Not Done Yet: Mary Cain Has Been Injured in 2017, Planning On Racing Again in 2018
by LetsRun.com
November 9, 2017
In two weeks — on November 24, 2017 — it will have been exactly one year since former American teen prodigy Mary Cain last raced. Cain hasn’t raced or really been heard from at all since she dropped out of the 2016 Manchester Road Race last November.
If you think that means she’s hung up the spikes, you’d be wrong. We reached out to Cain’s management team for an update and her agent Ricky Simms emailed us back the following statement, “Mary was hurt in 2017 but will be back in 2018. Nothing has changed in her coaching/training set-up.”
Mary Cain after an XC race last October (photo by Chris Lotsbom for Race Results Weekly)
Cain, 21, is among the fastest American juniors ever at both 800 (1:59.51) and 1500 (4:04.62) — marks she set at the age of 17 in 2013 when she made the final at Worlds in the 1500 where she placed 9th. At the time, she was living at home in New York but being coached by Alberto Salazar. That fall, she then turned professional, and after graduating high school in 2014, she formally joined the Nike Oregon Project and moved to Portland.
In 2014, she won the world junior gold at 3000 but didn’t run as fast (4:06.34) as the year before. In 2015, Cain slowed again and only ran 4:09.08 and it was announced in October of that year that she’d be returning to New York to attend Fordham University (she spent her freshman year at the University of Portland). A year later in October 2016, after a year during which Cain only ran 4:10.84, it was announced that Cain was no longer a member of the Nike Oregon Project and was now being coached by John Henwood, who had helped her when she was training remotely under Salazar in high school.
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MB: Not Done Yet: Mary Cain Has Been Injured in 2017 – Planning On Racing Again in 2018