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Not too many people are surprised by the findings with the exception of Salazar and Dr. Brown, as Nike’s attorneys have lost this round. I am not surprised by the arrogance of Salazar’s response which was posted on the Oregon Project website...just surprised that Nike allowed such a response to be posted. Have they forgotten about the once famous cyclist that they helped sponsor?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...doping-agency/
https://nikeoregonproject.com/blogs/...erto-statement
Well, Saladbar's statement is factually correct. Its just you can use loopholes to avoid positive results, and still be in violation of the spirit of the rule. Not unlike old Team Sky in my opinion.Quote:
Originally Posted by rwsaunders
I was on my way to post this article in the Times: Alberto Salazar, Coach of the Nike Oregon Project, Gets a 4-Year Doping Ban - The New York Times
And this: The Day Alberto Salazar Died | Runner's World
Is he just another megalomaniac (no shortage these days) or is he actually bat-shit crazy? Just really weird.
Feels like a group of people who think they are bigger than the sport. Let's not forget the threats--people who are like this like threats: John Capriotti, Nike Global Director of Athletics, Threatened To Kill Brooks Beasts Head Coach and Former Nike Employee Danny Mackey At 215 USAs According to Police Report - LetsRun.com
4 years does not seem long enough.
30 accompanying “pacemakers” and a lead pace car to break the 2-hour Marathon record...he used to run for Nike and now Ineos.
Eliud Kipchoge smashes two-hour marathon barrier - CNN
Bizarre.
Not surprised Ineos cycling was involved in a supporting role. This seems consistent with Brailsford's approach, e.g., fixated on optimal conditions to replicate laboratory-developed performance. I bet he'd love to manipulate the TdF this way. Not the kind of thing that inspires me, at all.
Mary Cain is an amazing athlete. She was so fast! My niece, a collegiate runner, and I used to follow her results and write back and forth. And then she disappeared. Meanwhile, my niece's coach, a woman who had recruited her at the small college she attended, was dismissed and a new coach, a man, came in and said point blank that he would only work with the men. And that was the end of my niece's competitive running. She trained on her own, overtrained, and ended up breaking a bone in her foot. Before that, school records and consistent top 5 at meets. More importantly, she enjoyed it immensely and got great satisfaction out of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by thollandpe
Fortunately, she took all that focus and commitment from running and applied it to her studies. Now she is finishing her graduate work at UNC and will get her doctor of veterinary medicine degree next year.
But what kind of sick f*ck looks at Mary Cain running like she did in high school and decides that what she needs is a course of action that will destroy all the gifts she has?
Unfortunately, the answer is a list that keeps gets longer and longer.
The Oregon Project website which posted AS's lame response to WADA's actions has been pulled.
Reposting this because you must watch. This is hateful in the extreme.Quote:
Originally Posted by thollandpe
What I love about the piece (plenty which sickens me) is Mary Cain looks the camera dead in the eye and says, "and this is how to fix it". I do believe Alberto thinks he was looking out for Mary's well being and this is the problem. I have seen colligate sports like cross country eat up talented young women which usually begins is target weights and results in depression and stress fractures. Her and Nike's story I dont think is unique. Only the prestige is unique.Quote:
Originally Posted by ides1056
So true.Quote:
Originally Posted by joosttx
Cam Levins who was a NOP teammate at the time, has come out and apologized to Mary for not looking out for her as he remembers Salazar bashing her for gaining weight. Jonathon Marcus who was meet director of 2015 OXY, says he remembers Salazar publicly yelling at Mary for gaining weight. Amy Yoder Begley was kicked off NOP in 2011 for finishing 6th at USATF Champs in the 10,000m. She remembers Salazar telling her she had the biggest butt on the starting line. Jordon Hasay, who was Mary's teammate, and currently a Nike runner needs to break her silence.
I am grateful for those like Mary Cain who are willing to shine a light on such dysfunction. I hope Salazar, and others in that program, wind up on the receiving end of some seriously punitive action. More than a 4-year ban.
Very interesting video. Living in Westchester County, where Mary Cain is from, always read articles in the local sports section about her during her high school days. Never really knew what happened to her after she entered college, other than her results were getting worse. There is a high school runner in section 1 in New York State (Mary Cain's former section) who is breaking Mary Cain's records. Hopefully, the young lady and her parents learn something from Mary Cain. Personally, hope the young lady stay an amateur and runs in college. A little bit of extra weight is not always a bad thing for the runners. A friend's daughter ran x/c and track for an Ivy League college. She developed an eating disorder. Thankfully, she received help, gained some weight back, and her results improved. Her senior year she qualified for the NCAA championship---think it was the mile--it was a number of years ago.
Emphasis mine.Quote:
Originally Posted by joosttx
I agree with everything else, but I don't think it had anything to do with anyone's well-being. I think it had to do with power. And the charge that comes from using sociopathic brutalism to force people to win races as a manifestation of one's power over them.
