I know it sucks but I'm not sure why people think they are entitled to everyone being nice to them. The world is a mean place. It's just not realistic to expect that everyone is going to treat you well. At some point you have to toughen up and deal with this reality.
It's really not that hard to be a decent human being and be respectful of others. I can't imagine how pathetic any teammates, coaches or parents are that would bully or harass Mary Cain while she was in the midst of an all time legendary high school running career.
It's actually impossible to be a decent human being if you are not a good person. And the world is full of terrible people. The point of my post was to wonder why Cain feels like she is entitled to a world where nobody is mean. Every other person on earth has to deal with mean people and bullies. Most of the rest of us do just that...we deal with the bullying and move on. I don't feel sorry for her at all because she feels that everyone is required to be nice to her. On top of that, maybe she was an ahole and brought it on herself.
Mary Cain’s new book is coming out soon and TFN has had an early look at it.
This part of the review really caught my attention.
Any Bronxville people want to chime in here? The Bronxville coach was a legendary figure, right? I’m supposed to believe he just let a superstar athlete get abused.
I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time believing that. That makes no sense. Wouldn’t every coach in the world be bending over backwards to placate a 5 star recruit like Cain.
I once heard that Cain’s older sister supposedly thought everyone on the team was out to get her as well. What’s the truth here? This seems weird to me that she’s always magically a super victim.
The really shocking thing about that book review is that the reviewer appears to take at face value everything that Cain says. I have no intention of buying the book, but I would like to hear what Cain says about her own parents' role in her life, her own decision to forego a serious college education to focus on her athletic career, her own attempt to return to Salazar's coaching after so many setbacks and so much alleged abuse, and so many other matters that might give an objective observer reason not to take everything she says at face value.
Feel a little bit bad for Mary, based on what she went through (Al Sal is not a good character), but she'll be set for life. Must be nice.
1) Generational wealth from parents
2) She's even in a STEM field (from what I've heard), I think she was going to college for pre-med or something after the Al Sal thing happened.
I'll give Mary Cain the benefit of the doubt on this one. Girls are nasty to each other and I've seen it on the high school and college levels. Throw in Bronxville being a fairly wealthy area adds in snobbish parents and their kids being brats.
Cain is 100% lying here. I was college teammates with a girl who ran on the same team as Cain. She said Cain was really mean and nasty to everyone. She wanted all of the coaches attention and would get mad if the coach talked to anyone else on the team. Overall Cain was just a bad teammate.
I believe this person because if Cain was a great teammate, it would be so cool to brag to everyone about being her teammates because she was the most famous person in American running for a while.
I know a ton of people who bragged about being teammates with Sydney McLaughlin. But nobody ever went out of their way to brag about being teammates with Cain because Cain was a horrible person.
thanks for your context. LRC has a bad rep for being incel-ish and mean to women but sometimes women can be mean to each other even beyond what LRC trolls throw out...and sometimes women are more subtle and more effective in their insults.
She's a professional victim. For girl that was born with a lot of privileges and advantages, she sure seems to have invented a life of struggles for herself.
When someone wants to be miserable, there's really nothing you can do to stop them. I think she would do herself a big favor by just moving on with her life. She's like so many child actors, or other flash in the pan athletes. They just cant get past it.
Dude, she got her career and young adulthood railroaded by a corporate coach. She saw what could have been. Sure she made the decision to go that route, I would have too with that talent. But it was a bitter disaster for her- some bad luck and probably a lot of bad coach.
it was sad to see her career not follow its trajectory.
So glad to see she graduated med school and is a doctor now. Shows she always going to still win.
And besides writer says we can make a few hundred grand telling this honest and interesting story, where do I sign.
she'll never struggle--even if her book doesn't go anywhere she'll easily become a doctor, plus she has parents and connections probably in that field. she'll never be one of those girls working doordash for $20 an hour.
