NYT: I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike

[Mike 03]

Excerpt:

Mary Cain’s male coaches were convinced she had to get “thinner, and thinner, and thinner.” Then her body started breaking down.

At 17, Mary Cain was already a record-breaking phenom: the fastest girl in a generation, and the youngest American track and field athlete to make a World Championships team. In 2013, she was signed by the best track team in the world, Nike’s Oregon Project, run by its star coach Alberto Salazar.

Then everything collapsed. Her fall was just as spectacular as her rise, and she shares that story for the first time in the Video Op-Ed above.

Instead of becoming a symbol of girls’ unlimited potential in sports, Cain became yet another standout young athlete who got beaten down by a win-at-all-costs culture. Girls like Cain become damaged goods and fade away. We rarely hear what happened to them. We move on.

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A big part of this problem is that women and girls are being forced to meet athletic standards that are based on how men and boys develop. If you try to make a girl fit a boy’s development timeline, her body is at risk of breaking down. That is what happened to Cain.

After months of dieting and frustration, Cain found herself choosing between training with the best team in the world, or potentially developing osteoporosis or even infertility. She lost her period for three years and broke five bones. She went from being a once-in-a-generation Olympic hopeful to having suicidal thoughts.

“America loves a good child prodigy story, and business is ready and waiting to exploit that story, especially when it comes to girls,” said Lauren Fleshman, who ran for Nike until 2012. “When you have these kinds of good girls, girls who are good at following directions to the point of excelling, you’ll find a system that’s happy to take them. And it’s rife with abuse.”

Video of Mary Cain and more of this story at link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/nike-running-mary-cain.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Mary Cain's video is really the heart of the story, but the text is most important too.

There's no excuse for this kind of athletic training in the 21st century. Sports physicians and physiotherapists have known for probably two decades that you can't starve an athlete without severe consequences. This is just a disgrace. This is far more toxic to the Nike brand than sponsoring controversial athletes, because they have fostered the destruction of up and coming athletes, destroyed them and deprived the world of seeing them blossom and thrill us with their excellence.

What a shame.

[Aristus]

1. Starve an athlete, and you get broken athletes.

Criminally stupid.

Really good, first-rate organizations know better than to do that. I attended a Q&A with the principle dancers of Pacific Northwest Ballet once after a performance. Someone asked them what their nutrition regimen was. The prima answered: "We pretty much get to eat whatever we want." The training is so intense that they burn off everything they eat, so there's no dietary restriction.

People who think ballet is just dainty little tippy-toe dancing don't know anything about ballet. It requires incredible strength, stamina, grace, skill, coordination, and endurance. You can't starve a dancer and get that.

Let the athletes EAT, for God's sake!

[Mike 03]

7. Thanks for mentioning ballet. That's another great example.

Female gymnastics and ballet/dance do have reputations for this. As a huge fan of women's soccer, where this seems to be lest prevalent, I thought by now most coaches knew you can't train women like this. That's a reason this article made me so damned angry. This is simply common knowledge. To see it in track or any other sports is upsetting.

[Poiuyt]

2. Salazar has been banned from the sport for giving drugs to his athletes.

[pangaia]

16. such a disappointment.. i remember when he won boston....

[crimycarny]

3. So true

My daughter just started her freshman year as an athlete at a D1 college. Before they started training they all had physicals, including BMI testing. Thankfully the school would not give the girls their numbers. They were told the BMI was just to make sure they were all healthy and to develop a nutrition plan for each individual. There is no attempt to try and get the girls to lose weight or even talk about weight. Unfortunately, that is not the case at other colleges. I have a friend whose daughter plays the same sport at a different D1 college. They had the same BMI tests but the girls were all given their numbers. This mom told me her daughter blew up her phone the day they got their BMI numbers. "Is this number ok? Or does it mean I'm fat??". Her mom would reassure her only to have her daughter find something on google that worried her all over again. I know her daughter. She is a beautiful girl who is already on the thin side.

[Mike 03]

8. That's a really good way to handle this, if weight is an issue.

It's really the athlete's business and perhaps the coaches. Nike's coaches had these young women weigh in front of each other and if they missed weight, they were verbally abused in front of teammates.

