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

8yhoieg'sbijs wrote:

I'm a female British runner. My take on this is that everyone, including her parents, pushed a child athlete too hard, but that Mary Cain has also learned to be a whiner and an attention seeker, rather than a hard working athlete.

She is just one of many, many top juniors not to make it as a senior. I'm not a fan of the American school and college system, where so much attention is heaped on very young athletes and they race very frequently and hard. However, I don't think Mary Cain has what it takes to succeed on a senior level to Olympic and World standard. She lacks the dedicated, focussed mindset, the ability to deal with all of the usual issues that elite athletes must cope with, such as maintaining as low a weight as her body will sustain, and injuries. I suspect she was already hard trained and at her peak at age 17. She got used to winning against athletes who were not so physically mature and hard trained as herself and thinks the senior ranks should be as easy.

There are many British junior athletes who have run amazing times who have not gone whining to the national press when they failed to progress as seniors. The fact that Mary Cain's mother is encouraging her to do so isn't great. I guess they are both getting mileage out of the "I used to be the fastest girl in America" thing. But that title is meaningless. We don't have Olympics for girls in America. Many athletes fail. Its interesting that this has come out now that Salazar has gone down, its almost as if they are milking the sympathy bandwagon.

That video she posted, where she was shuffling, hunch shouldered, getting dropped, was unbelievable. Why post something like that, if not for attention/to make people feel sorry for you? It almost looked a little bit faked, so woe-is-me was her posture.

There are lots of American runners who are equally as irritating. Kara Goucher for one, who decided to have a baby at her peak. Sara Hall, while not so irritating, wasted her twenties to a great extent. I have heard so much vitriol on here about certain British female 800m runners, who have run in nearly every Olympic and World Championships final in the recent past, not being "successful" enough. Yet they are out there doing their best in the championships, year in, year out.

Its unfortunate the focus on female runners' weight. But athletes do have to be very lean to be at their best. Any coach will tell you that. Its nothing new, nothing specific to Salazar. Mary Cain, at last sight on her video, had a noticeable pot belly, and that's something that would concern many mid twenties women, never mind a supposedly elite level athlete. She does not have the look of someone who is half starved, or who has had insufficient nutrients to grow - she could easily pass for 28. She actually looks like someone who matured very early and was at her best when she was stronger and lighter than her contemporaries.

MikeMach1977 wrote:

8yhoieg'sbijs wrote:

I'm a female British runner. My take on this is that everyone, including her parents, pushed a child athlete too hard, but that Mary Cain has also learned to be a whiner and an attention seeker, rather than a hard working athlete.

She is just one of many, many top juniors not to make it as a senior. I'm not a fan of the American school and college system, where so much attention is heaped on very young athletes and they race very frequently and hard. However, I don't think Mary Cain has what it takes to succeed on a senior level to Olympic and World standard. She lacks the dedicated, focussed mindset, the ability to deal with all of the usual issues that elite athletes must cope with, such as maintaining as low a weight as her body will sustain, and injuries. I suspect she was already hard trained and at her peak at age 17. She got used to winning against athletes who were not so physically mature and hard trained as herself and thinks the senior ranks should be as easy.

There are many British junior athletes who have run amazing times who have not gone whining to the national press when they failed to progress as seniors. The fact that Mary Cain's mother is encouraging her to do so isn't great. I guess they are both getting mileage out of the "I used to be the fastest girl in America" thing. But that title is meaningless. We don't have Olympics for girls in America. Many athletes fail. Its interesting that this has come out now that Salazar has gone down, its almost as if they are milking the sympathy bandwagon.

That video she posted, where she was shuffling, hunch shouldered, getting dropped, was unbelievable. Why post something like that, if not for attention/to make people feel sorry for you? It almost looked a little bit faked, so woe-is-me was her posture.

There are lots of American runners who are equally as irritating. Kara Goucher for one, who decided to have a baby at her peak. Sara Hall, while not so irritating, wasted her twenties to a great extent. I have heard so much vitriol on here about certain British female 800m runners, who have run in nearly every Olympic and World Championships final in the recent past, not being "successful" enough. Yet they are out there doing their best in the championships, year in, year out.