I see it all the time in wealthy schools--Chad Fraternity or Sally Sorority graduate HS, usually from a big public/private suburban school, go to college or uni, do the Greek thing and/or athletics, get a good job at a FAANG or big med/big law/big media after college and ride the corporate ladder up. They don't even work part-time in college, either. I saw it at places like Accidenture and even in the medical profession.
I'll give Mary Cain the benefit of the doubt on this one. Girls are nasty to each other and I've seen it on the high school and college levels. Throw in Bronxville being a fairly wealthy area adds in snobbish parents and their kids being brats.
Yep. Mean girls can be pretty sneaky, especially in front of authority figures like coaches and teachers. The coach probably didn't see any of it.
Solid and succinct post.
The book Queen Bees and Wannabes (a pysch text about HS female dynamics) is a LEGIT good read. It's also the same book that the classic Mean Girls movie was based on.
As noted earlier, women are able to navigate social conditions and issues better than men, in many ways they have the upper hand. I also see it in corporate America, women can get all the good jobs now b/c men don't know how to navigate interviews as much and HR wants to get more women hired. (It is on men to be better at advocating for their jobs and playing the game better, and/or getting more schooling, etc.).
To Mary's credit she's in medical field now, and will probably have success wherever she goes.
Poor Ms. Cain, always the victim. And I'm not buying the bullying due to living in a wealthy area. We moved to a northeast state and a top 10 wealthiest zip code in the nation when my son was a Junior. It was significantly wealthier than Bronxville. There were minor bullying issues at his private school (not involving my son) in a western state prior to that. When he attended public schools his last 2 years of high school, there were no significant bullying issues at all. I know people that witnessed her interactions with Salazar. She is a crazy lying loser in my estimation. I don't usually blame those that claim to be victims but she's an exception. As a physician myself, I'll say Stanford made a big mistake giving her a path to become a physician even if she's intelligent enough to become one.
I'm not going to make a diagnosis without firsthand interactions with her, but I strongly suspect she has personality disorder.
As a fellow professional, I have to agree with you. Its difficult to see Mary knuckling down and completing her medical degree, never mind submitting to the rigours of a professional career and a quiet, publicity-free life. And who would risk employing her when she is so likely to complain about her employers/bosses/colleagues?
It sounds as if the sister has similar buylling complexes. This is possibly down to the parents or inherited traits, but there is a pattern of victimhood following unwise decision-making, which the parents seem to encourage.
Mary has made a lot of money indirectly out of her running career through publicity and perhaps sees herself as a bit of a star for these reasons, not for her running results. I hope she's not going to develop this theme further through her life. There comes a stage where you are an adult and have to focus on developing your own life, rather than reminiscing about every mildly unfortuate incident which you view as adversely affecting you.
I'm curious how her parents became wealthy. Good point on the sister. May buy the book. It is also interesting to understand their family dynamic/history to see what brought them to this point...
I talked to another member of the press about this thread today. He wasn’t having any of the criticism of the Bronxville coach whom he said was a legend and great guy.
In some ways, there can be two truths. I was just stunned that the book reviewer accepted everything as fact. They should have said, “Cain claims she was bullied….” And probably also asked the coach for comment.
My gosh these posts are something else. Do we know if the coach was contacted? It seems Mary has moved on and is crushing it. Obviously her parents did a lot more right than they did wrong. I have no doubt she was bullied as girls are an extremely jealous bunch. And parents have blinders when it comes to their own kids. The jealously doesn't stop in adulthood. It's why women don't want to be managed by other women at work and why defense attorneys want to stack juries with women in sex assault cases where the victim is a woman and suspect is a man as he has a better chance of prevailing.
Male coaches can be 'legends' and have great records but my experience is they underestimate the impact toxic behaviors between females can have on a team. Men can fight and then be friends whereas women hold grudges forever.
Some nuggets here. Also weird about the timing of this book-Mary Cain hasn't been in the public eye for several years.
