Mary Cain, her father, Ritz, Julian and others talk in-depth with Sports Illustrated includes Salazar's full statement

you might be surprised.

Here’s a few things I’ve always assumed were true about Salazar and his training group. This goes back to 2002 when there was controversy about his “high altitude house” investigated by USADA.

My conclusions:

• Salazar has always been pushing the limits

• Salazar is an intense human and probably has some filter/Asperger’s issues

• Salazar prefers to work with young athletes so he can shape their training from the start

• Salazar is only interested in the highest results – GOLD medals

• Salazar is a verbally abusive person who is committed to insanely rigid training programs

• Not everyone can handle Salazar/NOP’s programs

• Salazar is a huge jerk

Cain could have left. Could have reported the issues. Could have peacefully left the group. Could have bought some snacks for herself. Cain didn’t have to be there training as a professional athlete getting paid.

Sure, Salazar is a total a-hole about weight, but to win Olympic and world championship medals, the stakes were high and he was good at getting athletes to that point. Not every physically talented athlete can handle the stress of every program. She could have left.

I think the weight stuff isn’t healthy and Al Sal is a bad role model, but it seems to be a fact of female distance running at the highest level. Sucks, but if your body can’t stay thin, you probably can’t win a gold medal. Just like if you don’t have the right muscle fibers to be a 100m sprinter or high jumper etc. It’s genetic to some point how you store fat.

There should be a program where new professional athletes get taught how brutal it can be to succeed as a pro and the mental hardships associated.

ventolin ^4 wrote:

don't you think it's a little strange that the only people really defending nop is alberto (the founder and head), pete julian (the heir apparent), and treasure (who even tried to push off some liability in the si interview)? if you're going to mention "the usual suspects" like magness and goucher when they criticize the nop, shouldn't you also note that the only nop defenders willing to go public are alberto and his assistants?

tldr: the only person really defending the oregon project is alberto himself (julian suddenly sounds very apologetic in his si interview), while there's quite literally a chorus of former athletes and associates who are all saying the same thing. i guess i'm just trying to say that this sentiment that magness and goucher's words somehow mean less because they're longtime critics is silly.

who would have thought that vertolin would have so many intelligent things to say in a row.

a PR out of no where.

ya, sal is telling his truth and cain is telling her truth, with a little fudging here and there.

to accuse Nike and Al Sal of over all gross incompetence in the sports medicine / nutrition field, well that would be the last of their crimes. NOP while not perfect was state of the art in sports medicine, abeit, Cain reporting many injuries, means that she did not have access to the good PEDs.

at the heart of the matter is the fragile psyche, not of women, of athletes, and especially runners.

your world collapses, and you're scarred for life if someone calls out your butt?????

pathetic.

you want to see some heros, some tough nuts, go check out a slave labor Nike, Apple, or Asian sweat shop factory,

where mothers live in a crap tin shack, raising children, working 6 and 7 days 12 hours plus...

it is a pusssy generation.

but hardship will fix all, real hardship simply eliminates these easily butt hurt people.

My coach in the early 1980s (who became the coach of the US women's olympic team) once greeted a female athlete returning from summer break with "What have you been doing this summer, other than eating?"

HOOWIE wrote:

SFH fan wrote:

Yes, that's the problem with kids these days, is that they often can't be talked to directly. I'm glad Dr. Cain realized this too.

In a nut-shell, Alberto was using 80s style coaching to achieve peak performance, when FBOW Millennials need a different approach. Maybe using gameification as a weight loss incentive, merge it in with social media somehow, that's the modern ticket.

Name a coach in the 80 who was like Alberto. Go.

My college coach was a woman who was a multiple world XC champion. I remember her lining up the girls, not the guys, to get weighed in front of the entire team and the guys that were just lifting weights in the weight room.

This was 1979-83.

Complete bullshit. It didn't help one runner on the team.

longjack wrote:

ya, sal is telling his truth and cain is telling her truth, with a little fudging here and there.

to accuse Nike and Al Sal of over all gross incompetence in the sports medicine / nutrition field, well that would be the last of their crimes.

This is interesting. It seems this is one of the rare times that both sides of the debate are arriving at a point of agreement.

We both seem to agree that the environment at the Oregon Project was tough for young teenagers.

But the old school thinks this is acceptable just as if a soldier were to go through basic training.

It is true that Gjert Ingebrigtsen is tough on his 3 sons. His other 2 sons quit and decided not to pursue a running career. Their father does indeed love them but is also tough at the same time.

letsrun seems pretty sober on a lot of this.

like women coaches.

i'm not so sure that women would be much different, or even a bit harder than men.

men tend to have sympathy for the opposite sex, a lot of women, lesser so.

i have too small a sample size of coaches, but in general, women don't like women bosses, that's for sure,

baring transgender/ hormonal oddities.

a pain in the weltschmerz wrote:

My college coach was a woman who was a multiple world XC champion. I remember her lining up the girls, not the guys, to get weighed in front of the entire team and the guys that were just lifting weights in the weight room.

This was 1979-83.

Complete bullshit. It didn't help one runner on the team.

