple days in Eugene with Geoff and had dinner one night with Harry Johnson and his wife. It was then that they discussed with me the concept of having a Nike/Blue Ribbon Sports sponsored club team based in Eugene that would be organized along the lines of a Eastern European subsidized track club with a coach and very organized training protocol and selected competitions leading up to an extensive competitive season spent on the European Circuit from June-August. I was told that the club was 1-2 years away from reality so I flew home to attempt to find a job that would allow me to also train/race to continue my running career until the club was a reality.

In mid-July I got a phone call from Hollister saying that the timetable had been moved up and that they wanted to start the program yet that fall.

I accepted their proposal in late July and was used by Geoff and Harry to recruit other post-collegiate runners. I moved out there in mid-August of 1977 and the team was pretty much all in residence by mid-September. Most of us lived in Eugene and worked 30 hour work weeks in jobs found by supporters of the program but a handful (Henry Marsh, Doug Brown, Jeff Wells, Mac Wilkens, Al Fuerbach, etc.) lived and trained elsewhere due to school or family commitments but would join us for specific training camps or competition trips. They did not move to Eugene until the next year. Harry also allowed some local top local Eugene athletes like Mike Manley to work out with us... but they weren't financially subsidized by Nike. We all had health and dental insurance through a group plan but no single medical physician. We all lived in rental homes, condos, or apartments and Nike paid the difference between what we made from our jobs at 30 hrs/week and what we would have made full-time. These were not endorsement contracts but Nike also covered 100% of coaching, travel, uniforms, supplies, sports med, entry fees, etc. It was a radically different approach to supporting American T & F athletes in 1977-78 compared to anything else out there at that time.

The team training concept under Johnson worked pretty well that fall but started to unravel that winter/spring due to Harry's dictatorial coaching style and pretty harsh training program. Most all of the AW athletes training in Eugene under Harry got sick or hurt at one time or the other. I won't go into all the details here but we did still exhibit some successful racing results sporadically but much better from June on when the program eased up in time for the National Champs and our European tour in which almost everyone set PR's at their main events. But, morale and attitude continued to deteriorate and the team atmosphere/environment became tense and uncomfortable even at the US Champs and while we were competing in Europe with decent to good results. Most all of us were in the top 5 of the year end US seasonal list of mid to long distance times in 1978. We all were given 2 weeks of R & R at "home" following the conclusion of our nearly 2 month tour of Europe. Upon returning to Eugene George Malley (Malmo) and myself tendered our resignations from the team. I moved back to Illinois but Malley decided to stay and attempt to still train in Eugene on his own. Most of the other non-resident AW athletes finally relocated to Eugene that fall but Henry Marsh and Paul Geis adopted a unique approach to getting around the Harry Johnson problem and got Bill Bowerman to agree to coach them to avoid Johnson's overtraining program model.

I regret now that I did not try that tact as Johnson (as well as everyone else at Nike) was reluctant to buck Bowerman if Bill decided he really wanted to do something. Harry threatened to cut off all assistance to me if I moved back to Illinois and Rob Strasser even gave me my market value during what I now realize was an exit interview up at Nike headquarters. I did not want to leave Nike after over 6 years with them... but found I really had no choice. I could not survive post-collegiately on just a few pair of shoes and sweats. Harry Johnson threatened to quit AW coaching if Nike helped me more than that....Nike had invested well over half a million dollars into AW that first year... and they still believed in Johnson's coaching system at that point in time. So, I had become "expendable." It would take another year before Nike management finally understood and appreciated the problems as the team has mostly really bad results in 1979 as Johnson ramped up his program further and guys underperformed both domestically and overseas. Eventually they would fire Harry 4-6 weeks before the 1980 Olympic Trials that were conducted in Eugene so that they could recruit talented athletes that were in town for the Trials. They hired Dick Quax to be the new coach.

On that September 1978 day when I returned to AW's new offices to resign.. the first person I bumped into was Dick Brown who said he was an exercise physiologist with a master's degree who had been hired to test and monitor all the AW athletes blood and other physiological signs... in an attempt to establish a baseline of good health and high performance blood values for each athlete to compare against when performance deteriorated so that "over training or impending illness" could be identified earlier and remedied. This was all part of Nike/AW's intent to provide more support services to the athletes to help them reach their full potential and be more internationally competitive. Again, some really revolutionary stuff for American athletes as we were aiming at the 1980 Moscow Olympics....

