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

Seems Al doesn't agree with Mary and her supporters, cogitate on this from Al before commentating:

In the written response sent late Thursday evening, Salazar says:

“Mary’s father is a medical doctor, and both of her parents were deeply involved in her training, competition and health throughout the period she was coached by me. For example, Mary’s father consulted on medications and supplements Mary used during her time at the NOP. Neither of her parents nor Mary raised any of the issues that she now suggests occurred while I was coaching her. To be clear, I never encouraged her, or worse yet, shamed her, to maintain an unhealthy weight.”

Salazar writes: “Mary at times struggled to find and maintain her ideal performance and training weight."

He said in those instances he consulted her father and referred Cain to a female doctor.

The doctor “would have been responsible for prescribing Mary with any medication, including birth control pills. And of course, as I have said many times before, I have never given, encouraged or suggested that any of my athletes take any banned substance, ever.”

He writes that contrary to Cain’s allegations, the Oregon Project team included both a nutritionist and a sports psychologist.

Cain contends she left Portland in 2015 and returned to her family home in New York, although she continued to train as a member of the Oregon Project through the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials.

Salazar writes Cain traveled to Portland in April of this year and asked him to resume coaching her. He says he and Cain were in communication by email and text message as recently as July of this year. He says she asked his advice about training and recovery from injury in the emails and text message.

He enclosed a text message he says Cain sent to him in April that included this passage:

“Thanks again so much for a great trip -- I’m excited to be working together again and I really want this. Haha got back to a chilly morning in NY and even skipped class just to prioritize training and recovery since that’s my No. 1.”

TinaInCali wrote:

OK, I'll bite.

Female here.

I ran mid-distance D1. I can run a marathon well within the US time to go to the Marathon Trials (I'm not a citizen, however, as I am British).

I watch my weight. Intensely. I'm naturally skinny.

I also dislike Nike. Intensely.

I always liked Mary Cain, and I still do. HOWEVER, nobody at NOP 'made her' do anything. I am a bit tired of people playing the victim and saying I was 'made' to do this. If anybody 'made her' do something, it was her parents. Coach Salazar, not my favourite person at all by the way, did not MAKE her do this.

As a human being with her own volition, she could (and ultimately did) leave the team.

Salazar was a jerk? Yes he was. But he is right...to a point, thinner is better. To a point, of course.

Good post.

Um, no. Where in the contract did it say you had to starve yourself and take diuretics? People's concepts of personal responsibility and free will can be pretty shaky around here.

Did some research on LC and she went to Harvard. Graduated in '06. VERY good runner (3:03 for the marathon) and she's shooting for an OTQ per he

Good points about the feminists. Just when I want to agree with them at some points I see crap like that ("Women are better") and realize they are not better than the meathead bros they are against.

Let it Rupp wrote:

Hateraid wrote:

Actually she was paid to do the things she had to do to keep her job. So yes they did make her do it. She was under contract to run for Salazar so she had to be there and follow his rules. Otherwise she would have been allowed to eat in front of everyone and not have the sneak food to eat in her room.

Um, no. Where in the contract did it say you had to starve yourself and take diuretics? People's concepts of personal responsibility and free will can be pretty shaky around here.

So you don't think she needs to listen to her coach/boss? I'm not sure you understand how a job works. Have you had one before?

Dumb post, actually. Especially this:

"thinner is better. To a point, of course."

That's the entire crux of the matter -- Alberto was payed lots of money to know where that point should be. But he didn't -- he just kept hammering on weight control as a primary goal. If it hurts an athlete in the way Mary describes it's obviously a piss-poor job of coaching.

Any and every runner could theoretically get faster times if they weighed less. But that theory inevitably confronts the reality of human bodies breaking doewn when they don't get adequate nutrition. A better coach (and person) would recognize this and allow for a healthier bodyweight that would have allowed Mary to develop her talent instead of crushing it.

Hateraid wrote:

Let it Rupp wrote:

Um, no. Where in the contract did it say you had to starve yourself and take diuretics? People's concepts of personal responsibility and free will can be pretty shaky around here.

So you don't think she needs to listen to her coach/boss? I'm not sure you understand how a job works. Have you had one before?

Then leave! Get a lawyer and get out of the contract.

I have a job. I am a Nurse Practitioner.

If I am called upon to do something I view as wrong, I can leave that job.

I can, later, say that my employer was acting unethically. But nobody MADE ME do anything wrong. Nobody MADE ME do something I did not wish to do.

jecht wrote:

Wrestling for guys has the similar pressure of weigh-ins too. Good point on that!

Guys are not treated as a protected group or class in the same way that females are. I shouldn’t have to mansplain that to you.

Mary shouldn’t have been accepted into NOP at that age. She wasn’t mature enough to handle the pressure.

