Explosive New York Times article: Mary Cain breaks silence about NOP

Mary says that race weight is important to race well. But losing weight only will help you perform better up to a certain point. Mary started to hit the point where losing more weight was not helping her perform better, all while being yelled at that losing more weight would help her perform better.

There is not a magic weight for every height/build of individual. Different people race best at different weights. That's why other athletes (and other female mid-distance runners mentioned on here) have reacted well to losing more weight. When Mary's weight loss started to cause her times to in the opposite direction, it should have been clear to any coach that something needed to be fixed. Mary even pointed this out when discussing that NOP had no certified nutritionist. But instead, the coaches told her that she just needed to lose more weight.

And for everyone saying that this is just Mary blaming someone else for her not getting faster, coaches do it too. It's a convenient cop out for coaches to say "it's because you weigh too much" when maybe their coaching approach (not just workouts) might be an issue. Good coaches understand that every athlete responds to almost everything a little different, especially emotionally but even physically.

I think it would be interesting to host a forum of all of the top American women runners where they could speak honestly about their relationship with food and weight. Shalane Flanagan and Jenny Simpson (to name just a couple) are quite a bit leaner now than when they came out of college. I'd be curious to hear their explanation of how that happened.

Anecdotally, I've noticed that many fit women (outside of professional running) tend to get leaner in their late 20s. (Plenty get bigger, but I think you know what I'm talking about -- those 30 to 50 year old fit women who have no vestiges of baby fat.) I'd be curious to hear from sports scientists/nutritionists about whether that's a natural occurrence. Maybe these women are all restricting as well...

...meanwhile in Ethiopia and Kenya today young 19-22yo women did 10x1000m @ 3:00 with 2 minutes rest jog and then ate a plate of fried corn meal and some fresh chicken along with some good greens to balance things out. After that they read the nytimes and laughed their heads off about this whole thing.

afsdfasdf wrote:

C/M Runner wrote:

He may have a psychology degree but it doesn't mean he's board certified.

You don't need to be, idiot

cain is a real child here.

while having a psychologist and nutritionist is a great idea, you want some guru types from world class environments, which are often non-degreed people.

the idea of getting someone with paper credentials - a "certified" expert is totally ridiculous.

for your university degree, is more often that not, is a non functional degree, a quack-ademia piece of toiled paper.

all the top experts in any sports are outside the academic system, in fact, academia does not like guys like peter coe, like arthur lydiard, arch jelley,cerutty, and you name it.

quackademia does not like talent. but they claim you as their own, the keep the facade going.

right now, the best work is coming out of mixed martial arts, where there is an intense mental and physical aspect, and

there is cash to attract good minds to sports med.

go to MMA for sports med protocols.

at the end of the day, Al Sal has contributed a lot to sports medicine knowledge, and the do gooder process, which is 180 to total evil, is to bury all the good results, in the grey area,

in this way, the do gooders here are about as useful as a salem jury for witches back in the day.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

dsrunner wrote:

Actually, your comments are false and misguided.

You should not diffuse or excuse the abuse and neglect Cain was subjected to. It went far beyond pure stupidity, this was pure evil. Psychopathy with a marketing department is not good for the sport.

Meanwhile your training terminology and mindset are outdated. Neither high nor low intensity training is inheritently unhealthy. That’s astoudingly simplistic spin on what in truth amounted to years of sadistic inexcusable abuse.

Her courage, strength and clarity are an inspiration.

Aside from her account, what solid proof do we have that she was subjected to abuse/neglect? The optics of her parents allowing her to move across the country without being there 24/7 seems like neglect. So how is that on Nike/NOP/etc? Do we have anyone from these circles talking about what happened besides Mary? The nice thing is that in the courts if something happened, you get to hear both sides of the story to try and figure out the truth. Thinking it is a forgone conclusion that her side is 100% legit is what got us Duke Lacrosse, mattress girl at Columbia, the kids from Convington, etc. I am going to say, it seems like negligence from parents/coaches/staff since they didn't pick up on signs Mary was in a lot of distress. The fact that she was in distress is probably due to a lot of things. In terms of the veracity of what was said to her, I will wait to hear a response. I am also inclined to think that HS girls should not be coached by AS as he seems to not understand who he is coaching, but I am not going to assume he was saying she was fat or didn't attempt to the best of his ability to coach/guide her. As evidenced by what happened he did a terrible job, but that doesn't mean he was being abusive. He may have been. I would like to see further accounts from other parties. Given what was said, I am sure we will get some in the near future.

stupid person 69 wrote:

mary cain is a middle distance runner and is already pretty thin. why does she need to be super thin? having some weight in muscle is perfectly fine

Because physics?

Trumps idiot kid wrote:

I’d cut myself too if I forfeited going to college to watch Alberto and Galen play touch butt all day.

This is no disrespect to Mary Cain either BTW.

sjsklausj wrote:

18 year olds are placed in charge of nukes

Not to detract from the thread, but no they aren't. Officers would be the ones in charge of nukes, and they have to go to college first.

When the Bears first played William The Refrigerator Perry some reporter asked Ditka why he had not used Noah Jackson the same way and cut him. Ditka said that Perry was an athlete and Noah Jackson was a fat slob.

why go to college when you can make a living off running? college is something you can always go back to later in life.

oboeviolin wrote:

Lenny Leonard wrote:

Salazar may be a lot of things, but there is no way that he misunderstands how female and male athletes differ in their development.

Why do you say that?

