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

Firstly for Mary I am sorry. As a parent of a teenager who told us about their self harm it is the most devastating moment I’ve ever had. Your world stops nothing matters, work life the future all extracurriculars. You stop, everything to focus entirely on the safety and well-being of your child. We immediately went into action getting therapy and medical doctors removing them from the causes of stress that we felt were contributing to the anxiety and depression. Having said all that I can’t possibly imagine sending my child across country at 18 years old to become a professional athlete without being involved somehow it is sad she didn’t turn to her parents first it is sad that the sports psychiatrist and coach did not immediately pump the brakes and look after their well-being. In hindsight, lots of things should change. There should be a full-time female doctor on the team there should be a full-time female coach, a nutritionist, and someone who’s not financially vested overseeing this. How many kids have the emotional and physical strength to be a professional in any sport at 18? not many. The road is littered with the skeletons of phenoms. I hope Miss Cain is able to move forward in a healthy and successful life. Maybe we don’t allow teenagers to turn professional, without checks and balances in place, just look at what happened in the world of gymnastics.

Lol, this guy is really going to die on that hill, huh?

Oooooh, Nice to meet you Mr. Salazar.

Yeah, that or she hadn't had a period for three years because of hormone-altering medications Salazar put her on, paired with overtraining.

Or it does.

You seem to have misheard what she said; they had no qualified dietitians. Those present were just friends of Salazar with no professional training.

Okay, now I'm just convinced you're a troll. Hassan and Hassay both are perfect examples of what Salazar does. Look at photos before and after joining the NOP. They take medications to drop body fat, leaving them gaunt but muscular. We have two sources for this now.

Maybe, but not the way Salazar made it happen. Even then, everyone has different body types. No way to make this body lose more weight than they already did:

Well, when you ignore other science to favor weight shaming, I think it becomes solely weight shaming. Any psychologist will tell you that publicly yelling at someone, especially for relatively unchangeable attributes, is severely damaging.

I'm sure that's why Salazar & co. didn't care when she told them she was slitting her wrists.

Look, man, you clearly have biases because you "Know Salazar", or are Salazar. Who knows.

But NEVER turn a blind eye to abuse - both of individuals (who happened to be 16 years old in this case) and of the system.

opportunistic pathogen wrote:

I really don't buy this story.

It's complete opposite of what other athletes say about Alberto being like father to them.

Smells fishy here

Please study up on the psychological effects of abusive relationships and rebounding.

Also study up on Stockholm Syndrome - it might help you understand the former topic a little quicker.

Have fun!

Did you son miss his periods? Have suicidal thoughts? Cut himself?

Nah his situation and Cains are totally the same.

First, 114 lbs. does not sound unreasonable. You look at other middle distance runners like Coburn, Simpson, Kate Grace and others: They are all unbelievably thin. Cain has never been that lean. Maybe it's not in the cards for her to have a physique that is like that.

Perhaps Salazar shouldn't have been coaching someone so young. There are a lot of "coaches" who really don't know what they are doing. The golfer, John Daly, was interviewed about his time at University of Arkansas. The coach wanted him to lose weight and so he recommended that Daly start smoking cigarettes! Anyone who follows golf knows that Daly did exactly that and continues to this day.

kl wrote:

Magness: Coward

Julian: Coward

I've added an editor's note to thie post above.

Editor's note: We have no idea why the poster is criticizing Magness for anything that has to do with Cain as Magness left the NOP in 2012 and Cain joined in 2013.

i found it funny that she has nothing good to say about nike and blames all the problems world on the company then in the video is wearing Nike. would seem if she has such hate for them she would not wear them at least not for the video

guess contract is done now

This went mainstream so Nike is going to take a hit on this one.

They tried to treat a girl like a professional athlete and that typically doesn't work out good on the end. Her parents need to look in the mirror and take at least partial blame on this.

90 lbs weakling wrote:

I'm a skinny hobby jogger and can do 10 pullups and 30 pushups easily. With a tiny bit of training i could do more than 15/40. Don't need much strength if you don't weigh much.

Though in comparison I look obese to MC and others (my BMI is 19.2)

I'm 6'3" and about 170 pounds, BMI 21.2, age 57 and a retired runner who now swims or strength trains. Maybe my long arms (36 sleeve) have something to do with this.

Obviously a lot of mistakes were made by Alberto and Nike but they first major one was thinking a teen phenom was a sure bet. What veteran coach doesn’t know after a few years in the business that what a girl does at age 14-17 guarantees nothing for the following 4 year period.