In college, the sororities were some of the worst offenders. The women I knew who were running to be in sororities, or accepted into them, were subject to naked line-ups and public weigh-ins. They used to sit there in the dining hall and smoke and drink coffee instead of eating. I truly hope those days are over because that kind of thing almost guarantees women end up with eating disorders.

[xmas74]

21. I was in a sorority in college.

When we did a line up it was about our outfits before a big event. It was a once over to check hems, run in panty hose, etc. It wasn't about our weight. And we only did it for a big event where our appearance was important. I had to do something similar when I was in debate in high school and college.
No one on our campus ever did naked push ups, except for one guy who liked showing off his body. I smoked many cigarettes because I was a smoker from a family of smokers and drank lots of coffee because I had group projects where we met over coffee. Our house mother always had a simple breakfast of cold cereal, toast, English muffins, yogurt and fruit available in our home. She always had a made from scratch soup, a green salad, fruit, cold cuts with sandwich fixings and a handheld baked good like cookies, brownies, rice crispy treats,etc available for lunch. We only ate dinner in the cafeteria because we had light, filling,healthy options available in our house.

My sisters ate more than people thought. We always made sure everyone ate before going out to the bar, on a date, etc.

[Mike 03]

29. Glad they had a more sensible approach.

I don't say what went on at this University was the rule, but it was not a secret. A couple of women I knew were quite open in discussing it. I think maybe private universities are more susceptible to abuses. But I have a feeling this wouldn't be allowed now, nor the extreme drinking (and occasional deaths) that went on there. EDIT: This was a great university, the best time of my life. But it varied widely depending on what school you were attending and what your goals were there.

[a la izquierda]

19. BMI is garbage.

Garbage, stupid measure unless it’s used to a determine the overall size of a general population. It’s worthless for the individual and leads to-in my case- a recurrence of an eating disorder. My BMI is high because I’m short and and solid muscle. Thank god my doctor knows it’s pointless and does body fat percentage instead.

I was a D1 runner and a competitive swimmer as well. The year I competed was the worst year of my life, so I quit running for decades. I’m now just regaining my love of it. I still have a bit of issue with swimming in a lap pool.

[Wounded Bear]

26. BMI was supposed to be a "short cut" to body fat percentages...

but like you say, it ignores individual shit like metabolism in favor of a statistical "norm." Much like the old height/weight charts, it doesn't always fit, and with athletes, with their specialized needs, it can lead to bad outcomes.

The OP is a sad story. In this day and age, it should be fairly easy to determine the difference between male and female physiologies in athletics and develop proper fitness/diet/training regimens that lead to high performance and good health.

[ronnie624]

4. "Instead of becoming a symbol of girls' unlimited potential in sports"

There is a big part of the problem, right there. In large part, it's a cultural thing. There is no such thing as "unlimited potential" in anything.

At this point in our history, humans should be teaching succeeding generations to be coopertive instead of competitive, anyway.That is how we will improve our collective probability for survival, given the issue of accelerating ecological collapse. Competition is a predatory behavior that undermines social cohesion.

[bullwinkle428]

5. I've read about this sort of thing happening in women's cycling as well. It seems

that some of these coaches feel somehow more empowered to abuse their female charges as opposed to the young men in the various development squads.

[Mike 03]

9. Cycling is an excellent example to raise.

And jockeys too. I've read horror stories about jockeys trying to make, or remain at, weight. (EDIT: not that I have much respect for horse racing as a "sport&quot

EDIT: Figure skating is another sport that's been tainted by coaching that over-emphasizes weight loss and appearance at the expense of
the athlete's performance and mental enjoyment of the sport.

[Blue_Tires]

12. All this time I thought gymnastics was the real "girl breaker"

[Blue_Tires]

6. She should have a winner of a lawsuit?

[Mike 03]

10. I was thinking about this too.

There's lost future earnings, loss of livelihood--real money damages--in addition to punitive damages.

[nolabear]

11. I despise the way women are looked down on in sports.

I hate to use a cliche but patriarchal culture only sees the male standard as being worthwhile. Women accomplish phenomenal things in so many sports but hey, they’re not bigger, faster, stronger, thinner, etc. than men so they’re patted on the head or, like this woman, destroyed by a world who has no knowledge or desire to know about the miracles of nature we are.