Ok, Brit wrote:

TinaInCali wrote:

I can run a marathon well within the US time to go to the Marathon Trials (I'm not a citizen, however, as I am British).

.

But you haven't, have you? Ok, Brit.

To clarify, I mean the previous standard. My 2019 marathon was well under 2:40. I cannot touch a sub 2:30.

TinaInCali wrote:

Hateraid wrote:

Actually she was paid to do the things she had to do to keep her job. So yes they did make her do it. She was under contract to run for Salazar so she had to be there and follow his rules. Otherwise she would have been allowed to eat in front of everyone and not have the sneak food to eat in her room.

I have a job. I am a Nurse Practitioner.

If I am called upon to do something I view as wrong, I can leave that job.

I can, later, say that my employer was acting unethically. But nobody MADE ME do anything wrong. Nobody MADE ME do something I did not wish to do.

and she did eventually. But she was 18 years old on the highest profile team in the world and probably being paid pretty well. She probably thought this is just the way things are done. I could see how it would be difficult to leave that team couldn't you?

C0l0rado wrote:

Dumb post, actually. Especially this:

"thinner is better. To a point, of course."

That's the entire crux of the matter -- Alberto was payed lots of money to know where that point should be. But he didn't -- he just kept hammering on weight control as a primary goal. If it hurts an athlete in the way Mary describes it's obviously a piss-poor job of coaching.

Any and every runner could theoretically get faster times if they weighed less. But that theory inevitably confronts the reality of human bodies breaking doewn when they don't get adequate nutrition. A better coach (and person) would recognize this and allow for a healthier bodyweight that would have allowed Mary to develop her talent instead of crushing it.

Doing a piss-poor job of coaching is not making somebody do something.

I am not sure why this is so difficult to understand. I realise modern people have no concept of liberty, so perhaps this is the issue. But he did not MAKE her do this.

TinaInCali wrote:

OK, I'll bite.

Female here.

I ran mid-distance D1. I can run a marathon well within the US time to go to the Marathon Trials (I'm not a citizen, however, as I am British).

I watch my weight. Intensely. I'm naturally skinny.

I also dislike Nike. Intensely.

I always liked Mary Cain, and I still do. HOWEVER, nobody at NOP 'made her' do anything. I am a bit tired of people playing the victim and saying I was 'made' to do this. If anybody 'made her' do something, it was her parents. Coach Salazar, not my favourite person at all by the way, did not MAKE her do this.

As a human being with her own volition, she could (and ultimately did) leave the team.

Salazar was a jerk? Yes he was. But he is right...to a point, thinner is better. To a point, of course.

THIS IS THE VOICE OF REASON.

Hateraid wrote:

TinaInCali wrote:

I have a job. I am a Nurse Practitioner.

If I am called upon to do something I view as wrong, I can leave that job.

I can, later, say that my employer was acting unethically. But nobody MADE ME do anything wrong. Nobody MADE ME do something I did not wish to do.

and she did eventually. But she was 18 years old on the highest profile team in the world and probably being paid pretty well. She probably thought this is just the way things are done. I could see how it would be difficult to leave that team couldn't you?

Absolutely it would be difficult leaving the team!

That goes without saying.

Once again....if she was a victim, she was a victim of poor parenting.

TinaInCali wrote:

Hateraid wrote:

and she did eventually. But she was 18 years old on the highest profile team in the world and probably being paid pretty well. She probably thought this is just the way things are done. I could see how it would be difficult to leave that team couldn't you?

Absolutely it would be difficult leaving the team!

That goes without saying.

Once again....if she was a victim, she was a victim of poor parenting.

Yeah, and we are victim to your shite posts. bugger off

Browns had a good QB in the '80s named Kosar and they ruined him with bad coaching, no OL and no support staff.

Same thing in the '90s and '00s (Couch) and now with Freddie Kitchens ruining Mayfield.

The point is Mary, as talented as she was, needed more support from people around her to deal with people like Al Sal.

There are plenty of bad coaches and bad bosses making people do stupid stuff every day. Yes you have the ability to leave but then you don't get paid. That's why people stay in jobs they hate right? Yes we all have the freedom to leave but can't.

Cardiac arrest, suicide! You need to stop posting while drinking.

Context on the stuffed animal:

DES MOINES — When you watched her take command of the race, it was easy to forget Mary Cain was less than two months past her 17th birthday, even if she already had proved herself capable of holding her own with adults in the running world.

And then you saw Cain holding a small, yellow stuffed animal after the race as she talked with the media, a duck named "Puddles."

"I brought him just in case afterward I needed some comforting," she said.

For all her apparent confidence, of her fearlessly talking about getting to Moscow for the world championships, Cain needed plenty of comforting between Thursday's semifinal and Saturday's final of the 1,500 meters.