Yesterday Mary Cain, the phenomenal middle distance runner came forward to talk openly about her experience while running for the Nike Oregon Project.
I think all of you are aware of her story. I will not repeat it.
Here are my thoughts on this.
Now Shalane Flanagan and Cam Levins have both come forward and said they should have been more supportive of Mary Cain. Probably a lot of others who should have as well, especially as Mary was so young when she was with NOP. Most of these others were post collegiate in their careers. Mary was taken out of high school to be turned into a world class athlete. Actually she was already world class, but her physical development was not yet over. She was in that girl to woman transition period and that was incredible stress put onto her physiology and psyche. When we consider this, it is not uncommon at all that thousands of girls go through this transition in their teenage years while combining high performance sports with growing into womanhood. When I was coaching the women at the U.of Dayton it was common knowledge that menstrual cycles would cease. There were already rules in place that weigh ins could only be done by staff in the training room privately and that information was not passed on to coaches. It was more for medical staff to be aware of possible anorexia or other eating disorders. NOP made their own rules so the athletes who were getting a salary from NOP had to put up and shut up. Their careers were on the line, and it is quite possible that insubordination was frowned upon. I don't know what if any sanctions were placed on the athlete for being insubordinate at NOP.
In the past, there were several schools of coaching, all successful including Igloi, Cerutty, Lydiard, Bowerman, Stampfl, Gerschler. I'm sure they all left some broken bodies along the wayside. Some were a lot harder than others. Bowerman was known to be very cautious about over training his runners, but some of the others were not. You thrived or you died.
The other thing that is very disconcerting is taking a kid away from home at a young age to train. This happens a lot in other sports such as women's gymnastics. But I think often a parent accompanies the young gymnasts to a training site to live. Still they ultimately turn their kid over to another adult to tell them how to live. We know things can go wrong such as happened at Michigan State. Parents have to examine their own motivation for doing this. I can imagine Mary begging her parents to let her go to Oregon where she would have the greatest coach in the world. Back in the day in East Germany, you didn't have to beg your parents to be allowed to go, you were taken by the State.
Here in Canada we are dealing with a terrible time in our history when First Nations children were taken away at very young ages and forced to learn English, forget their traditional ways, and also be violated by opportunistic predators. It led to a long painful history, and today that cultural genocide will be a long time healing. I can see some parallels in this with how we treat young athletes. And when the athlete fails to live up to expectations they are dumped along the wayside.
Look a bit further. In hockey, young boys become property, literally 'owned' by hockey organizations. At sixteen they move out of their homes to live at effectively a foster home while they play hockey and maybe if there is time, go to school. If they fail to make progress, they usually get a job driving a beer truck. Further down the line, look at the art of ballet. A girl is not going to move on if she cannot squeeze through a very narrow template by a certain age. Ain't no fat girls dancing in the ballet Russe. They train as hard as any athlete. The men in ballet do too. A number of years ago, the male dancers in a professional company were tested against NHL hockey players and scored higher in every category except upper arm strength. This is how society treats its performers. It's sink or swim, crap or get off the pot. Everytime you watch some prodigy or a 'seasoned' performer making an athletic performance or a musical or other artistic endeavor, remember they have paid a painful price for your pleasure.
George Brose
Vancouver Island
Comment:
Preaching to the choir about Salazar’s Hx and his playing the edges and that misguided zeitgeist around winning at any cost. And how playing the shaming card is not unlike an aspect of the deceit the ‘sports doctor’ at Mi State, Larry Nassar — now in prison for life, employed as part of his repertoire in keeping the lid on his abusive actions.
Cain’s full statement parses out the inherent vulnerability of young talented female athletes in their quest for full realization of their talents and the level of trust necessarily placed in their retinue of coaches.
A newly minted MSU trustee resigned this past week citing a culture at the school and on her board not interested in doing much other than hiding — apparently — a lot of dirty laundry. They’d brought as President former MI governor and all around disordered character, John Engler, for damage control. And all he pretty much did in his tone deafness, if not downright negligence, was dig their PR hole significantly deeper. His tenure was quite short. Apparently he’d spent too many years in government.
