Surprisingly insensitive of you. This was a person who sued Nike for trauma that was in no small amount caused by the culture there. That kind of culture is pervasive in youth sports nowadays. It sucks for her but she is the template cautionary tale(at least in athletics).
Whether you like it or not (and I can tell that many of you don’t like it), Mary Cain’s story is a really important story in US distance running.
I WILL absolutely be purchasing and reading her book. It’s a fascinating story about the reality of being a distance running prodigy, and then being exploited by a broken system that exploits tons of other (mostly female) athletes.
I want to address a few things from previous posters, namely, people who are so frustrated that she didn’t just cave to the narrative that was slapped on her, the one that paints her as a girl who was once fast but hit puberty and slowed down, and graciously disappeared from view.
Mary Cain didn’t have the mentality or the work ethic of an elite athlete: Can you provide concrete evidence of this? Where is the evidence? Give me stories, quotes, anything. Mary was a professional athlete before she graduated from high school and she was a very successful one. She did it all while being a straight A student. Currently she’s at Stanford Medical School and published a memoir at the same time. I don’t have any insights into her work ethic as I don’t know her, but from the outside, it doesn’t seem like she is exactly a couch potato.
Mary Cain is an attention seeker: When Mary went public, she said multiple times she wasn’t expecting much, just a chance to reclaim her story. Her story went VIRAL. It wasn’t just the running world. She was given every opportunity, every chance to become a full blown influencer. She could have turned her instagram page into a shrine for all things Mary, capitalizing on every trend, and amassing followers. Instead she kept a relatively low social media profile, stuck to the advocacy she was trying to do rather than make every moment about her.
People gripe on Atalanta, and I also think that the project was not well executed or thought out. But I don’t think Atalanta was an extension of her attention seeking but rather an earnest but ill concieved attempt to help make the sport better. She was like, 23-24 when she created it, so the idea tanked. Who cares?
If we want to see athletes in the sport find success, we need to learn from what happened to Mary Cain: People forget this, but Mary Cain’s talent level at the time was completely unprecedented. No other high school girl was running as fast as she was ever. And she did it without the shoes. She has articulated multiple times the way she was mistreated by Salazar told she had to lose weight and punished by being held out of a trip to Europe, even though she was in shape. The result was losing tons of weight in a matter of three months which left her bones brittle and her way more injury prone than she ever had been. There was psychological manipulation that led to depression. She was given laxatives and birth control pills to help her lose weight. None of the scrutiny was tied to performance because her performance only started tanking AFTER she was pressured to lose weight. Mary’s story opened the door for women to share how they have been pushed into losing weight without there being a concrete performance reason why. Maybe, just maybe it’s not the best thing for girls and women to focus solely on weight to run faster.
Alberto Salazar does bad things: Not sure why everyone is so insistent that Mary Cain is a whiner, when Salazar was literally banned from coaching because it was proven that he messed with drugs and has behaved unethically. He gave his own son testosterone yall! Why are we so quick to dismiss Mary Cain when she isn’t the one who was banned from the sport!
This is a story where everyone is at fault. Salazar for being an abusive creep, Cain’s parents for shipping her off across the country to run professionally by herself before she was ready, and those who saw what was happening and did nothing. Mary herself is not blameless: She could have run with her HS team and led a normal life. She was doing pretty good as it was, and no one forced her to go to NOP.
This is a story where everyone is at fault. Salazar for being an abusive creep, Cain’s parents for shipping her off across the country to run professionally by herself before she was ready, and those who saw what was happening and did nothing. Mary herself is not blameless: She could have run with her HS team and led a normal life. She was doing pretty good as it was, and no one forced her to go to NOP.
This is a story where everyone is at fault. Salazar for being an abusive creep, Cain’s parents for shipping her off across the country to run professionally by herself before she was ready, and those who saw what was happening and did nothing. Mary herself is not blameless: She could have run with her HS team and led a normal life. She was doing pretty good as it was, and no one forced her to go to NOP.