Bullying, perhaps, but it's not as if she didn't have her chances to excel. Case in point: Mary Cain was invited to run on the 2013 Prefontaine Classic. Not in that field: Ajee Wilson the reigning world junior champion. I'd be more interested in a book written by Ajee.
Agree. I grew up next to Bronxville. I suspect that the coach could very well be influenced by the wealth and social standing of some of these girls' families. While Cain's father is a doctor, frankly that wouldn't position her family very high in the Bronxville social strata.
Cain is 100% lying here. I was college teammates with a girl who ran on the same team as Cain. She said Cain was really mean and nasty to everyone. She wanted all of the coaches attention and would get mad if the coach talked to anyone else on the team. Overall Cain was just a bad teammate.
I believe this person because if Cain was a great teammate, it would be so cool to brag to everyone about being her teammates because she was the most famous person in American running for a while.
I know a ton of people who bragged about being teammates with Sydney McLaughlin. But nobody ever went out of their way to brag about being teammates with Cain because Cain was a horrible person.
This sounds like the truth. There is no reason for the teammate to lie, be the cool story would be to say you were friends with Cain in high school.
It has also widely been reported that Cain had a hard time fitting into her pro group. I really don't think a bunch of pro runners are going to be jealous and mean to a 16 year old. A bet a lot of the pro runners would be excited to be a friend and mentor to her. But allegedly Cain was such a mean selfish annoying brat that the pros didn't want to be associated with her.
It has also widely been reported that Cain had a hard time fitting into her pro group. I really don't think a bunch of pro runners are going to be jealous and mean to a 16 year old. A bet a lot of the pro runners would be excited to be a friend and mentor to her. But allegedly Cain was such a mean selfish annoying brat that the pros didn't want to be associated with her.
I think it's probably a little of both. It's always going to be hard for 30-something pro runners to relate to a 16-year-old girl. Add to that Cain's apparent awkwardness/immaturity, plus Moser, Rowbury, et al. not being the nicest people themselves (a cutthroat group like NOP is unlikely to attract the warmest people), and it's a recipe for disaster. Underlying all of this is terrible parenting by the Cains.
Yes, she did. Are you not familiar with her college education? And do you not understand that she did so solely for the purpose of focusing on her athletic career and living near her coach Alberto Salazar?
According to her current Wikipedia article, Cain "attended the honors program at the University of Portland in Portland, Oregon while competing as a professional athlete for Nike, Inc."
Perhaps you can explain why you believe that to be false or how attending "the honors program at the University of Portland" can be reconciled with "forego[ing] a serious college education." Her admission to Stanford Medical School more than suggests that its admissions committee disagreed with you.
P. S.: I am unaffiliated with the University of Portland and Stanford.
She was going to Portland part time. Her main focus and job was to run for Nike. Everyone knows that. She could have run in the best universities as an NCAA athlete but money smells better.
Not even mentioned in her linkedin. Probably means she enrolled and took a class and sort of lied to the public.
This topic is literally the most boring, irrelevant topic to ever have a high ranking on the Message Boards. Who The F cares about her feelings from HS many years ago? OMG, we all dealt with issues back then. And as I said before, I cannot imagine the BEST athlete on any sports team being bullied, unless there was a very good reason for it- ie, she was the cause. Every team I've ever been on gave total respect to the best athlete, unless they were being a jerk to the other teammates.
This sounds like the truth. There is no reason for the teammate to lie, be the cool story would be to say you were friends with Cain in high school.
It has also widely been reported that Cain had a hard time fitting into her pro group. I really don't think a bunch of pro runners are going to be jealous and mean to a 16 year old. A bet a lot of the pro runners would be excited to be a friend and mentor to her. But allegedly Cain was such a mean selfish annoying brat that the pros didn't want to be associated with her.
I can verify this as well since I also know someone that ran under AlSal when she was there. She was a bit odd and immature and they were older than her. They were not about to tolerate her behavior. Basically she had no friends on the team for several reasons. Should have taken the NCAA route.