Its unfortunate the focus on female runners' weight. But athletes do have to be very lean to be at their best. Any coach will tell you that. Its nothing new, nothing specific to Salazar. Mary Cain, at last sight on her video, had a noticeable pot belly, and that's something that would concern many mid twenties women, never mind a supposedly elite level athlete. She does not have the look of someone who is half starved, or who has had insufficient nutrients to grow - she could easily pass for 28. She actually looks like someone who matured very early and was at her best when she was stronger and lighter than her contemporaries.

Cain may not have become an olympian, may be overweight for a competitive runner currently and she might be using this platform to sensationalize things to a certain degree to get publicity about what went on while under NOP. However, we now have 3 women (Areson, Yoder-Begley, Goucher) and 3 men (Levins, Magness, Goucher) directly saying he was calling women fat and talking about their weight and specifically their butts. I think everyone agrees part of running success is about weight. People are bringing up anecdotes about their HS and college experiences. I haven't heard anyone bring up something as extreme as fat-shaming for women. We have Salazar saying he calmly and respectfully brought up training and racing weight and we have 6 athletes painting a more extreme view. I think I am going to go with the numbers on this one and say Salazar has an obsession with weight and brings it up in a not so subtle fashion that is maniacal. Everything else he does is extreme, so I have a hard time believing his personality in this respect bucks that trend.

WeightProfess wrote:

MikeMach1977 wrote:

Cain may not have become an olympian, may be overweight for a competitive runner currently and she might be using this platform to sensationalize things to a certain degree to get publicity about what went on while under NOP. However, we now have 3 women (Areson, Yoder-Begley, Goucher) and 3 men (Levins, Magness, Goucher) directly saying he was calling women fat and talking about their weight and specifically their butts. I think everyone agrees part of running success is about weight. People are bringing up anecdotes about their HS and college experiences. I haven't heard anyone bring up something as extreme as fat-shaming for women. We have Salazar saying he calmly and respectfully brought up training and racing weight and we have 6 athletes painting a more extreme view. I think I am going to go with the numbers on this one and say Salazar has an obsession with weight and brings it up in a not so subtle fashion that is maniacal. Everything else he does is extreme, so I have a hard time believing his personality in this respect bucks that trend.

I don’t think Salazar or anyone on NOP bandwagon would disagree that he was obsessed with making sure his athletes weren’t overweight, but what is wrong with that? My problem is these are Olympic athletes and arguably the best group in the world. Wouldn’t you expect the coach of that team to be on top of this type of thing? I’m guessing it’s the same in Cycling, Swimming and other endurance sports? Why is it wrong for him to keep his athletes in check?

TrackCoach wrote:

shaking my head wrote:

1. dont weigh an athlete in front of their peers

2. dont yell at them and publicly humiliate them because of said weight gain

3. suggest they speak with the highly qualified nutritionist that you have hired to work with your athletes

Not that difficult, scary if you're an actual track coach.

I was a runner and coach for decades and I been on teams where you lined up, got on a scale, your weight was called out and recorded. Granted, some of this was a long time ago and perhaps kids are just different nowadays, but back then it really wasn't that big of a deal. As a coach, I've never focused too much on weight because I can only recall once or twice where it was an issue. I did have a young female athlete coming back from injury and she was frustrated by her poor performances and I told her that her times would get better as she gets in better shape and lost weight. There was no shaming involved, I thought this was the type of guidance a coach provided. Weight plays a major part for males and females in all sports, its really about being healthy and being underweight can be just as bad as being overweight. You have to remember, Cain was a professional athlete, as a pro, you are not going to be cuddled. In fact, even a D1 scholarship athlete will be informed about their weight if it is perceived as an issue. It is stupid for anyone to think a coach is supposed to pretend he doesn't notice your weight is an issue. - In Coach Salazar's defense, perhaps he did not handle things perfectly with Mary, but like most professional coaches, working with teenage females not something they have must experience with.