Tara Welling on the culture of NOP: "weight was...embedded into the training process...it was a constant comparison battle"

The physician had food?

So, this to me sounds pretty positive and responsible. Like someone with her best interests in mind, and also ensuring that she can run her fastest.

But she follows up with:

Which, given the former statement doesn't really make sense. I'm not sure how she gets there. Perhaps the part that made her doubt that is the part where she talked about going up to 105lbs and then being asked to drop the upper body stuff and bring it back down to 100lb to be like Dibaba.

All that in mind, her take seems quite reasonable and fair. She throws out things Alberto did that were good, and things that could be seen as not so good, such as athlete comparisons and hinging her NOP career on one race (a time target or something seems much more reasonable than just one opportunity where if you have an off day you're fvcked).

One of the themes we are seeing and getting a pretty clear picture of is that a Alberto is a very detail oriented control freak, especially not well suited for coaching women. It is so bizarre to see a man so well versed on some aspects of training so misinformed and stuck in the past on other aspects (such as exact arbitrary weight goals).

He and Nike openly was recruiting for a women’s head coach for the NOP for several years as he realized he was not as good with women athletes. But he/Nike were never able to hire one. I think it would have been much better for Kara, Tara, Mary, Amy if they had.

Maybe Shalene becomes that over at Bowerman Track Club.

jesseriley wrote:

Ha ha, AS would know about weight loss. They had to give him 6 liters after one marathon. That’s almost 13 pounds of fluid. Yeah, let’s make that guy a coach!

Very short, troubled career for such a talent.

You don’t know what it’s like to sweat as much AlSal and me. We have the highest recorded sweat rates on record. I’ve dropped that much weight during an event too and it sucks.

Would Shalane direct them to attain the same body type that she has?

Alberto was also Welling's coach when she lost weight to an unhealthy degree. With his obsession with weighing athletes, this is not something that would have escaped his attention. In other words, Alberto was one of the causes of Welling's condition in the first place, he was not just the cure.

Been in the game a while wrote:

One of the themes we are seeing and getting a pretty clear picture of is that a Alberto is a very detail oriented control freak, especially not well suited for coaching women. It is so bizarre to see a man so well versed on some aspects of training so misinformed and stuck in the past on other aspects (such as exact arbitrary weight goals).

He and Nike openly was recruiting for a women’s head coach for the NOP for several years as he realized he was not as good with women athletes. But he/Nike were never able to hire one. I think it would have been much better for Kara, Tara, Mary, Amy if they had.

Maybe Shalene becomes that over at Bowerman Track Club.

The article is clear that he didn't single out women. I think that goes agains the narrative Kara, Mary and others are pushing out there. I agree he was a control freak and stuck in the past with respect to racing weight. But I think a lot of people are still in that mindset in 2019. A lot.

Sounds like that's exactly what he did.

"I was told when we get back to the states, he would help me get connected with... (insert every health professional)."

They were out of the states and didn't have current access to those resources. He got her food, and then planned to get her help (and did).

You're making something out of nothing because you're either ignorant or have an agenda.

I left the Oregon Project in the winter of 2014. By that point, I was solely working with [NOP assistant] Pete Julian as I felt he better understood how I responded to training.

I think Rowbury recently said something similar regarding her gradual switch from Salazar to Julian.

The fact that people can read this article and conclude that it implicates Salazar in some wrong doing regarding Tara is just typical of these fanatic haters who possess some kind of warped agenda.

All this talk of weight loss is making me hungry.

T.M.A.D.D.D.H.A.S.F.N.E.

Agenda wrote:

The fact that people can read this article and conclude that it implicates Salazar in some wrong doing regarding Tara is just typical of these fanatic haters who possess some kind of warped agenda.

That depends. Was Salazar's mistake asking his athletes to lose weight to unhealthy levels, or was it asking them to adjust their weights in ways that were arbitrary and not specific to the athlete's needs? If it's the latter, I think this article does indict Salazar.

In other words, if we are setting the bar so low that saying Salazar didn't want his athletes to be malnourished, then this article is positive, I guess. If the bar is higher, and we think Salazar should not be putting unrealistic expectations on his athletes that are arbitrarily set and that put said athletes under extreme pressure, then I'm not sure this article does anything to vindicate him.

BadSummary wrote:

This was actually finally a good article for Alberto. He actively got Tara help and didn’t let her race until she gained weight. Yet in your summary above you portray it like it was entirely negative, which it wasn’t. Why not include the good parts?

I agree. Very odd.

BadSummary wrote:

This was actually finally a good article for Alberto. He actively got Tara help and didn’t let her race until she gained weight. Yet in your summary above you portray it like it was entirely negative, which it wasn’t. Why not include the good parts?

Ditto. LRC this was a great angle you got, but the summary was really unfair.

Attention allison wrote:

Wait a minute. Why isn’t Skechers catching grief for cancelling her sponsorship co-incident with her having a baby?

+1000

Attention allison wrote:

Wait a minute. Why isn’t Skechers catching grief for cancelling her sponsorship co-incident with her having a baby?

Are we certain that she didn't want out of a sponsorship that required her to run in Skechers?

runnnnner for sale. wrote:

I swear all the ex-female runners always seem to wind up in real estate. It shows you that they ain't that bright to begin with.

And Yes I know I'm ending a sentence with a preposition.

Or they simply have far fewer career fields leading to high earnings starting at age 30+ than even their male counterparts do. Nobody wants a 33 year old intern or entry level employee who hasn't been in touch with the field studied in college for a decade or more. Male or female. What, should she open a shoe store like Kennedy did?

Dr store wrote:

The physician had food?

Someone that malnourished would likely also suffer from hormonal and GI issues which would make achieving a healthy body composition a greater challenge absent addressing them. Letsrun is a great microcosm of America, hilariously ignorant of science and medicine.

Her husband works at Nike.

Salazar STILL is employed by Nike (which says a lot about the morals/ethics of that company), has had tremendous influence up until the ban. There is no indication one way or another as to whether he still does.

Would it be smart for her to trash Salazar (fellow employee) and or/Nike and put her husband at serious, possibly career-ending risk?? What does she have to gain by slamming them when there is so much to lose?