Mary Tried to Rejoin NOP in April 2019

automorphic wrote:

One of the biggest problems with the reaction here is that we expect victims to be heroes. The corollary of that is that if Cain (or Magness, Goucher, etc.) is not a hero, then she's not a victim. And so the discussion becomes a referendum on Cain, not on Salazar and the NOP.

It doesn't matter if Cain's a good person. Maybe she's a wonderful person; maybe she's a horrible person who just wants to get back at Salazar for not letting her rejoin NOP. (Obviously I would hope for the former.)

It doesn't really matter too much. What matters is that Salazar, by many different people and for many different reasons, has been accused of being a scumbag. Disbelieving this doesn't just require disbelieving Cain, but also Cam Levins, for instance, and many other people. And it requires another explanation for the weirdness that we've always known was there with Cain and the NOP.

If Mary Cain were the only person who has said something this negative about Salazar, then it would be her words against his, and it would be perfectly reasonable to question her motives and her character. But they're simply not relevant in a world where many others have said the same thing, and none of the accusations are inconsistent with who we already think Salazar is.

It's perfectly reasonable to say something like "Salazar's 4-year ban was too harsh given the relatively meager doping violations that USADA was able to prove". But to assert that Salazar isn't a major pox on the sport requires that you dismiss or disprove: the proven doping violations (and suspicion of more), the grey area behavior, the psychological manipulation of athletes including publicly berating them and focusing disproportionately on their weight, the hostility to the media, trying to get personal information of Letsrun posters, and intimidating rival athletes and coaches while playing politics with the rules of the sport (i.e. the Gabe Grunewald DQ).

In this ecosystem, the force isn't with any one accusation, but with the sum total of all of them. That's why it isn't about Mary Cain: it's about Alberto Salazar and the things that he's done.

blue sky wrote:

I do wonder about her parents. Because I am interested in this story, I watched the video clip of her and her mother interviewed on GMA. Her parents should bear some responsibility. They had her immediately come home in 2015 after she called them and told them what was happening (cutting, suicidal thoughts). Obviously, the right thing to do. On GMA, her mother said, "I called her agent and said, "Get her out of there." AND THEN WHAT? Fast forward 4 years and Mary flies out there and asks to join NOP again. I understand how a person can be drawn back to someone they felt abused by, but she seemed to have a good support system in her family, emotional and financial. Her father is a highly paid anesthesiologist and her family lives in a wealthy suburb of NYC. They could afford to pay for a top therapist. They were clearly involved in her athletic career. It is hard to believe her parents didn't know how the world works and were unaware of issues that can affect young female athletes. Her father would have been exposed to all sorts of behaviors in his medical school and residency training. Were her parents wearing blinders because AS claims to be a devout Roman Catholic? Clearly, Mary needs a lower pressure, kinder training milieu to thrive. There is no shame in that.

3 sided wrote:

AlSal's response wrote:

And AlSal's response to Ken Goe:

In the written response sent late Thursday evening, Salazar says:

“Mary’s father is a medical doctor, and both of her parents were deeply involved in her training, competition and health throughout the period she was coached by me. For example, Mary’s father consulted on medications and supplements Mary used during her time at the NOP. Neither of her parents nor Mary raised any of the issues that she now suggests occurred while I was coaching her. To be clear, I never encouraged her, or worse yet, shamed her, to maintain an unhealthy weight.”

Salazar writes: “Mary at times struggled to find and maintain her ideal performance and training weight."

He said in those instances he consulted her father and referred Cain to a female doctor.

The doctor “would have been responsible for prescribing Mary with any medication, including birth control pills. And of course, as I have said many times before, I have never given, encouraged or suggested that any of my athletes take any banned substance, ever.”

He writes that contrary to Cain’s allegations, the Oregon Project team included both a nutritionist and a sports psychologist.

Cain contends she left Portland in 2015 and returned to her family home in New York, although she continued to train as a member of the Oregon Project through the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials.

Salazar writes Cain traveled to Portland in April of this year and asked him to resume coaching her. He says he and Cain were in communication by email and text message as recently as July of this year. He says she asked his advice about training and recovery from injury in the emails and text message.

He enclosed a text message he says Cain sent to him in April that included this passage:

“Thanks again so much for a great trip -- I’m excited to be working together again and I really want this. Haha got back to a chilly morning in NY and even skipped class just to prioritize training and recovery since that’s my No. 1.”

What needs to be understood is that there are ALWAYS 3 sides to a story: her side, his side, and the truth. A one sided argument is intellectually unacceptable.

rojo wrote:

automorphic wrote:

One of the biggest problems with the reaction here is that we expect victims to be heroes. The corollary of that is that if Cain (or Magness, Goucher, etc.) is not a hero, then she's not a victim. And so the discussion becomes a referendum on Cain, not on Salazar and the NOP.

It doesn't matter if Cain's a good person. Maybe she's a wonderful person; maybe she's a horrible person who just wants to get back at Salazar for not letting her rejoin NOP. (Obviously I would hope for the former.)

It doesn't really matter too much. What matters is that Salazar, by many different people and for many different reasons, has been accused of being a scumbag. Disbelieving this doesn't just require disbelieving Cain, but also Cam Levins, for instance, and many other people. And it requires another explanation for the weirdness that we've always known was there with Cain and the NOP.

If Mary Cain were the only person who has said something this negative about Salazar, then it would be her words against his, and it would be perfectly reasonable to question her motives and her character. But they're simply not relevant in a world where many others have said the same thing, and none of the accusations are inconsistent with who we already think Salazar is.

It's perfectly reasonable to say something like "Salazar's 4-year ban was too harsh given the relatively meager doping violations that USADA was able to prove". But to assert that Salazar isn't a major pox on the sport requires that you dismiss or disprove: the proven doping violations (and suspicion of more), the grey area behavior, the psychological manipulation of athletes including publicly berating them and focusing disproportionately on their weight, the hostility to the media, trying to get personal information of Letsrun posters, and intimidating rival athletes and coaches while playing politics with the rules of the sport (i.e. the Gabe Grunewald DQ).

In this ecosystem, the force isn't with any one accusation, but with the sum total of all of them. That's why it isn't about Mary Cain: it's about Alberto Salazar and the things that he's done.

FANTASTIC POST. I loved your talk about us expecting victims to be heroes.

I was talking to Weldon this morning and he was saying something similar about today's society. Someone is either the second coming or the devil, the greatest or the evilest when in reality it's more complicated than that but few are willing to admit that.

I just watched Cain on Good Morning America Today. I was struck how at the end of the story when they listed Nike's response they conveniently left out the part where Nike said she tried to rejoin the team. Does that totally discredit Cain's allegations? Not at all. But GMA didn't want to paint the full picture, they didn't want to deal with the messiness of life so they left that out and in my opinion that is journalism malpractice. It complicates the story of "Evil big company run by men abuses little girl" so it was left out.

Watch it for yourself.

https://twitter.com/GMA/status/1192793839884328960