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

I never seem to get a lot wrote:

Supertramp wrote:

Yep, this thread is about as toxic as I thought it would be.

Good for Mary Cain.

Alberto is a horrible human being. Ban him forever.

No amount of medals or success is worth living like this, let alone risking somebody's life altogether.

Glorify sports all you want, they're just games at the end of the day.

THIS.

Posters here can try to justify Alberto/Nike/excessive weight loss however they want, but I'm not comfortable with this being a part of running culture. If athletes get slower but live healthier, happier lives, so be it. It's just a game at the end of the day.

For some it is not just a game. For some it is a job or a college education.

NoClue wrote:

I'm advocating that a coach (or any supervisor) not encourage behavior that is actively detrimental to the health of an athlete - both physically and emotionally. You are right that pro running is not a typical office environment, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be baselines for the well-being of athletes/employees. Its obvious Salazar's behavior well exceed the baseline that most rational and compassionate people would draw.

With that attitude you will NEVER reach the top in any sport. Any hard, anaerobic workout IS detrimental to the health and poses a risk. Any all-out race can cause a stress fracture or a collapse. Any sharp increase in mileage does the same - how many HS coaches throw high mileage/high intensity at their athletes and hope that 5-7 somehow survive? They could all just train moderate, Tinman-style and aim for long-term development but no, they want performances in HS so they rank higher and get a salary bonus.

Every runner who decides to become a pro runner, or pro-athlete in any other sport knows that what they are doing is WAY ABOVE what would still be healthy. Look at Salazar and what his training did to him - he is a physiological wreck, his body got severely damaged from years of running professionally. Cyclists die in their 50's due to after-effects from PED-usage and constantly pushing their bodies in a fuel-depleted state.

Why did no one here cause so much fuzz when Ritz went public with Salazar prescribing him thyroid meds that he never needed? Now he has to take a pill for the rest of his life, for a misdiagnosed condition that he never had and his thyroid stopped his natural production of hormones after he started supplementing it with Salazar's drugs. Magness realized the same, unfortunately 10 years too late. The "L-carnitine" experiment COULD have had major effect on his health, it was a test that fortunately just boosted his performance a lot but what if his body would have gone crazy due to the massive infusion?

The fact is, professional running is NOT healthy, no matter what coach/team you are in. Reducing/optimizing weight is one unhealthy component of pro-running, but there are at least 10 more that exceed "exercise for fitness/health".

Big lol @Alberto "keeping it real like men did during his era..." Alberto has been a POS harda** blight for decades and he's paid for it multiple times between doping allegations, his infamous "dead for 14 minutes" stint, and now this. Stop sucking him off like he's Bill Belichick or something.

Yours is a wonderful post.

So it's OK to tell someone they have to lose weight and they end up emotionally damaged, cutting themselves, and suicidal? There are ways to go about things and obviously they were done wrong.[/quote]

So everything that happened to her was due to outside forces? Sure. You are attributing 100% of the issues being caused by Nike/NOP. A lot of them might have been, but it could also be the case that Mary Cain also had issues or would have developed them without ever being part of running, Nike, or the NOP. We don't have a counterfactual to know what contribution is due to her experiences and not everyone who had those experiences would have become suicidal. Not a good argument.

mary cain is a middle distance runner and is already pretty thin. why does she need to be super thin? having some weight in muscle is perfectly fine

You don't need to be, idiot

I feel for Mary, but Alberto's methods maybe just triggered something inside her that was already there. A normal person wouldn't resort to cutting wrists. If she needed a pyschologist that is valid, but why blame NOP for not having one when she could have freely sought out her own? In fact, probably better to have the seperation.

Alberto has done a lot of good, and in the judgement of some not so good for the sport. On the whole, his record as one of the best remains despite the attempts of social media and cancel culture to dictate otherwise.

Not as nice as they make out to be wrote:

How the EFF did older athletes like Rowbury or treniere not speak up? That in and of itself is disgusting. Shame on you!