I've read many criticisms of college coaches on this site for many years. It seems that this problem of not understanding women and their development is pretty common.

Salazar sounds like he should be banned for good.

We have seen that Salazar left no page unturned when it came to trying to find ways to make his athletes faster. I agree that Salazar probably had a good understanding of how women's bodies differ from men when it comes to athletic development. But most male coaches probably are clueless about the differences in male and female bodies and most females are probably not comfortable sharing female health issues with male coaches.

Mary and Alberto were both working towards Mary being the best athlete ever. Maybe that was not possible due to her body type. Maybe she could have still been successful without being super skinny. But they were shooting for best ever.

There are a lot of things wrapped up in the allegations againt NOP and Salazar by Cain and people are combining them all together. By far the most disturbing allegation if true is that she told coach Salazar and the psychologist she was cutting herself and they ignored that. I almost feel like we should have two different threads. THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT WEIGHT SHE SHOULD BE . While I was surprised about some of the other things ie weighing athletes in front of others, public shaming, I'm not too surprised that Alberto went to extremes to try and get Mary to race well. He has shown he will do just about anything he thinks is legal (although Cain says it was illegal) to get athletes to perform at their best and I'm not surprised he thought weight was important. I think a lot of what Alberto did with his other athletes (allegedly encouraging them to take prescriptions that aren't theirs) is wrong, but if you do some of this same stuff with someone who is a minor it is much worse. I've wondered why some of them having tried a lawsuit and maybe it is because Nike has deep pockets and they were consenting adults but in Cain's case for some of it she wasn't a legal adult and even if legally 18 for most of this, she wans't a fully mature adult mentally. Telling an 18 year old to take some stuff to drop weight I think it worse than doing it to a 28 year old. People forget Mary was just a child when she turned pro. She came through the mixed at USAs for the first time with a stuffed animal. Performance wise she may have been a pro, but maturity wise she was not and should have been treated much differently. I do remember Robert saying "someone should contact her parents" when she signed with NOP. The BBC stuff wasn't out then right? But they had to ask around right? But even if they did and people said, "Alberto will try and make sure she performs well and do questionable things to make sure she does," there is no way they'd bring up the cutting stuff which is why I think people are almost ignoring it and discussing the weight and shaming stuff.

I understand some of what you are saying about the parents. Cain had quit her successful high school team before joining NOP right? One could argue they started her on the path to professional running and debate whether that was the right choice.

However, even if that was the wrong choice, they would have no way to know (if true) that a coach and psychologist would ignore a cutting attempt. I find it hard to believe anyone would do that. It's just so beyond the pale.

Genuine question. Why is this being made into a gender issue and not just an issue of a broken system that values winning over the health of it's athletes? I guess I'm just not fully grasping how NOP abusing Mary Cain is related to the fact that they employed only male coaches. Are there no bad female coaches? Are there no bad female nutritionists? Obviously this was a broken, abusive situation but what does that have to do with gender? Is she suggesting that only females should coach females? If I'm coming off as a jerk, it's unintentional. I'm just seeking to better understand the situation as a male with an obvious blindspot for this type of thing.

Just wanted to let y'all know that Twitter is calling for Alberto to go to prison and for Nike to be shut down.

Conversely, this article is also bringing out the transgender argument folks en masse.

You can kiss any support for T&F coaches goodbye!!! Your sport is toast.

Toodles!

-TheJack

6ft7inBBaller wrote:

Genuine question. Why is this being made into a gender issue and not just an issue of a broken system that values winning over the health of it's athletes? I guess I'm just not fully grasping how NOP abusing Mary Cain is related to the fact that they employed only male coaches. Are there no bad female coaches? Are there no bad female nutritionists? Obviously this was a broken, abusive situation but what does that have to do with gender? Is she suggesting that only females should coach females? If I'm coming off as a jerk, it's unintentional. I'm just seeking to better understand the situation as a male with an obvious blindspot for this type of thing.

I imagine NYT wanted to play up the angle and had it emphasized.

Trumps idiot kid wrote:

I’d cut myself too if I forfeited going to college to watch Alberto and Galen play touch butt all day.

College? You sound like a 7th grader who doesn't know what calling kids "homo" means but you do it anyway.

Just trying to get closer to the truth. This is called an editorial video, it is Mary Cain's version of events.

Naive wrote:

“pure evil”

You obviously don’t have a clue what pure evil is. Nazi Germany was pure evil.

Al Sal just wasn’t a very good coach for Mary. She recognized it and got out before it killed her. The choice to work with him at NOP was her choice.

Any coach who neglects an athlete's mental well-being this egregiously needs a different career. This happens too often at the collegiate level as many ex-D1 runners can attest. If she told her coach she was cutting herself that should have been immediately investigated.

I'd like to believe just putting women in charge would fix it all, but we all know the real answer is removing assholes who care about their results but not about the rules or about their athletes. How many more anecdotes and bans do people need to realize Al Sal is not a good person?

Thankfully, her parents did the right thing in getting her out of a toxic environment ASAP...that's the lesson here - support anyone you know in a toxic environment getting safe. Be it athletics or anything else.

Raysism wrote:

I think it would be interesting to host a forum of all of the top American women runners where they could speak honestly about their relationship with food and weight. Shalane Flanagan and Jenny Simpson (to name just a couple) are quite a bit leaner now than when they came out of college. I'd be curious to hear their explanation of how that happened.

Flanagan only wrote 2 cook books on nutrition and fueling for athletes.