Mary Cain hot take

Caitlin probably shouldn't be an example for anything. She has been institutionalized for an eating disorder both before and after her time with Alberto I believe.

Narcissism wrote:

Look up the word "Narcissism" you might learn something about Mary.

or Alberto

Narcissism wrote:

Look up the word "Narcissism" you might learn something about Mary.

+100000

Rather than bring the issue up to Nike, she ran to one of the largest newspapers in America and had a #metoo like video made.

Mary has every sign of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Usually this disorder begins relatively early in age, but only really manifests itself in the late teens in a tangible way. It is one of the harder personality disorders to cure, mostly it involves recognition and behavior modification. Only then can she move forward.

WhatHappenedinApril wrote:

If her parents were so horrified by what happened initially, how could a second try at the NOP ever been on the table?

Exactly. And she didn't disclose her second attempt to join the team until Nike pointed it out. If she was trying to be credible, she should have disclosed it upfront.

notrump wrote:

There's been a lot of discussion on these boards about the young female runners who perform phenonemally well and then their improvement stops. This seems to happen with about 8 out of 10 young runners. I don't think Salazar is responsible for Mary Cain hitting her ceiling, and Mary needs to understand that hitting her ceiling is what actually happened.

However, I do think her complaints about the brutality and callousness of his training methods are 100% on the mark - entirely inappropriate, especially for an 18 year old.

Perhaps it happens to that many athletes because they are not trained the right way? Maybe this keeps happening because they are treated like machines rather than people.

Well give me a list of the most successful professional coaches in the USA over the last 20 years and provide data. Or do you think they are all substandard and you could have done better? Or do you have an idea of a current coach that can do better and give some reason why? And what is your philosophy for successfully training professional runners, treating them like they are still in high school their whole career? I really want to know your training plan and philosophy.

Who has been the best wrote:

Well give me a list of the most successful professional coaches in the USA over the last 20 years and provide data. Or do you think they are all substandard and you could have done better? Or do you have an idea of a current coach that can do better and give some reason why? And what is your philosophy for successfully training professional runners, treating them like they are still in high school their whole career? I really want to know your training plan and philosophy.

I pose a question and you attack my creditability on a message board, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. I am not suggesting I know more than coaches who have been successful. What I am saying is if we just look at the decline of athletes coming out of high school or college as just getting older we could be doing a disservice to young atheletes.

How many athletes coming out of high school or college do you expect to win Olympic/WC medals.? There will be successful HS/College runners that simply cannot get to the World level. What is that that you don't you understand about this. When these runners realize the don't have a future as a World class runner, they move on. Sorry for hurting your delicate feelings, but you sound like you know nothing about professional running or the real world for that matter. Now go back to your safe space.

I'm responding to a post. Please actually read the post I responded to. Again, I really hope I am not being rude towards you. It is not my intention to attack you in any way but based on your reaction it seems you feel that way. It seems you are incredibly passionate about this topic and have conducted research and I certainly wouldn't want to overstep. This will be my last post as I have a meeting to attend(I'm just going to go watch a movie). Feel free to continue the debate without me. What I will say is I support Mary Cain and I personally think she is brave.

I'm so done with this pathetic thread full of unoriginal thought and a whole lot of whining.

Let me break this down for you in a way you might understand.

Mary was abused by Alberto. At the very least she was mishandled and mistreated. This was not a little girl who couldn't handle some tough coaching from a "world class" coach. This was a talented athlete who was served badly by a coach who was not capable of coaching her and many women to success.

Here's why.

Weight matters in running, yes? But you know what matters more? Performance. Sure athletes must be lean to perform well, but Alberto wasn't worried about his female runners performing well. He was worried about what their butts looked like on the starting line.

Exhibit A. Amy Yoder Begley finished sixth at the USA championships. Good placing right? Well Alberto said her butt was too big and kicked her out of the program.

Exhibit B. He also criticized Jenny Simpson and called her soft and pudgy. Jenny was a WORLD CHAMPION. Anyone who things Jenny was "pudgy" needs their eyes checked, but even if she was, Jenny had the body of a WORLD CHAMPION. But he said she wasn't a good role model because of how she looked. Again. Nothing to do with performance.

Exhibit C. He said Mary should weight 114 pounds. Mary herself called this an arbitrary number. Alberto in his pathetic defense did not deny that this number had nothing to do with science. It's not like Mary would break records at that weight. In fact, he ignored science several times before including BMI indexes of his female athletes. This isn't TOUGH COACHING. It's just lazy abusive treatment.

Exhibit D: Alberto tried to make his female athletes lose weight using thyroid medication they didn't need, diuretics, and birth control. Is this the tough coaching that women should just deal with? I sincerely ask.

You are a fool.

Amy finished 90 seconds behind the winner — in other words, a distant sixth.

Too much drama here wrote:

People here are such drama queens. They act like Mary returned from years of fighting in the rice paddies of Vietnam and came home with PTSD. For goodness sake, she was a professional runner who was told by a coach to lose weight, nothing more nothing less.

Now she has been away from NOP for years. She’s had plenty of time to find a kinder and gentler coach and finally meet her destiny of being a world class women runner. But she hasn’t made much progress in that endeavor. Oh yes I know, she was so emotionally scarred that she was completely incapable of regaining fitness and achieving her true destiny under a different coach, system and environment.

THANK YOU!!!

No. Nope. No.

It wasn't just the emotional trauma, that you trivialize here, it was also getting over tons of injuries and getting her body on track that took so long.

Also on a side note, I'm tired of everyone talking about how girls burn out and ignoring all the boys that do too. Burnout has never been a girls issue. The footlocker to ncaa champion thing is such a stupid and arbitrary stat. I hear of so many talented high school boys that are never heard from again all the time.

I'm glad you say it isn't the emotional trauma, but rather tons of injuries. Some runners just can't sustain professional running demands even when they are paid large professional salaries. Mary was not able to meet the standards of a professional runner.

Nobody ever said that boys don't burn out also and that is the very point. Both boy and girl high school elite runners often never become a world class runner, nor did Mary. But most boys don't cry about it, they don't blame others for their failures and they don't try to play a victim game in the public, they don't contact the NYT, they don't go on GMA. Mary did.

This thread and all the other Mary Cain threads need to be registered posters only to filter out all the anonymous idiots posting over and over with the same stuff under different handles.

Let me be clear wrote:

Exhibit A. Amy Yoder Begley finished sixth at the USA championships. Good placing right? Well Alberto said her butt was too big and kicked her out of the program.

Nope not a good place if your goal is to be the very best in the world. She finished 94 seconds behind 1st

Exhibit C. He said Mary should weight 114 pounds. Mary herself called this an arbitrary number. Alberto in his pathetic defense did not deny that this number had nothing to do with science.

Science shows the top runners in the world are very lean. Try watching the next Olympics.

prodigy’s fail and always blame someone and never themselves.

They blame their parents, coach, lack of support.

It’s hard to live up to your own hype.

The rest of us are failures and I’m not personally blaming Nike or my coach.