Sounds like it was as bad as a lot of us suspected it must be at NOP. The way Salazar conducted himself at meets I can’t believe anybody is surprised by all of this.

1955 wrote:

I have to say, this whole thing confirms my concerns about having male coaches for young female runners. The potential for abuse -- and that covers a wide range of issues, including some criminal -- is just too great. I am sure there are many great male coaches of female programs, but putting that much power over vulnerable kids is risky.

I am also disappointed that the older women in Mary's group (apparently) didn't do more to support & protect her.

I think you expect far too much from other athletes. You are talking about mid 20s gals who have their own issues to deal with. What is hard is always figuring out how much of these type of things are perception versus reality. At best Salazer was ignoring a bunch of signs that a person had an eating disorder. At worst he was causing them.

I am not sure the problem is men coaching woman as much as it is people with little experience coaching young woman and their issues. How many dozen teen age woman has Al Sal coached? I know Chock ended poorly before cain but we aren't talking a huge sample size. Maybe there are some stats showing that woman coaches teams have less eating disorders but my impression is it is a lot more of a coach thing than a gender thing.

Mary Cain deserves all of the sympathy in the world, and Alberto is a bro science buffoon, but this is bad, bad, bad for the sport of track & field.

Skip on over to Twitter, where this is trending as a "Moment", and see what the good folks on that unbiased platform are saying.

wimpyrunners wrote:

poi'8y wrote:

What percentage of men (not limited to NCAA runners) can do 15 chin ups? What percentage of women (not limited to NCAA runners) can do "half that?" A 15 chin up performance for a man and a 7.5 chin up performance for a woman would be about sub-elite level.

Like 95% of my high school team can do that. That's definitely not sub-elite.

Chin ups aren't about strength as much as strength to weight ratio. Bet you will find as many XC runners cranking out 15 and you find linemen trying to do chinups when they way 300lbs.

800 dude wrote:

Cain acknowledged that weight matters, but this story is about more than that.

1) Athletes should not be shamed and berated because of their weight, period.

2) Coaches with no expertise in nutrition should not be telling athletes what they're allowed to eat.

3) Athletes who have not even reached physical maturity should not be pushed to reach the same incredibly lean body composition as fully mature athletes.

4) Athletes should not be told to illegally abuse prescription drugs in order to lose weight.

That about sums it up.

rojo wrote:

daddy-NO(P) wrote:

Would you send your daughter or son there to be coached by Alberto? Me, no, and I held that believe before the ProPublica story broke. Now, would any parent????

That was one thing I was wondering when Cain joined the group. Did her parents even know the allegations being said behind the scenes about Alberto? I thought honestly maybe I should call them. Not sure if it would have made a difference.

MeHereYouWhere?! wrote:

1. Did Alberto actually ever PUBLICLY shame Mary's weight? Maybe he did it inside the team, but I don't recall ever seeing (hearing/reading) this actually said. .

If any one on here witnessed Alberto publicly shaming her about her weight in 2015 at Oxy, please email me at

robertjohnson@letsrun.com

. You can stay anonymous if you like.

No. That's not okay. Anyone can claim anything if they're staying anonymous. That's the problem with this website. If a bunch of "anonymous" people say they witnessed it, that isn't a story.

How much money did Nike give Cain to turn pro?

This thread perfectly illustrates why American distance runners suck.

Pretty spot on. I’m pretty confident in saying most serious runners cannot do 15 ACTUAL chin ups. Sure, someone might be able to if they go halfway down and use momentum from their legs but there’s is no chance that even 50% of male college runners can do 15 actual chin ups. I’d say most can do around 8. In college I was 130lbs and could put up 195 on the bench (obviously not entirely the same muscle groups but you get the point since pretty much everyone knows what they can bench), which I think is fairly strong and 15 actual chin ups would probably be right around the limit for me. Maybe 20. There’s no point in a strength test. That’s so general and people are naturally stronger and weaker than others at the same weight.

Everyone should have their weight and body fat taken by an athletic trainer at the beginning and end of each season, and maybe weight more frequently for people they are concerned about. You can tell them their weight since they can just weigh themselves at home anyway, but keep the body fat % away from the athletes knowledge. I don’t know if all colleges have an on-campus health center (mine did so I assume most do) but it’s also not unreasonable to make athletes who they are worried about get a blood test before the start of each season. Some people are just naturally very thin and can’t do anything about it so an eye test might look concerning but if they get good blood test results then they can compete. It’s honestly a simple solution. Sure it’s a bit inconvenient and a little more costly, but it’s worth it to save young athletes from doing damage to their bodies they can’t fix