We merged two Mary Cain threads into 1. The 2nd one was entitled, "Update: Mary Cain makes another sexual allegation - Alberto Salazar looked at her exposed breasts while she was sleeping"
I was curious and read her memoir last night. I was previously very sympathetic to her because of what she went through, having read her NY Times article and others. I am less so having just read her memoir.
1. She spends a lot of time airing serious grievances about her high school head girls' track/CC coach, her teammates and their parents. Many super talented kids face resentment, envy or worse in HS. Since her parents knew she was being bullied and she says that they met with the principal and AD multiple times, without a change in how she was being treated, why didn't they just forget the HS team and have her run for a USATF team early on. When she switched to the boys' team, that didn't end well either. Remove yourself from the toxic situation.
2. There isn't much new about Alberto and NOP in the book, except that she alleges he came into her bedroom three times at night when she was staying at his house. Darren Treasure was, as has been previously reported, not a psychologist, was unprofessional in his behavior and lacking in compassion.
I was shocked at what she wrote about Pete Julian. Extremely unkind and gratuitous.
3. I applaud what she has done with non profits and speaking out against athlete abuse. That is wonderful. But, prior to her memoir, at times I have wondered if she projects her experiences on to people who aren't having bad experiences.
4. Her memoir left me wondering about a few things: The size of her ego, a sense of entitlement, her not having yet developed certain coping and maneuvering skills. Also, NIKE probably paid her hundreds of thousands of dollars when they signed her (she doesn't disclose the financial terms of her contract), but she complains in chapter 125 that she saw a real sports psychologist after leaving NOP and NIKE wouldn't pay or reimburse for it, because they had Darren. And her $20 million lawsuit against NIKE.
As a retired physician, I sincerely hope she gets through her clinical med school years and residency without too much trauma. There will be challenges. Being a physician is not about you.
Well written post. Do you honestly believe she’ll make it through med school? I can only imagine her personal statement. I think k they’ll push her through M4 but she’ll never apply or match to a residency.
She probably wont. She seems to be a very confusing or confused person. Im sure i read she was going to try triathlons,then she was going to run for ireland,now she wants to be a doctor.I also read she attempted to go back to oregon after quitting salazars group.I always hoped she would attempt a comeback,as the 800 meter runner she really is,but that didnt happen. Or maybe it did........
I'm finally fed up with this sheet. She is wallowing in drama. She's taking it into as many overtimes (5, 6, 7?) as she can get out of it. Alberto is a strange guy, who was doing creepy things to his female athletes, that is true, but this is just too much. At some point you have to decide who is actually telling the truth, and who is not? She could have quit Alberto/Nike after months, or a year at most. But she didn't. Enough.
This is the take you give when you lack empathy and critical thinking. May you never find yourself or a loved one in an abusive dynamic.
Book Reader, are you sure our name isn't "Book Writer"?
Well written post. Do you honestly believe she’ll make it through med school? I can only imagine her personal statement. I think k they’ll push her through M4 but she’ll never apply or match to a residency.
She probably wont. She seems to be a very confusing or confused person. Im sure i read she was going to try triathlons,then she was going to run for ireland,now she wants to be a doctor.I also read she attempted to go back to oregon after quitting salazars group.I always hoped she would attempt a comeback,as the 800 meter runner she really is,but that didnt happen. Or maybe it did........
I think you are the one who is confused.
I haven't been a Mary shill and have called out some parts of her book I felt were unfair to others but these ridiculous comments make it clear that a lot of people (probably men) are still very uncomfortable with her.
God forbid a person in their twenties try different things. All in all, Mary is pretty accomplished. She's an author and will be a doctor. So things will work out fine.
You guys have GOT to accept that Alberto was a bad coach, and an abusive person. It's not just Mary who has alleged this. He was banned by USADA in 2019. He's banned by Safesport for life in 2021. What more do you need to accept the fact that this "legend" was actually no legend at all?
Now I don't blame you for this taking time to settle. I recall the puff pieces probably written by Ken Goe about Alberto's "special relationship" with Galen Rupp. It's easy to idealize something like that. But can you read between the lines now? Can you understand that a high school kid should not be that close to their coach?
Kara Goucher, the greatest female athlete Alberto ever coached has gone on the record saying he SA'ed her, gave her prescription pills she did not have a prescription for to lose weight, and manipulated her against other female athletes. Those things did not contribute to her success. Those things are not "tough coaching."
Alberto was not a meticulous coach who paid attention to details. He was obsessed with controlling other people and used coaching as a mechanism to fulfill that obsession. He lied about his friend Darren being a sports psych so Darren could spill all his secrets to Alberto. He made everyone on the team a narc. He had young kids he "coached" live at his house so he could watch them. He monitored food intake, not because he was concerned about runners getting faster because he liked to control what people ate and did.
He was a terrible coach. A terrible one. He turned several of his runners into head cases. He relied too much on prescription pills and performance enhancers. He wasn't on the cutting edge of anything. He was delusional. Mary wrote about how instead of letting her body grow naturally, he taped her arm down so it wouldn't fly out and jammed her into a horse brace to "fix her posture". That resulted in tons of muscle and bone issues and injuries, anyone with common sense would be able to see from a mile away. He didn't send her to a real doctor when she got a stress fracture so she ran on an injured leg until she went to a real doctor.