As stated earlier, MC was a lot younger. An athlete her age with physical changes going on over the next several years should not be worrying about reaching a world class body composition at that age.

Also, Rowbury amd Moser may have just had easier times maintaining lower weights, everyone is different. So maybe Salazar didn't have to push them as much as Cain.

Outside forces wrote:

So it's OK to tell someone they have to lose weight and they end up emotionally damaged, cutting themselves, and suicidal? There are ways to go about things and obviously they were done wrong.

So everything that happened to her was due to outside forces? Sure. You are attributing 100% of the issues being caused by Nike/NOP. A lot of them might have been, but it could also be the case that Mary Cain also had issues or would have developed them without ever being part of running, Nike, or the NOP. We don't have a counterfactual to know what contribution is due to her experiences and not everyone who had those experiences would have become suicidal. Not a good argument.[/quote]

Don't put words in my mouth. There is plenty of blame to pass around. But as a coach you can't constantly be on an 18 year old woman about her weight. You have to know what is happening with her. You have to know she is breaking down. I am sure Alberto saw all the signs and still plowed through. Her parents also have to know what's going on. As a coach you have to find a way to HELP the athlete not to crush her constantly.

Philip Exeter CC wrote:

I feel for Mary, but Alberto's methods maybe just triggered something inside her that was already there. A normal person wouldn't resort to cutting wrists. If she needed a pyschologist that is valid, but why blame NOP for not having one when she could have freely sought out her own? In fact, probably better to have the seperation.

Alberto has done a lot of good, and in the judgement of some not so good for the sport. On the whole, his record as one of the best remains despite the attempts of social media and cancel culture to dictate otherwise.

Ok, "philip exeter" elitist. Buh bye

central governor wrote:

If you are expecting an 18-year-old to have the cognitive and emotional maturity to be able to somehow foresee this or "take responsibility for their own actions" after the fact, I would advise you to think really hard and remember what you were capable of as an 18-year-old. When it comes to grappling with the big things, you are still very much a child at that age.

Salazar was trusted with acting in loco parentis, a concept he was obviously not familiar with.

18 year olds are placed in charge of nukes, required to make correct choices on whether to employ lethal violence as soldiers, and are treated as adults by society, because they are adults, and are fully capable of making far more important choices than what athletic coach to employ and whether to continue to listen to him.

Twitter is a Paragon of Virtue wrote:

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.

F Twitter. People who say LRC is toxic are laughable and obviously haven't been on Twitter. I haven't looked at it in years, and I am better for it.

yea I would have to agree. Whoever says that running 100-120 miles a week and doing sessions that physically and mentally wreck you is a normal endeavor would not know what it feels like. Watching everything you eat and managing your energy throughout the day so that you have the strength to get through that tough workout on the schedule.....back to Mary Cain and this is a real shame for this young lady but with her coming out it will do good for the sport I hope.

I wish Salazar had died from that heart attack in '07. His runners, indeed the whole sport, would've been better off without him.

stupid person 69 wrote:

mary cain is a middle distance runner and is already pretty thin. why does she need to be super thin? having some weight in muscle is perfectly fine

2015, 3:56

2019, 3:51

While a 4-5s improvement might not sound much for a hobby jogger, on the absolute elite/world-class level it decides between winning a gold medal and ending up in 6th place or so.

Cytomel is an incredibly effective drug.

Kiprop was full of drugs, and looked like a skeleton running 1:43/3:26. So yea, weight matters even in middle-distance races.

His record is being a sh!tty human being, dating back to as early as his college days. That’s a lot more significant than a few trinkets.

afsdfasdf wrote:

C/M Runner wrote:

He may have a psychology degree but it doesn't mean he's board certified.

You don't need to be, idiot

You don't read good, do you.

Hint: Whether or not you "need to be" is irrelevant with regard to whether or not you "are."

bravie wrote:

Ok, "philip exeter" elitist. Buh bye

Agree, see you later! Polite of you to announce your intention to leave the thread instead of the ol' Irish goodbye