janitor wrote:
I'm in agreement with you, but I do think it is appropriate to blame Salazar in the Cain case. It just seems like coaching basics to understand where your runners are at the start and how hard its advisable to push. Especially when dealing with younger runners. The best coaches should also understand ways to sustain success. Also, its not as if there haven't been 10+ years of warnings about the injury dangers of having young women train to excessively low body weights.
I'm really hoping that Klosterhalfen is just working off an extraordinarily slight frame and not sacrificing too much, because she did have a great year, and it would be nice if that was one of many to come.
Was he partially responsible for what happened to her? Yes. But so were her parents, and herself with the "chasing records and medals!" at all cost mentality. Look at how careful Tuohy is with anything she does. You think she didn't get any pro offers? She just rejected them, she got a great HS coach, parents that support her and know what's right for her.
Is Salazar to blame? No. He always did what he thought would make her the best runner ever - and also reaching her own goals, which were medals and records. He treated her like any other elite he coached with, just with lower mileage (not more than 60) and slowly building her up. That turned out to still be WAY too intense and hard for her, and didn't work. He burned her out, she took a lot of damage mentally and struggled chasing her old performances.
No coach is born as all-knowing, 100% perfect coach that knows everything and never makes a mistake. Salazar made many mistakes with Cain - public weight shaming, overtraining her, too hard post-race workouts, yelling at her, etc. That's not how you treat a 16-year old girl who just gave up everything and moved away from home just to be coached by you and achieve the next level in running. But in his eyes, she was just a runner and he did what he thought would bring her to that level she was seeking.
She was the first 16-year old girl he took over, and it was a big learning experience to him. What worked well with Rupp didn't work with her. Did he learn from it? Probably, he never coached such a young women again but he successfully brought Hassan and Koko (please stop thinking that Julian and Salazar have no overlap) to the next level. They have never said a bad word about him or NOP.
I agree that Salazar was the wrong coach for Cain - in retrospect that's easy to say, but where should he have got the experience to deal with young girls from? Any HS coach would have probably been a better coach for Cain. Salazar spent his whole post-running career on coaching super-talented runners and turn them into world medalists, he never learned how to coach young HS girls that require different treatment than someone in her 20s even if they run the same times.