Hoooooooly Moly. I’ve made it through a few chapters of audiobook and just WOWZA. The way this girl feels victimized by almost every daily interaction is shocking.
- As a SEVENTH GRADER on a highschool team, remarks how revealing the oversized uniform feels (and how the boys don’t have to deal with that). Ahem, isn’t this a rite of passage? As a 90lb male 9th grader, I too, felt very exposed in my size Medium 20 year old uniform - it has not been added to my memoir
- You told all the older girls (when you are 12) that you want to win ______ meets (probably all the time) and they seem a little bit annoyed by it? How EVIL of them!!
- The hs XC coach was (possibly) a bit cold towards you when you didn’t want to run XC as the most talented athlete he had every come across. HEINOUS behavior!
- The HS parents who love running and whose kids love running talk a lot about their running at their kids’ running practices and running races? HOW DARE THEY!!!
- Your coach had a small conversation with another athlete about how good you were going to be in the coming years and you didn’t say anything during that singular conversation? YES! PUT IT IN THE BOOK!!!
two truths can be true at once. Al is an awful coach. terrible.
Mary is also still suffering and wrote this book far too soon before she could fully heal. And it shows, and we wish her well healing but also hope that she gets the help she needs because not everyone and literally their mothers (yikes to "chloe's mom", if true..) deserves to be dragged through hell on the record....
the individual in here said that this was one long creative writing exercise? that is so a far-fetched abstraction.. being far too generous.. that's like calling E! News' journalism "creative writing".
I'm no psychologist, but this book is a perfect example of the slew of symptoms that real PTSD can express..
I was hoping that Cain would do a book tour and give fans an opportunity to sign her work...but it seems that she isn't planning on doing such a thing.
However, for the low low price of 10k-20k, it appears you can book her to speak.
Let's set the humor aside and point out that the website linked may not be endorsed by her and it might contain information that is inaccurate. With all those caveats, I'm still bummed. There isn't a work on the market that captures the zeitgeist of what it's like to be a female professional athlete at the moment and I think the author gained fans through its publication. Plus--no irony intended--it would probably be instructive for her to meet the people she thinks dwell in their mother's basement.
She probably wont. She seems to be a very confusing or confused person. Im sure i read she was going to try triathlons,then she was going to run for ireland,now she wants to be a doctor.I also read she attempted to go back to oregon after quitting salazars group.I always hoped she would attempt a comeback,as the 800 meter runner she really is,but that didnt happen. Or maybe it did........
I think you are the one who is confused.
I haven't been a Mary shill and have called out some parts of her book I felt were unfair to others but these ridiculous comments make it clear that a lot of people (probably men) are still very uncomfortable with her.
God forbid a person in their twenties try different things. All in all, Mary is pretty accomplished. She's an author and will be a doctor. So things will work out fine.
You guys have GOT to accept that Alberto was a bad coach, and an abusive person. It's not just Mary who has alleged this. He was banned by USADA in 2019. He's banned by Safesport for life in 2021. What more do you need to accept the fact that this "legend" was actually no legend at all?
Now I don't blame you for this taking time to settle. I recall the puff pieces probably written by Ken Goe about Alberto's "special relationship" with Galen Rupp. It's easy to idealize something like that. But can you read between the lines now? Can you understand that a high school kid should not be that close to their coach?
Kara Goucher, the greatest female athlete Alberto ever coached has gone on the record saying he SA'ed her, gave her prescription pills she did not have a prescription for to lose weight, and manipulated her against other female athletes. Those things did not contribute to her success. Those things are not "tough coaching."
Alberto was not a meticulous coach who paid attention to details. He was obsessed with controlling other people and used coaching as a mechanism to fulfill that obsession. He lied about his friend Darren being a sports psych so Darren could spill all his secrets to Alberto. He made everyone on the team a narc. He had young kids he "coached" live at his house so he could watch them. He monitored food intake, not because he was concerned about runners getting faster because he liked to control what people ate and did.
He was a terrible coach. A terrible one. He turned several of his runners into head cases. He relied too much on prescription pills and performance enhancers. He wasn't on the cutting edge of anything. He was delusional. Mary wrote about how instead of letting her body grow naturally, he taped her arm down so it wouldn't fly out and jammed her into a horse brace to "fix her posture". That resulted in tons of muscle and bone issues and injuries, anyone with common sense would be able to see from a mile away. He didn't send her to a real doctor when she got a stress fracture so she ran on an injured leg until she went to a real doctor.
The Gouchers, Mary Cain, etc, don't get to be clean and throw shade at Salazar. The Gouchers had their pre-existing relationship with thyroid doctor that they brought into NOP, and if anything, corrupted Salazar and NOP with. Mary Cain's dad was a medical doctor, ideal for doping in highschool (which would explain why her parents would entrust her over to NOP, they knew what Salazar/NOP's repuation was at the time).
If she thinks the NOP was hard, residency will be a real shock, fellow residents will not tolerate her whining . A psychiatry residency with a union might be a good fit.
The interview carries at the bottom a verbatim quote from Alberto saying he is sorry. She says she wanted him to say he is sorry but never got it. Can someone get it to her?
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