It can take many years for victims of sexual abuse to come forward, including to those close to them. A big part of that is women being conditioned to give men the benefit of the doubt, blame themselves, think others will blame them (like here on LetsRun is a good example), etc.
That's a solid explanation--initially I thought she'd go to Adam who would address the situation but it must have affected her to the point where maybe she compartmentalized it away, hoping to address it later and bring Al Sal to justice.
I haven't read the book but in her podcast she said she told members of her family before she told Adam. She said she compartmentalized the first time and/or thought it could be a mistake, so I don't know if she told anyone about that till the second time happened.
In her new memoir, Goucher says she was the woman behind the sexual assault allegations against famed coach Alberto Salazar that led to a lifetime ban at the...
Some stuff I didn’t know & found interesting-She is upfront about how much she earned with Nike, contracts & appearance fees. Before her pregnancy, her baseline w/ Nike was $320k/year. The year she got pregnant she basically didn’t get paid by nike bc she didn’t race although she did do pr, meet & greets & photoshoots for them. She had to go the legal route to get reimbursed her salary for the year she was pregnant & salazar didn’t support her on this & called her money hungry. She paints Salazar to be, among other things, an alcoholic. She says it was an open secret in the industry that he drank a lot & she believes he scheduled their practices late morning bc he was always hung over. a lot of this book is about salazar, most of it has been shared publicly. the Nike Oregon project, among other things, is portrayed as a team with no boundaries. The athletes had blind faith in Alberto & she believes mo farah & Galen could’ve gone as far as take epo if Alberto told them it was ok. Even for herself, she thinks it’s possible Alberto rubbed testosterone cream on her during one of his massages. They were quick to ingest whatever unmarked pills Salazar gave them & she fears even she herself took a banned substance at some point. she has nothing bad to say about jerry Schumacher, mark wetmore & shalane Flanagan. Joining Jerry’s group was the first time she experienced a professional team. Also she originally wanted to join the mammoth track club after leaving nop but they rejected her.
Did reading the book make you want to vomit in your mouth?
The story I was told about the NOP was a very prominent US runner was considering joining the team. He was handed a bag of pills and told to take them. He was sharing a room with Rupp and went into the bathroom and started trying to google the names he could see from the side of the pills in small letters.
They person who told me this story imagined it was some sort of test. If you took it witout hesitation, then Alberto would know what he could get away with.
Now I heard this story 2nd or 3rd hand. But now that Salazar is disgraced, I should ask this runner if they'll go on the record about it. Originally, I was told not to ask them about it as they didn't want to cross Nike. Now they'd still be crossing Nike but it might be more acceptable to do so.
This story honestly makes no sense. He was giving out pills to people that weren't even on the team? What happens if an athlete just immediately reported him for that? Feels like something got lost in translation here
Yeah, I call bs on that one. Nobody is that stupid (coach or athlete)
Speaking of hasay, when kara heard hasay was looking to join a Nike group she arranged a lunch with her in the hopes she could talk hasay out of working with Alberto. the morning of the lunch hasay canceled their date & then announced publicly she was joining nop. I’m sure hasay has some crazy Alberto stories but I doubt she’ll ever say anything negative about him publicly, at least while he’s alive. I think he’s a big reason why her best running years are behind her.
Speaking of hasay, when kara heard hasay was looking to join a Nike group she arranged a lunch with her in the hopes she could talk hasay out of working with Alberto. the morning of the lunch hasay canceled their date & then announced publicly she was joining nop. I’m sure hasay has some crazy Alberto stories but I doubt she’ll ever say anything negative about him publicly, at least while he’s alive. I think he’s a big reason why her best running years are behind her.
Probably, but who knows whether she would have been one of the top Americans in the marathon during her prime without Salazar.
I find Salazar's story sad-the drinking, the alleged abuse, the creams. and the lack of perspective on his role as a coach. He is talented, but tormented. The book may be accurate, but it can't be a fun read. Kara felt mistreated and Salazar is portrayed as a wreck.
The athletes had blind faith in Alberto & she believes mo farah & Galen could’ve gone as far as take epo if Alberto told them it was ok. Even for herself, she thinks it’s possible Alberto rubbed testosterone cream on her during one of his massages. They were quick to ingest whatever unmarked pills Salazar gave them & she fears even she herself took a banned substance at some point.