Rich Mach
From the Nov. 11, 2019 Guardian by Sean Ingle
Excellente réflexion . Faire une performance à l'adolescence ne veut pas dire nécessairement faire une longue carrière . La transformation du corps peut jouer de mauvais tours. Beaucoup d'athlètes frustrés cherchent des boucs émissaires à leur contre performance.
" Don't be a cloud because you failed to become a star. "
Jose Sant
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This Sunday evening on the NPR’s news show, All Things Considered, Mary Cain was interviewed for what seemed to be at least 5 full minutes, if not longer. She has gotten much coverage recently after coming out about her tenure as an athlete trained by the now banned Alberto Salazar. While I was not privy to any body language that requires visual access, she never skipped a beat, was reasoned and even in her presentations of what took place. Anyone reading this has undoubtedly heard of her observations and, possibly, has seen her interviewed earlier within some other venue. So I will not covered already trod ground.
I would find it difficult to disbelieve what she had to offer, but will cover later on what begs to be vetted and has thus far — to my experience anyway —not been spoken of. The major take aways were two. One, that she was laboring under considerable strain and uncertainty; and the lack of emotional understanding and support from this world famous coach and his cohorts was sufficiently devastating that she was in considerable emotional difficulty near the end of her tenure with NOP. The other takeaway was the built-in deficiencies and intrinsic difficulties when a male coaches a female and tries to tune into the female mind. And, at the same time, that male sticks hard and fast with what has worked for his more successful male charges. And does not bend to any notions about what the optimal body fat ratio might be for a woman’s long term health and well being. Her overall structural health was suffering and she now believes she was on the way to long term and irreversible damage had she continued on the overall Kamikaze training regimen.
As we know, the so-called sports psychologist Salazar had on board with him was hardly that — along any legal lines anyway. Her expressed concerns fell on deaf ears. With both of them. And in a system run by men that is largely already about men, the ‘tough-it- out’ metaphor is written all over the place. And a central tenet woven through and around most all training and racing transactions between coaches and their athletes. ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’ institutional blather. This is culturally embedded boilerplate for world class athletes.
The female that is going to make it in the midst of such a milieu is a female that tries to fit in with that mentality. Salazar’s grousing about her weight as she continued to mature into a young woman and the public ‘shaming” — was that because of the way it was handled — whether calculated or not, would have to be a powerful player in threatening to break the ineffable spirit of any one athlete who already is beginning to feel excluded and looked askance at. And gradually isolated — if largely in her own mind — from the remainder of this very elite group.
On a side note I found Shalane Flanagan’s mea culpa that she should have said something, but didn’t, rather disingenuous. I hope that Mary does not chose to throw in her lot with Shalane as the bottom line was Shalane was not about to go against the prevailing current in that rather closed system. Mary sounded together and improving and on the move toward a successful season of competition in 2020. She is now 23 and was unusually well spoken for such a young person in the aforementioned interview. However ….
My reservations revolve around the lack of parental involvement while she was a continent away on the West coast. And while supremely talented, also very young to be in such an environment with other world class adult athletes. I feel as if there may be things left out about her hanging in there until she came home nearly broken. A kind of prevailing zeitgeist within her family perhaps. And that those things, again, have to do with the lack of a timely intervention on the part of her parents. I find it difficult to imagine that the first they came to know of her predicament and dilemma seemed to be very late in the game after she was cutting herself and spiraling into a significant .. and I daresay … frightening depression.
In this litigious time, one wonders if this is a preludium to a lawsuit about to be brought. Hopefully not. That may not go well for the Cain family Her answer to the question about the claim she partitioned NOP as late as last April, 7 months ago now, to return .… I really have no memory of her answer which usually means for me it was word salad-like enough that I pretty much tuned it out. And truth be told, the answer was probably sufficiently inconsequential in not really addressing the question asked.
In closing, if Mary is not entirely candid in public, my suspicion would be she is withholding certain knowledge from it being considered by herself as well. And that signifies problems ahead, because she would not be free and clear of this part of her journey and it cannot make enough solid sense then for her to be able to entirely let this experience with Salazar and Co. go and to then be able to enter into a new and unfettered phase of training and racing. And, to hopefully, realize her full potential as a gifted and talented athlete.
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