Hard disagree. Saying “everyone is at fault” flattens the reality of the situation, and suggests everyone deserves equal blame.
There are reasons why Mary couldn’t run on her high school team. She said she was bullied off of her team. Now, it’s possible there was more to the story than that, but before Salazar was even in the picture, it was an unwelcoming environment to be there. Bronxville is not an easy place if you don’t fit in.
People always knew about Salazar, but back in 2012 you had to dig deep into the rumor mill to actually find out the truth about him. I don’t think Mary’s family was equipped to do that. Mary’s parents probably thought he was a savior that came to help them when they already found themselves in a difficult situation. They only knew he was a successful professional coach hot of the London Olympics. Kara had just left his coaching. Nothing about him had come to the public yet. They were probably honored to have him coach their daughter. And they didn’t ship Mary off to Portland. If they sent her to live there when she was sixteen, that would have been shipping off. But Mary went to Portland for college. That’s different.
Now, it’s totally possible that mistakes were made by Mary’s family. It’s possible that her ostracization on the team was due to the way she and her family behaved too. But none of that excuses Salazar’s behavior and the way he ran that team.
This is a story where everyone is at fault. Salazar for being an abusive creep, Cain’s parents for shipping her off across the country to run professionally by herself before she was ready, and those who saw what was happening and did nothing. Mary herself is not blameless: She could have run with her HS team and led a normal life. She was doing pretty good as it was, and no one forced her to go to NOP.
That's a good take in that no one person is fully clean but I think the majority falls on Al Sal regardless.
I just think going forward, Mary will be set for life and can put this behind her. Even if she didn't have rich parents, she'll be a successful doctor and make tons of $$$$$. Having STEM-focused abilities is a gift itself, even if she was not a pro runner. She will never really face the struggles most Americans do trying to get by.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
This is a story where everyone is at fault. Salazar for being an abusive creep, Cain’s parents for shipping her off across the country to run professionally by herself before she was ready, and those who saw what was happening and did nothing. Mary herself is not blameless: She could have run with her HS team and led a normal life. She was doing pretty good as it was, and no one forced her to go to NOP.
Hard disagree. Saying “everyone is at fault” flattens the reality of the situation, and suggests everyone deserves equal blame.
There are reasons why Mary couldn’t run on her high school team. She said she was bullied off of her team. Now, it’s possible there was more to the story than that, but before Salazar was even in the picture, it was an unwelcoming environment to be there. Bronxville is not an easy place if you don’t fit in.
People always knew about Salazar, but back in 2012 you had to dig deep into the rumor mill to actually find out the truth about him. I don’t think Mary’s family was equipped to do that. Mary’s parents probably thought he was a savior that came to help them when they already found themselves in a difficult situation. They only knew he was a successful professional coach hot of the London Olympics. Kara had just left his coaching. Nothing about him had come to the public yet. They were probably honored to have him coach their daughter. And they didn’t ship Mary off to Portland. If they sent her to live there when she was sixteen, that would have been shipping off. But Mary went to Portland for college. That’s different.
Now, it’s totally possible that mistakes were made by Mary’s family. It’s possible that her ostracization on the team was due to the way she and her family behaved too. But none of that excuses Salazar’s behavior and the way he ran that team.
The thought that Mary Cain went to Portland to go to college is absurd. She went to Portland to train as a track athlete. She went out there with, apparently, no support or peer group to surround herself with and instead was thrown in with a group of mature athletes and not college students. I said at the time that the parents need to tread lightly in agreeing to this set up...assuming they did.
It appears that you are posting from an angle of being some sort of insider and are going to give her every possible doubt in her favor. That's ok however it makes everything you post less than genuine.
As an aside, how much info other than what is already public can be told in a book as I'm going to guess that any settlement would have contained a pretty solid NDA.