This sort of cult of personality thing is always fascinating. What is it about that skinny sprig of a man that could inspire such blind loyalty? Was he really that charming, manipulative, whatever? He must have been something. All reports about Hitler were that he could all but hypnotize people into loyalty with his personality, which always seems crazy given that whatever rhetorical techniques he was using were still, at the end of the day, coming out of a little weird looking dude with a goofy mustache.
I suppose one theory with Salazar, given the rest of the post about unmarked pills and “unknowingly” doping the runners, is that the doping or near-doping may have been a factor. Not open blackmail per se since he doesn’t seem to have done that, but a kind of psychological thing: he got some kind of dope into their systems somehow, either rubbing the cream during a massage or giving them unmarked pills which they took or whatever, and now they at best had to be doubtful or uncertain about whether they had now taken something that could give them better results yet also potentially derail their career if caught. Now they’re kind of of psychologically stuck with Salazar: he’s getting me results but could potentially blow the whistle on me if I step out of line. He seems not to be doing that in reality, but at the time they wouldn’t have known what he might or might not do if they challenged him, or left the team.
Thats an interpretation for anyone who didn’t want to dope, of course. I’ve suspected that Farah and Rupp are just enthusiastic dopers, or at the very least, enthusiastically uninterested in knowing what was really in any unmarked pills.
It's not that hard to understand. . Once you establish yourself in a position of power, you leverage it to sell yourself. You see people all the time brag about how they coached some athlete to a certain time or championship when those athletes would have done it themselves anyway. It's almost accepted that the top guys in any sport are going to be a bit weird because they have usually spent all their time being focused on one thing
That guy tested Testosterone on his minor children and that was known and safesport did nothing! Why they waited to ban him is crazy to me. SafeSport really doesn't keep sports safe from sexual abuse if they are cool with sex hormones being handed out to minor children.
Salazar's sons weren't minors. SafeSport wouldn't have jurisdiction over this at all. Since his sons weren't athletes, you could claim (as I believe Salazar's defense did), that WADA jurisdiction was questionable.
Note, I'm not condoning Salazar's actions, just responding to your claims.
It’s an entertaining read due to all the tea spillage but it is sad that her experience with Alberto & Nike has become such a huge part of her life story despite only working with them for a few years
Salazar should never had gotten as far as he did. The very first athlete he coached as a professional was Mary Slaney, and she tested positive for testosterone within just a year or two of working with him. Nike should have canned him then and there, but instead they gave him the keys to the front door.
There is also no doubt that Salazar is a liar. In 2015, when questioned about his association with Slaney, he tried to claim he was really never her coach despite overwhelming evidence he was. He's also a first class jerk. He found the counsel that eventually represented Slaney in her lawsuit against the IAAF over her T/E test, then years later, throws her under the bus by denying he coached her in the 90's, implying he thought she had doped (why Slaney stood up for him in 2015 is baffling). If you would like to see the proof, here it is...
She's back: Mary Decker Slaney is 37. She holds five American track records from 800 meters to 3,000 meters. She has a body road-marked by surgical scars as many as 20, according to Slaney and...
I haven't read Goucher's book yet (I will when it arrives on my doorstep tomorrow), but it's evident Nike is trash. Helping create Salazar, promoting Goucher's pregnancy while cutting her salary, doing nothing about doping,... Remember all that crap the next time you see one of Nike's virtue-signalling commercials (barf).
I find Salazar's story sad-the drinking, the alleged abuse, the creams. and the lack of perspective on his role as a coach. He is talented, but tormented. The book may be accurate, but it can't be a fun read. Kara felt mistreated and Salazar is portrayed as a wreck.
This book is hard to get at all the libraries in Columbus (17 total)--I didn't think it would be that hard to get, but I was wrong. Lots of people attracted to the story of this apparently, at least in Central Ohio. It's a pretty arcane topic.
I was a big Salazar fan reading of how he pushed himself and his workload. I still look at his xc training logs for inspiration, but the man he was as an adult is saddening, and that’s just me some young guy who viewed him as a running hero, can’t imagine what it was like for Kara who viewed him almost as a father figure.
