USATF Permanently Bans Saratoga Springs Coached Art & Lina Kranick (and Art died a month ago)

“Pushing through limits” and abuse are two very different things.

Pushing through limits would involve encouraging athletes to push through the last rep. It would involve encouraging them but not forcing them to do their summer mileage. Reminding them that the hot summer runs will pay off come championship time.

In contrast, abuse would involve telling athletes to train through injuries against professional medicine. To tie them to a motor vehicle to “increase” speed. To give minors pills of any kind without parents being aware.

“Winning titles” is meaningless if done unethically.

That's not an apples to apples comparison though. Unless the DUI happened while driving athletes around, that is not a past offense that is a good predictor as to whether or not a coach will harm athletes.

Would you be OK with a coach who raped a high school athlete and served their time in jail coaching again?

I recognize that "tough coaching" is a more subjective matter and that norms have changed over time, but tying an athlete to a truck was not acceptable 40 years ago.

More importantly, they were not banned for a single incident, but for a pattern of behavior lasting decades. One report was 77 pages long, USATF's report was 66 pages long. There are a variety of allegations that have been made public and clearly far more were made privately.

You are mixing up Salazar's bans, he got 4 years from USADA and a lifetime ban from the US Center for SafeSport.

Once the USADA ban ended, athletes were free to train with him again, but he will never be able to be credentialed at USATF events again.

Should a coach who raped children in the 1970s be allowed to coach today just because the crimes were never prosecuted criminally within the statute of limitations?

We knew what "overspeed training" was in the 1980s just as we do today; the difference is we didn't have cool little machines like the 1080 Sprint to pull an athlete. Vehicles were commonly used. The father of a sprinter on my team bought some bungee cords for his son to train with and all of our sprinters voluntarily tied themselves to a vehicle and were pulled through the stadium parking lot.

I had another friend who was forced to run like this but he wasn't pulled by a truck or by a coach. He was a football player who lived on a farm. His father tied him to the tractor and made him run through the fields as punishment. We just shrugged out shoulders and thought, "Well, that's his dad's way." We didn't think anything was wrong with it; it was just his father's way of punishing him. I would have rather been forced to run behind a tractor than be beaten like other guys were by their fathers.

Disciple has changed a lot since the 80s. Corporal punishment was still common in schools. It was acceptable for the principal to smack a kid on the behind with a wooden paddle as punishment. Now only about 10 states or so still allow it and even those rarely if ever use it.

Regardless, I think banning a dead man is simply ludicrous.

So what happens when an underage athlete has been molested and a few (or many) years have gone by, the athlete (now an adult) realizes SafeSport exists, the coach is still coaching and has gotten away with sexually molesting other teenagers. SafeSport is about ridding the sport of scumbag deviants like Wellesley's John Babington. No criminal outcome was possible (statute of limitations) but because of SafeSport he lost his standing in the running world and was banned from having anything to do with USATF. His reputation in tatters. It's a good thing SafeSport acted when they did because otherwise he would have died having gotten away with his crimes against teenage runners.

This couple didn't care about the kids they coached -- they resented them and used them to fulfill their own pathetic grandiose dreams.

Do you have no decency? This is a beloved coach that has passed away and left everyone that he has coached and mentored heart broken this is insensitive and ridiculous. You don’t even know him. Do not talk about something that you have no history with it is embarrassing for yourself and insanely hurtful to others. You are getting your information from outside articles and not primary sources if you have ever talked to him, his wife or his runners you would be a lot more knowledgeable about this topic so who do you think you are saying someone should rot in hell when this man has changed people’s lives. Absolutely disgusting.

If you knew anything about those coaches you would know that it’s the exact opposite. They coached until the very end because they cared for those girls that are on the team and wanted to make them the best runners they could become. Don’t go posting things without knowing the true story.

It's not going to result in death or serious injury if they are watching what happens. Would I do it? Hell no. Was it stupid as hell? YES

Did they have good intentions at the time? Yes.

As someone else said, this was a thing that coaches did back then.

Regardless, I don't want to legislate what happened 35 years ago. Let's look at eveything that has happened since 2020 and judge them on that. They won a natty in 2022. Have they evolved? Are they still 'abusive'?

We can't judge them in the year 2025 for actions they did in 1998 based on today's standards. I mean gay marriage was illegal until 10 years ago. Society evolves hopefully for the better.

I just find it wild that USATF feels like they have the moral authority to end people's careers with zero explanation - meanwhile their CEO is flying in private planes, taking home millions in some years while the revenue is declining. I'm much more outraged by that.

Tell us what they did, issue a report or don't ban them for life.

Good point. Salazar is banned by SafeSport for life but he's not banned from WA or WADA.

Rojo, you've posted twice now and you didn't happen to notice posts #67 and #71?! Seriously?

You do realize I'm posting as I'm reading the thread. So I see something in post like 55 that I want to respond to and I respond to it.

When I got to 67 and 71 , I deleted them both permanently banned the poster.

Is there any paperwork suppoting the ban? If you believe a ban is necessary. Publish it or GTFO.

I’m just curious how USATF would have any authority to ban them . They were high school coaches not youth program coaches .
Brilliant coaches but their weakness was Art’s anger and their inflexibility . I was at a roadski race in Cambridge Mass in the 80s. Art was in it and hit a pothole and crashed . He was so crazy he was going to fight the race organizers . Also saw him flip out a few times in his kids .
If some parent questioned what they did , Art wasn’t going to budge so he made lots of enemies. Nowadays you can’t tell parents to pound salt but the Kranicks were from a different era and by the time there were helicopter parents they had coached multiple state champions and national champions . No one could pull that off today ,

Some notes...

1. I think that tying a kid to the back of the car to help them "run faster" was probably bad 40 years ago. I don't like the whole "it was perfectly fine then!" You could do that for anything abusive. It was not fine to the girl it happened to!

2. I went to college with some runners from a neighboring school and at the time they had only negative things to say about the Kranicks and how hated they were by the Saratoga team. Fast forward to today, I'm not seeing that many people come out of the woodwork to speak on abuse. That's not to discredit the few who did! I am just surprised. I'm disgusted by the car story, but given that I always believed those kids, I expected more...

3. Would be curious to hear from one person in particular; Nicole Blood. Nicole was their star and in her junior year, she quit the team. I can't find links now but it's the closest we got to hearing about some real abusive stories that happened in that tent. I recall Blood describing a "run to tolerance" policy--indicating she was injured but they wanted her to run through it anyways and she needed a break, hence leading to the departure. There were other stories too. While training on her own and still a high school girl, she heard Kranick mutter "trash running by" , and she said in an interview that the other girls on the team weren't allowed to speak to her after she quit. That's a huge overreach from a coach. Isolating a high school student for the crime of quitting the team is outrageous.

But then Nicole had a total about face. I guess they made up and now she too will rave about them. It's her experience, not any of ours, I'd just be curious to see how she squares everything.

There's really nothing to report on. I ran HS and D1 in NY, was teammates with several FM (and Saratoga) kids and none of them had anything good to say about him. He ran the kids into the ground for his own ego, the kids were shot by the time they got to college, and other big schools around the country caught up to and surpassed what FM was doing for training.

Then all of the reputation hits started coming in, I know a few now-HS coaches who said through the grapevine that parents basically don't want their kids running for him. And now he just cares about his grandson on the team. They're a dead program.