I don’t think a sociopath can tell what is right and wrong. My point is I believe he thinks he has done nothing wrong which is sick and sad and not unique to just him.Quote:
Originally Posted by j44ke
Got you. Yes. Agree.Quote:
Originally Posted by joosttx
OpEd by Lauren Fleshman former professional runner and Stanford Grad
Over the past week, the athletic world has been embroiled in a reckoning following high school phenom Mary Cain’s story of suffering from an eating disorder and suicidal thoughts in pursuit of athletic success. Stories like hers are not new. What’s new, and what I think has triggered such outrage, is that she has audaciously put the blame where it belongs: on a sports system built by and for men.
That system is long overdue for reform.
I’ve had a lot of time to think about how to fix it. The win-at-all-costs culture of competitive high school sports manifested itself early for me — in the form of a salad with dressing on the side. That was the meal of choice for several girls seated together at a pre-race dinner before we raced one another at the 1998 National Foot Locker Cross Country Championships. The next morning, the top 32 girls and 32 boys in the nation would line up to race for medals, bragging rights and college scholarships. In the race, some of them crumpled, and others flew. Many of the girls near the front had fueled themselves with salad the night before. Some were alarmingly thin.
If I hadn’t made the medal podium, I might have doubted my choice of pasta at that dinner. If I hadn’t talked to my high school coach about what I saw, I might have fallen into the same trap in college that has annihilated enough talent to fill several Olympic teams. Luckily, my coach reinforced my positive body image and educated me about eating disorders. He sold me on the long game, and it worked.
At Stanford, I won five N.C.A.A. titles and was a 15-time All-American. I raced with unmatched consistency year over year. Part of me was motivated to prove that, with a stronger frame, you could be successful for longer — that winning didn’t have to involve hurting yourself.
But rather than change the culture, people talked about me as if I were an exception to the rule that thinner was better. During my final season, with the transition to pro running on the horizon, I began to believe them. I restricted my diet to make my 21-year-old body, still soft from the new estrogen infusing it, look like the leaner 28-year-old women I saw making Olympic teams. I wasn’t ready for that kind of body. I made myself into it anyway. I may have looked the part, but I lost my energy. I lost my period, and injuries set in, derailing the first half of my professional running career.
I was one of the fastest distance runners to never make the Olympics. I’m certain that relative energy deficiency in sport, or RED-S, the same problem Mary Cain encountered, caused me to leave some talent on the table. I don’t mind the missed podiums, the missed chances. What gnaws at me is that nothing has changed. Until we acknowledge and respect that the female performance curve is different from the male version that sports was built on, girls will continue to face institutionalized harm.
It is grown women, not girls, who top the most prestigious podiums. It is grown women in their late 20s and 30s breaking American records. It is American women in their mid-30s winning the Boston and New York Marathons. Imagine if we gave more girls a chance to get there.
Eating disorders have the second-highest mortality rate of all mental health disorders, surpassed only by opioid addiction. They have continued to increase for girls ages 15 to 22, which directly overlaps with the peak of adolescence, commonly spent in high school and college sports. Over one-third of N.C.A.A. Division I female athletes exhibit risk factors for anorexia nervosa.
The natural improvement curve of young women generally includes a performance dip or plateau as the body adjusts to the changes of adolescence. If you make it past the dip, you are rewarded with steadier improvement through your mid-20s and 30s. During this normal plateau, though, girls train in a system that holds up the more linear, male performance curve as the ideal. When their biological performance curve is not normalized and supported, women and girls are faced with a choice: fight their body’s changes, or ride it out and be declared undedicated.
We do not currently have a sports system built for girls. If we did, it would look very different — and it would benefit everyone.
The abuse that Mary Cain described has been justified and allowed to persist for decades. It is still a very common practice for a coach to continue milking points out of athletes who are battling an eating disorder, while providing completely inadequate care. It is still a very common practice for coaches to directly create an eating-disorder culture in the name of performance by focusing on weight and appearance.
Coaches are the ones with the power. They bear the responsibility for creating an environment that prioritizes health over performance. If coaches are found to create or contribute to a culture of negative body image or eating disorders, they are committing abuse, and they should be fired.
If sports were built for young women and girls, the focus on weight would be replaced with basic nutrition and RED-S education, which would dramatically reduce injuries and mental health disorders for all genders. Eating disorders are a form of self-harm and should be treated as such, with mandatory reporting to medical professionals for the safety of the individual. In college programs, a nutritionist and a certified psychologist who specializes in eating-disorder recovery should be as commonly available as athletic trainers. Coaches should be rewarded based on health metrics and retention of talent, rather than for cycling out athletes who burn out year after year. There should be a hall of fame that inducts coaches whose athletes have gone on to have the longest careers.
Mary Cain’s story is the story of thousands of girls and boys. Her coach, Alberto Salazar, is just the latest in a line of powerful men being scrutinized for the harmful ways they have used their power. Women and girls are no longer content just to have a chance to play; we are demanding that sports be rebuilt altogether.
Despite decades spent submerging athletes in environments of negative body image and eating-disorder culture and contributing to a mental health crisis, very few coaches and administrators have been held to account. It’s time to acknowledge the unequal power dynamic of coaches and athletes, and address the systemic harm. It’s time to call this behavior what it is: abuse.
Lauren Fleshman (@laurenfleshman) is a two-time 5,000-meter national champion and head coach of the professional women’s running group Littlewing Athletics.