Of course, everyone knows that Brown's blood monitoring and other physiological testing/evaluation for good health... while training as hard as possible without becoming sick or injured... is only one small step from managing PED usage from a safety/effectiveness standpoint. According to Julie Strasser's book, Swoosh, and the newspaper article linked above...Dick Brown and other support medical people in Eugene "crossed the line" and got into PED usage/monitoring sometime in the next few years. Based on my own experience with competing against AW athletes.... I would judge that to be around 1981 and later. With the exception of the field event athletes like Wilkens and Feurbach... I believe that everyone on AW from 1977-1980 was probably PED free. But, from 1981 on.... I have my doubts. To include Alberto Salazar's huge breakthrough year of 1982 in when he set the AR in the 5K, 10K, and marathon... altho he did start to break down and his performances slacked off somewhat by mid 1983. Jeff Drenth's mysterious death in 1986 (?) after a workout and massage at AW hdqtrs seemed to have been a turning point for AW Eugene....and I also believe that there was an "accidental" fire not long after that which destroyed a bunch of paper office records in the AW office located in the AW hdqtrs. It wasn't long after then ... that it became apparent that AW was being "phased out" in favor of individual contracts only as we led up to 1988 and beyond.

The original concept of Athletics West was noble enough.... but the biggest mistake was to hire a coach who had only had experience at the H.S. level (14-18 year olds) for years to be both coach and GM of a program which involved only older post collegiate athletes who had only been invited to join because they had been successful in their own right... in their own system... in order to post results good enough to be recruited. Johnson didn't care how they had arrived at that point in performance... they were gonna do it "his way" in AW or they were not going to be part of his group. At that time, there were 3 coaching "legends" in Eugene: Bill Bowerman, Bill Dellinger, and Harry Johnson. Bowerman and Dellinger had extensive experience with older college age athletes.....while Johnson did not. Bowerman did not want to coach full time again but I always wonder what would have happened if former US Olympian Dellinger had been given the reins to AW instead of Johnson... as rumors indicated was probably considered. Things might have turned out differently due to the disparity in personality and coaching styles between Johnson and Dellinger. We'll never know.... I do believe that Hollister was instrumental in Johnson getting the job since Geoff was a South Eugene H.S. grad which is where Johnson coached and experienced much success.

I'm sure that some of the AW athletes who stayed in during 1979 or came in during 1980 or later... read LRC and this post.... and can submit their own version of events as well as opinions after mine. I welcome such. I do not think that Nike went back to an organized and coached training groups until they gave Alberto Salazar the job to coach and organize a few of the Nike contracted American distance runners who were struggling on their own back in the '90's. Dan Browne was probably the biggest star in that group. There was also the Gagliano coached Nike Farm Team at Palo Alto. I believe that AW (80's) and these two groups (in the 90's) is what spawned the present NOP and Bowerman Track Club training groups as well as the OTC Elite group coached by Salazar and Schumacher and Mark Rowland, respectively. But, much of the template was developed (good or bad) by the original Athletics West.... to probably include medically supervised use of PED's or other questionable supplements or apparatus/devices to enhance athletic performance... paid for by the profits enjoyed by the Nike sports marketing success story from the late 1970's to today.

It is a uniquely American story......compared to the other countries we were competing against back then. Most of them government sponsored.

.

Thanks for posting.

Good job Craig. here is my recap from a previous thread (2009):

Athletics West, the beginning.

September 1977. Geoff Hollister hired Harry Johnson a local high school coach. Original core members: Craig "Felix" Virgin, Phil "Tiny" Kane, Mike "Manks" Manke, Jim "Craw" Crawford, and Myself ("malmo" after defeating hometown hero Dan Glans in Malmo, Sweden)... I think that it was either Tiny or Craw that first moved to Eugene.

November 1977 Satellite original members: Mac Wilkins, Al Feuerbach, "The Reverend" Jeff Wells, John Lodwick, Doug Brown, and Craig Brigham.

June 1978: First generation, second wave were Ralph "Mr. Freeze" King, Henry "Mormon" Marsh, Kevin "Kinky" McCarey. And Dick Brown, who would run their "lab" that was formed in the fall of 78.

Fall of 1978. Second generation: Alex Kasich, Ron Addison, Tom Burleson, Lionel Ortega, Tony Sandoval, Paul "Stem" Stemmer, Randy Melancon, Paul Geis. Mary Decker soon followed (1979)

By 1980 the flood gates had opened and by 1983 they had Jack Daniels, Jeff Drenth, Don Clary, Al Salazar, Dan Aldridge, Thom Hunt, Tom Byers, Steve Placencia, Ken Martin, and many others. The list is very long and I'm sure that I left off a lot of major players, not by design.

-------

Athletics West started in 1977 as the result of Geoff Hollister's misguided dream of bringing top Americans to Eugene to train together. The thought here was to develop American talent to become competitive on the world stage. It was a good idea, but a very poor implementation. In the first two years that AW was in operation athletes were expected to live an train in Eugene under a successful but unproven high school coach named Harry Johnson. Johnson quickly proved to be ineffective as a coach because of his dictatorial and abrasive manner and was fired in the Spring of 1980 and was sent off to Korea by Nike.

