Mary Cain and Nike

[tandfman]

Two stories now on the front page here suggest that Salazar is not the only coach in the world who has been guilty of fat-shaming female runners. Of course, that doesn't make justify what he did any more than the fact that other coaches have been found guilty of doping-related offenses.

[Conor Dary]

Of course not...I know of college coaches doing it....

OTOH I also knew international athletes who got way too thin all on their own....

[mungo man]

I’ll only go so far with opposing the conventional wisdom here. Salazar may be a terrible person, but since working with him was seen as a good path to success, I’m guessing a lot of people were willing to make trade offs.

Thats exactly whats wrong with this sport. The investigation into doping by Salazar started around June 2015 and included testimonies from athletes about microdosing.

But even despite that, some athletes were falling over themselves to be coached by Salazar. Some are still singing his praises. Sifan Hassan became a Salazar student in 2017 and was recently praising him.

[trackCanuck]

But even despite that, some athletes were falling over themselves to be coached by Salazar. Some are still singing his praises. Sifan Hassan became a Salazar student in 2017 and was recently praising him.

No wonder, his methods clearly pay handsome dividends.....

[El Toro]

Weight control is part and parcel of any athlete's training regime but it is only a subset of the overall nutritional and health strategy, which is a subset of the entire training plan.

You have professionals in each space to plan and monitor the effectiveness of those strategies. Salazar for all his apparent obsessiveness didn't utilise a relevant professional and clearly didn't monitor the effectiveness of weight loss with Cain, otherwise he would have reassessed that strategy as it started to fail.

As an example, this is in contrast to the Finnish WHJ record holder, Ella Junnila. I read in a newspaper article around the time of her record this year that her peaking included a process to lose 2 or 3 kg to improve her power to weight ratio for the most important competitions.

However, this was closely monitored by her team to ensure that it was done in a way to ensure no negative impact on her training through loss of muscle mass etc. They planned her weight loss just like they planned her weight training to improve her performance, to be effective, not to injure her - simple really.

[26mi235]

Clearly that's exactly what he did. He took chances that he thought would not lead to positive tests, and that he thought he could explain away with therapeutic use exemptions.

No, that is exactly the wrong strategy when a single positive tests puts a cloud over everything. Plus Alberto was well aware that testing is getting systematically better over time and things that do not trip a positive at one point in time get flagged by later tests. Since none if athletes have tested positive (this is a vastly different testing regime that with Lance Armstrong) and they have had many hundreds of tests, it clearly is the case that if he is having athletes use things that are doping under the rules it was in extremely small amounts, which is not all that helpful then. Your argument just does not seem to fit here. In addition, why is the USADA, which went after Salazar with some zeal, pretty much adamant that there is noting there with athletes doping.

[Wiederganger]

Clearly that's exactly what he did. He took chances that he thought would not lead to positive tests, and that he thought he could explain away with therapeutic use exemptions.In addition, he had weight loss and training goals that may work for some and not for others, like Mary Cain. He was cruel to those who didn't follow his plan even when it wasn't working. If it doesn't work for 18 of 20 athletes and 2 are olympic medalists, he can claim success and more athletes will flock to him.

He may not even think it as cheating, but his boundary pushing was considered cheating and he was suspended.He thought he could coach in the way he did, and manage whatever fallout occurred. He was wrong, like other coaches before him, but he seems to have done it to a greater degree than the rest, and had deeper pockets supporting him.Heprobably never even saw this coming.

agreed, agreed, agreed.

[tandfman]

Tweet from Sally Bergesen of Oiselle:

@oiselle_sally

It's easy to categorize Salazar as a monster, but the reality is he is a generational coaching stereotype: male, white, grizzled, insensitive, proudly "not PC," misogynistic, controlling... and soon to be irrelevant in a world that has changed around them.

[Dave]

Woody Hays, Bob Knight, Joe Paterno, Alberto Salazar. They all produced winners until their shortcomings could no longer be tolerated.

[trackCanuck]

Tweet from Sally Bergesen of Oiselle:

"It's easy to categorize Salazar as a monster, but the reality is he is a generational coaching stereotype: male, white, grizzled, insensitive, proudly "not PC," misogynistic, controlling... and soon to be irrelevant in a world that has changed around them."

Sounds like a mini-monster headed for the dinosaur patch.