Under fire from women runners for his training methodology, former Nike Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar issued a statement Tuesday to explain his actions and apologize.
Former Oregon Project runner Mary Cain accused Salazar of weight-shaming her to the point she felt emotionally abused in a story and video appearing last week in The New York Times.
Cain, who joined Salazar’s Portland-based training group as a professional after high school in 2013, said she suffered injury and a disrupted menstrual cycle before leaving Portland to return to her family home in New York. Nike issued a statement saying it has begun an investigation.
Since Cain went public, other former Oregon Project runners such as Kara Goucher, Amy Yoder Begley and Jackie Areson have come to her defense on social media and criticized Salazar’s training methods.
Begley, a 2008 Olympian, tweeted of being dismissed from the team in 2011, told she was “too fat” and “had the biggest butt on the starting line.”
Areson posted a long statement on Instagram. In it she said Salazar let her know he thought “I was fat." She said she was "constantly questioned why and if I was on my period, despite making the 3,000-meter final at the 2012 world indoor champs.”
In Salazar’s statement, he wrote: “On occasion, I may have made comments that were callous or insensitive over the course of years of helping my athletes through hard training. If any athlete was hurt by any comments that I have made, such an effect was entirely unintended, and I am sorry. I do dispute, however, the notion that any athlete suffered any abuse or gender discrimination while running for the Oregon Project.”
Salazar wrote he felt it was his job as a coach to help athletes maximize their performance. At the elite level, he said, it is important for athletes — men and women — to understand the impact weight has on performance.
“That’s part of elite sport,” he wrote. “Maybe that needs to change. Indeed, I have always treated men and women similarly in this regard — to treat my female athletes differently I believe would not be in their personal interests or in the interests of promoting their best athletic performance.”
Salazar wrote he did not require his athletes to lose weight, and instead had frank discussions with them about “what their target training weight and performance weight should be to attain peak performance while maintaining an overall good well-being.”
He wrote he provided his athletes with resources such as “dietitians, nutritionists and others, to help them achieve or maintain any training weight or performance weight in a healthy and appropriate manner.”
In this April 29, 2016 file photo, Mary Cain walks off the track after competing in the women's special 1500-meter run at the Drake Relays.(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)AP
Salazar said in Cain’s case, he kept her father in the loop about Cain’s training and copied him on all emails he sent her about training and nutrition.
Cain was a teenage sensation, setting a number of U.S. high school and junior records and winning the 2014 World Junior title in the 3,000.
Her career tailed off due to injury. She left Portland in 2015, but continued to train as a member of the Oregon Project through the 2016 U.S. Olympic trials.
After The New York Times published the story and video in which Cain criticized Salazar, the coach issued a first statement revealing Cain had been in communication with him by email and text as late as this year, and last spring had sought to rejoin his team.
Cain subsequently conceded she had asked to rejoin the Oregon Project. She said she since realized she was the victim of an abusive situation and decided it was important to speak up.
Salazar is serving a four-year ban by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency from the sport for breaking anti-doping rules. He has not been found to have doped athletes, however, nor directed athletes be doped. He is appealing the ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Nike disbanded the Oregon Project last month after Salazar’s ban.
-- Ken Goe
Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.