How do you know it didn't help? Weight, running, and performance and how to address it as a coach is not a black and white issue. I am not saying your coach was using most effective methods for the team, but saying it didn't work for anyone is an extreme statement. It ignores the fact that it probably worked for your coach when she was younger and that is why she is replicating it. To be a world champion I am sure you have to tend to extremes. A better point is that it might have worked for some, but it wasn't good for a lot of runners. There are some personalities that thrive in that setting. There are a lot who don't. It simply means that there are different personality types. I would tend to agree with you that those who thrive in adverse conditions (ie an extreme coach) are also going to have similar gains under a coach whose personality is less extreme.

I don't like Nike for many reasons, e.g., corporate oligarchy or sweatshop slavery, but I'm not entirely sure what to make of this recent "fat shaming" criticism. I'm sure different participants in this have different criticisms, but generally there doesn't seem to be a clear thesis.

Let me entertain a few of the possible arguments:

(1) We should reform sport. Sport specificity in general isn't good for you and the more competitive it is, the greater the price that must be paid by its competitors.

American Football is probably the poster-child of unhealthy sport. Should we be encouraging students that go to school to learn to use their heads as a means of imparting blunt force trauma?

(2) Theories about optimal (sport-specific) weight are outdated or over-simplified.

Given two persons A and B, all things else being equal, if A has less fat than B, then A will perform better than B on most athletic metrics (with some exceptions, particularly in strength-related sports like strong man).

"All things else being equal" is a problematic a prior, however. For instance, fat helps with energy and testosterone production. Thus, for most people, the sweet spot is arguably some body fat percentage that makes them noncompetitive with other people who obtain the lower body fat while not significantly degrading those other factors or only by harming their health. For many, this is a price they are willing to pay, which gets us back to (1): should we reform sport?

(3) Theories about optimal weight are reasonable, but coaches ought to be more sensitive about how they talk to their athletes.

Certainly, we should strive to be respectful to one another, but anecdotally, my coworkers and I are most productive when we are frank and to the point with respect to our shared goals. There's probably no right answer here, only matters of taste and trying to find a way to get along or to part ways when one isn't a good fit for whatever group dynamic exists.

Luke: "The force surrounds us, binds us, PENETRATES us. You need to FEEL the force..."

Rey: #Metoo

belial wrote:

I don't like Nike for many reasons, e.g., corporate oligarchy or sweatshop slavery, but I'm not entirely sure what to make of this recent "fat shaming" criticism. [snip]

People like you just don't get it.

I was a dancer for a good part of my youth and teenager years. I had applied and was excepted to a dance company. Not going to the name the group but I was told we had to maintain a certain weight. It was just part of the deal. I was told a few times in not the nicest way to lose weight. We also had group weigh ins. But I understood that I had to agreed to that entering the program. I did end up leaving the dance program. I Also had a coach tell me directly that I would never be a distance runner I was too big. But I didn’t take personally and ended up doing fairly well achieving my hobby jogger goals.

In the end I wish Mary would of chose a slower path to her goals. Going to college program obviously would of been a better choice. In the end hopefully we can all learn from this. Parents need to prepare kids of training expectations of professional athlete groups. And no this no excuse for Salazar. I hope coaches will learn from this too.

*accepted

*would have chosen

*would have been

And a comma or two wouldn't kill you...

Take your own advise wrote:

Positive Contribution wrote:

Mary wasn't training to be Navy SEAl dbag

She was training to be the equivalent of. She signed on with NOP to be a world beater, not a journeyman pro.

Running a world class 1500 meter = raiding the bin Laden compound under machine gun fire.

Got it.

ventolin ^4 wrote:

don't you think it's a little strange that the only people really defending nop is alberto (the founder and head), pete julian (the heir apparent), and treasure (who even tried to push off some liability in the si interview)? if you're going to mention "the usual suspects" like magness and goucher when they criticize the nop, shouldn't you also note that the only nop defenders willing to go public are alberto and his assistants?

tldr: the only person really defending the oregon project is alberto himself (julian suddenly sounds very apologetic in his si interview), while there's quite literally a chorus of former athletes and associates who are all saying the same thing. i guess i'm just trying to say that this sentiment that magness and goucher's words somehow mean less because they're longtime critics is silly.

fyi the TL:DR isn't supposed to match the length of your initial message. Kind of defeats the purpose.

So what I am not getting is, that nobody was forced to work with Salazar. Right?

He is probably a bit macho and just try to repeat his own crazy training with forced him to quit too early because of exhaustion.

But I guess it's nice to get a solid paycheck from Nike.

sorry, had a point but didn't know how to say it.

I don't really like the "she could have left" argument. Could she?

An 18 year old, fresh out of HS, being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Could she leave? Would she leave? Does she feel pressure to keep her mouth closed at the time? Does she feel pressure to follow all his rules (don't eat)?

Hateraid wrote:

I don't really like the "she could have left" argument. Could she?

An 18 year old, fresh out of HS, being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars. Could she leave? Would she leave? Does she feel pressure to keep her mouth closed at the time? Does she feel pressure to follow all his rules (don't eat)?

Of course she could have left. Some other factors ultimately motivated her to stay, whether it be pride, greed, stubbornness, or stupidity.