Geoff Hollister started recruiting athletes for AW sometime in the Summer of 1977, a few of them (Tony Waldrop, Greg Fredericks and Randy Thomas) turning him down for greener pastures. Others like Craig Virgin and Tiny Kane accepted the offer of a guaranteed minimum income of $1000/month and a part-time job. $1000/mo. was good money in 1977, especially in Eugene's awful economy. Remember up until then, no one was paid openly to run by the shoe companies, and those who were paid under-the-table were few and far between. Hollister called me in Europe in August then a few times in early September. He sounded shady and desperate but his persistence wore me down so he flew me to Eugene to hear them out. First impressions mean a lot, and I was not impressed one bit by either Harry or Geoff, both of whom could not stop talking about themselves and how great Harry was and how lucky I'd be to be coached by him. The one thing that really bothered me about these two was that neither of them cared about the sport or other people except when they could benefit from it/them personally. I could see that from day one Hollister and Johnsons sport wasnt anything like the sport that I signed up for. In fact, the only employee at Nike that I can think of whose philosophy on running aligned with mine is Jeff Johnson (not related to HJ) -- ironically someone I've never met.

Against my better judgment, and swayed by the idea that my running career didn't have to end at age 22, I said I'd come out for a year to see if it was for me. We were the first track and field athletes to "go pro."

Johnson's training method was essentially the prototype of the mindset you now see on these message boards. He plagiarized from the ideas of famous coaches (Lydiard, Holmer, etc) that he had read in running books, then put them all together into one "program", then threw in his own numerology metric on top of that, and wrote out complicated schedules. He didn't know a damn thing about training or human physiology. It was a lot like saying "I like ice cream, I like tacos, I like sushi, and I like apple pie" then throwing it all into a pot and serving it every day. It tasted like shit.

Contrary to the active imaginations of some, there was no dormitory style living. We weren't allowed to race indoors or any race of our choosing. Johnson decided when and where we'd race. His schedule had us running into a brick wall week after endless week for nine months all for a three month racing window of opportunity in Europe. There wasn't a week that went by without Johnson telling you how great he was and how lucky we were to be coached by him. The most frequent boast of his was that "you'll never understand my program until the year's over." His way of reminding us about his coaching genius. We heard this boast from him every week.

To this day, I don't understand his program, and I don't know of anyone else who does.

We had a small group of hangers-on who were allowed to train with us. The camaraderie of the added bodies was a positive, but there were more negatives to it than the positives. Many of those hangers-on were local Eugene runners who were envious (even pissed off) that they didn't get selected to AW and would show up ready to race every workout. It got to be a real pain trying to train consistently when some yahoo goes nuts for part of the workout, then you don't see him again for days.

Johnson had a sour view of our sport and of life in general. In Harry's mind, it was "us against them." "Them" was everyone else, especially the U of O, and specifically Bill Dellinger, whom "J" had a special wrath for. Apparently Dellinger refused to bow down at the altar of Johnson during a recruiting call.

By the end of the first AW tour in Europe (1978) almost all of us were sick of Johnson, but there was nothing we could do about him. Harry controlled the purse strings. A dependency relationship model was the only thing Harry understood. It was Jim Crawford who nicknamed him "little Hitler". Doug Brown was the most vocal anti-Johnson instigator, and he advised us all to do what he did -- keep two sets of books: 1) What you told Harry you did, and 2) What you actually did. But when push came to shove it was Craig Virgin and I who became the first defectors. Believe me, it would have been much easier leaving the mafia than it was to leave AW -- "we're not going to let you get away with this, you know?". They were furious. They reneged on their bonus commitments and began a malicious whisper campaign. When the smear campaign failed it went so far that my landlord Stu Berg, a hulking 6-8 300lb thug (and a close friend of Johnson's) threatened to break my legs when I refused an extortion attempt by him. When I finally got fed up with their vindictive games, I drove up to Beaverton to tell Phil Knight what was going on, it only infuriated them even more. Johnson and Hollister, true to form, never spoke to me again, and it wasn't until 15 years later that Hollister was forced to put on his best Mike Damone face when he found himself next to me in a Eugene restaurant.

The absolute best moment from the first year was when Mac Wilkins caught Henry Marsh cheating at Risk. I can still hear Mac's voice: "Now wait a minute there, Mormon. Let me see those cards!" Had it been 1878 instead of 1978 there would have been 6 bullets in Dinwoody's chest.