Medicine STILL has a male standard in so many areas. It’s astounding.

[Blue_Tires]

13. Dumb question, but..

If she's that hot a prodigy why would she be training with Nike instead of USA Track and Field or whatever the umbrella body is now?

[obamanut2012]

18. Because Salazar's "team" was the creme de la creme

In US track. At least until his very recent scandal.

[Mike 03]

25. It's not a dumb question.

It's like the female gymnasts who went to Bella Karoli (sp?) school for gymnasts knowing the rumors that it was cruel and difficult. He had the reputation for being the best in the business and turning out Olympians. Also, and I don't know if it's the case here, but parents sometimes put pressure on their athlete children to jump at these elite opportunities because of the prestige.

[mathematic]

14. The same coach coached Jordan Hasay and Shannon Rowbury

Both were very successful with Nike.

There's always a "phenom" HS girl making news. Jordan Hasay was the one before Cain. Cain was great in high school. The best since Mary Slaney (nee Decker) in the 80s, who had a very successful career and is considered one of the best middle distance runners ever from the US. Shannon Rowbury broke her decades old record in the 1500m. Rowbury held the american records for the 1500 & 5k until just this fall (both were claimed by Shelby Houlihan).

My point here is that it's wrong and overblown to use Cain's experience as an indictment of coaching or to draw conclusions about flaws in coaching of women. High level sports chew up athletes, male and female, and the best athletes, the ones that win the medals and trophies, are the ones that break down the least.

[obamanut2012]

20. He also almost destroyed Kara Goucher's career

As well as was abusive to many other women (and men), including trying to force them to juice.

[Mike 03]

27. Fair point. Female coaching has come a long ways in general but it's right to call out

malpractice. Look at amazing Jill Ellis and how she coached the US Women's National team. Every account I've read of her coaching shows she did it the right way, and the evidence is how mentally and physically strong her athletes are. They are successful in everything they do. But look at someone like Bella Karolyi and all the broken girls and broken spirits that came out of his elite school. What I'm against is taking someone with a dream, destroying the dream and breaking the body and the spirit. This doesn't just happen in sports.

[Sapient Donkey]

15. Don't these top athletes usually eat lots food to make up for the amount of calories they burn

I recall reading numerous stories of athletes who would eat like triple the normal amount of calories just so their body could keep up

[SonofDonald]

17. I was a king Crab fisherman in my twenties

We ate aproximately 8,000 calories a day and still lost weight, after a month or two your fat had vanished and you started growing muscle

In my first four months I went from 200 pounds down to 175 at six feet tall

And then went back up to 189 pounds

The training and workouts of an athlete is no different and in fact may be as intense as what I went through

Even I know that you need to fuel the machine, the thought of starving an athlete makes zero sense to me

Her story is horrible to me

[Sapient Donkey]

22. They should market that job as a fitness service.

But yeah, the idea of making an athlete starve goes against my understanding of how the body works.

[SonofDonald]

28. It's called

The Bering Sea Diet, eat all you want and still lose weight

Athletes expend all their energy in spurts, a crabber doesn't but does work continuously over long periods of time

You eat constantly besides three meals a "day", candy bars, 2-3 gallons of coffee and a loaf of bread butter and jam along with anything else you can chow down between strings of gear

That and 3-4 hours of sleep now and then, it doesn't seem possible you can do it but you can, they were doing it long before you decided to give it a try

Without all those calories it flat out wouldn't be possible

Starving an athlete beyond stupid

[Mike 03]

23. That's how it's supposed to work but if you begin to cut calories, especially

severely, your metabolism tries to adjust downward, so you end up stuck at a certain weight but exhausted even though you're eating fewer and fewer calories. At some point your body also begins to cannibalize muscle and other vital sources. In the case of a female, the article is saying her body stopped producing estrogen which lead to five bone fractures, and that was probably enabled in part by declining muscle mass.

[Mike 03]

24. You have to wonder something:

At the point where this fastest girl in America began to deteriorate, why her coach didn't say, "Go back to doing exactly what you were doing before I interfered."