By 1979 a couple of athletes escaped Harry's regime by running for cover under Bowerman's apron. This made both Johnson and Hollister pissed, and finally opened the eyes of a few in Beaverton that if they didn't do something about the Johnson problem things were going to implode. In the spring of 1980, in the midst of the Olympic Trials training, and without warning, Johnson was fired to the joy of everyone, and athletes were free to be coached by whomever they wanted and could live wherever they chose. I had people running across the track the day he was canned to be the first to tell me the "great" news. Ironically, not including Hollister, Virgin and I were the only ones saddened by Johnson's demise. For Hollister it was an indictment on his poor judgment.

After Johnson was fired, I was told by insiders in Beaverton, he boxed up the shrine to himself and never followed track again. Sad.

By the early 1980's the original goal that AW was to be a springboard to international success had been compromised to the point that it became cluttered with individuals whose only goal was to keep their subsidy going for another year. While there were a few blue-chippers stepping up to the plate, by and large, Eugene became a hangout for running vagabonds.

Athletics West had the potential to be a good thing, but it lacked adult supervision from the beginning. The closest it came to that was when Bob Sevene took over. By then it was too late.

If you want to learn more about AW then read "Swoosh".

PS. For the record, Tiny Kane really could piss into a second story window.

Read more:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3007030&page=2#ixzz3lvszlSvB

Virgin and Malley: thanks for the well-written posts! Fascinating stuff.

Sure makes one think twice about making one's life goal to be a fast runner with a big shoe sponsorship.

Al Burrito wrote:

Virgin and Malley: thanks for the well-written posts! Fascinating stuff.

Sure makes one think twice about making one's life goal to be a fast runner with a big shoe sponsorship.

Your odds are better to make it as a singer or musician with a record deal. There are more of those than fast runners with mega-shoe deals. So, forget about it. Run for the fun of it, and forget being a Walter Mitty.

The irony is that SFH, like Regina, was having quite the breakout year herself leading up to the olympics. When Regina got busted, I thought SFH was next. They both were PRing all over the place after having long solid careers that seemed to have plateaued for a while. Perhaps she really went for broke after her brother took his own life? I wonder if she will address this in her recent tell-all tour.

Henry Porter II wrote:

Thanks for posting.

Ditto. You too malmo.

and a little story to illustrate the lack of esprit and back-stabbing that typically poisoned the well during the first year.

One of our final competitions of the Summer was in Warsaw. We stumbled upon a plaza where there was a marble statue of the Goddess Nike. Next to the plaza there were gift shops that offered all sorts of cheaply made Polish nick-knacks for tourists like myself, where I found a 10" metal replica Nike statuette. Knowing that I intended to quit AW when I got home, I decided to purchased three of them, intended as parting gifts for Phil Knight, Rob Strasser and Geoff Hollister. I gave them to Doug Brown, trusting him to deliver the statuettes for me. Brownie said, "sure, malmo, you can count on me. I'll do that for you."

After being threatened by Harry's buddy Stu Burge, I decided that enough was enough and contacted Knight to request a personal interview with him to explain the circumstances of my departure.

Nike was headquartered in a low-rent office park back then. Knight's office was long and narrow, and about the size and decor of a Motel 6 room. His desk was backed against the right wall with a guest sofa perpendicular to it. After a brief chat I noticed that he actually had that Nike statuette on the credenza behind him, which caused me to smile knowingly.

When I got an opening I smiled, pointed at the statue, and said "That's a nice statue you have there."

Knight turned around to the credenza with a big grin on his face, and said, "Isn't it? Doug Brown got that for me. Wasn't that a thoughtful gesture?"

I mumbled, "Yes it was."

Awesome to see Craig Virgin posting on LR. This is what makes the boards worth visiting.

Thanks for your view also Malmo. I enjoy hearing the first hand accounts from guys that have lived the life of a professional.

I wonder if in 10 or 20 years, Ritz or Hall will be lurking LR and telling some stories every now and then.

So things haven't changed much in the culture out there.

I'm saving this page, lest it get arbitrarily deleted. Thanks for the insights and stories Craig Virgin and malmo.

Mr Virgin, Malmo -

Two of the best written, most informative posts I've seen here in a long while.

Great stuff, thanks. Long live LR.

HRE wrote:

Henry Porter II wrote:

Thanks for posting.

Ditto. You too malmo.

Best two posts on Letsrun for a very long time.

Craig/George,

Thank you for the thoughtful posts .

Hope the kids take the time to read them through, they are important to the history of the sport .

been around 'ya know wrote:

It is not interesting because it was 30 years ago.

Athletics West is in the history books. It was a different time. The eastern euopean countries had state sponsored drug programs.

And times have continued to drop since then. That's pretty interesting, isn't it?

World Cross 1980

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYr-anCd300