Opinion | I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike – The New York Times
Opinion | I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike The New York Times
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Mary Cain’s male coaches were convinced she had to get “thinner, and thinner, and thinner.” Then her body started breaking down.
By Mary Cain
Mary Cain became, in 2013, the youngest American track and field athlete to make a World Championships team.
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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. Then, everything changed.
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I was the fastest girl in America. “Mary Cain!” “There are women here almost twice her age” “being left in her wake.“ I set many national records. And I was a straight-A student. “C’mon, Mary Cain!” When I was 16, I got a call from Alberto Salazar at Nike. He was the world’s most famous track coach and he told me I was the most talented athlete he’d ever seen. During my freshman year in college, I moved out to train with him and his team full time at Nike world headquarters. It was a team of the fastest athletes in the world. And it was a dream come true. I joined Nike because I wanted to be the best female athlete, ever. Instead, I was emotionally and physically abused by a system designed by Alberto and endorsed by Nike. This is what happened to me. When I first arrived, an all-male Nike staff became convinced that in order for me to get better, I had to become thinner, and thinner, and thinner. This Nike team was the top running program in the country. And yet we had no certified sports psychologist. There was no certified nutritionist. It was really just a bunch of people who were Alberto’s friends. So when I went to anybody for help, they would always just tell me the same thing. And that was to listen to Alberto. Alberto was constantly trying to get me to lose weight. He created an arbitrary number of 114 pounds, and he would usually weigh me in front of my teammates and publicly shame me if I wasn’t hitting weight. He wanted to give me birth control pills and diuretics to lose weight— the latter of which isn’t allowed in track and field. I ran terrible during this time. It reached a point where I was on the starting line and I’d lost the race before I started, because in my head all I was thinking of was not the time I was trying to hit but the number on the scale I saw earlier that day. It would be naïve to not acknowledge the fact that weight is important in sports. Like boxers need to maintain a certain weight, or you know everybody always ends up citing the math about how the thinner you are, the faster you’re going to run because you have to carry less weight. But here’s a biology lesson I learned the hard way. When young women are forced to push themselves beyond what they’re capable at their given age, they’re at risk for developing RED–S. Suddenly, you realize you’ve lost your period for a couple months. And then a couple months becomes a couple years. And in my case, it was a total of three. And if you’re not getting your period, you’re not going to be able to have the necessary levels of estrogen to maintain strong bone health. And in my case, I broke five different bones. The New York Times Magazine published a story about how Alberto was training me and nurturing my talent. We weren’t doing any of that. I felt so scared. I felt so alone. And I felt so trapped. And I started to have suicidal thoughts. I started to cut myself. Some people saw me cutting myself and … sorry. Nobody really did anything or said anything. So in 2015, I ran this race, and I didn’t run super well. And afterwards, there was a thunderstorm going on. Half the track was under one tent. Alberto yelled at me in front of everybody else at the meet, and he told me that I’d clearly gained five pounds before the race. It was also that night that I told Alberto and our sports psych that I was cutting myself. And they pretty much told me they just wanted to go to bed. And I think for me, that was my kick in the head where I was like, “This system is sick.” I think even for my parents in certain ways, once I finally vocalized to them, I mean, they were horrified. They bought me the first plane ride home. And they were like, ”Get on that flight. Get the hell out of there.” I wasn’t even trying to make the Olympics anymore. I was just trying to survive. So I made the painful choice and I quit the team. “After a multiyear investigation, the U.S. anti-doping agency has banned Alberto Salazar from the sport for four years.” “Nike will shut down the Oregon project.” “Nike C.E.O. Mark Parker stepping down from the company in January of 2020.” Those reforms are mostly a direct result of the doping scandal. They’re not acknowledging the fact that there is a systemic crisis in women’s sports and at Nike, in which young girls’ bodies are being ruined by an emotionally and physically abusive system. That’s what needs to change, and here’s how we can do it. First, Nike needs to change. In track and field, Nike is all powerful. They control the top coaches, athletes, races, even the governing body. You can’t just fire a coach and eliminate a program and pretend the problem is solved. My worry is that Nike is merely going to rebrand the old program and put Alberto’s old assistant coaches in charge. Secondly, we need more women in power. Part of me wonders if I had worked with more female psychologists, nutritionists and even coaches where I’d be today. I got caught in a system designed by and for men, which destroys the bodies of young girls. Rather than force young girls to fend for themselves, we have to protect them. I genuinely do have hope for the sport. And I plan to be running for many years to come. And so part of the reason I’m doing this now is I want to end this chapter and I want to start a new one.
“Equal Play” is an Opinion video series showcasing the insurgent athletes who are dragging women’s sports into the 21st century. The article below is by Lindsay Crouse.
This article has been updated with responses from Nike, Mary Cain and other athletes.
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.
The problem is so common it affected the only other female athlete featured in the last Nike video ad Cain appeared in, the figure skater Gracie Gold. When the ad came out in 2014, Gold, like Cain, was a prodigy considered talented enough to win a gold medal at the next Olympics. And, like Cain, Gold got caught in a system where she was compelled to become thinner and thinner. Gold developed disordered eating to the point of imagining taking her life.
Nike has come under fire in recent months for doping charges involving Salazar. He is now banned from the sport for four years, and his elite Nike team has been dismantled. In October, Nike’s chief executive resigned. (In an email, Salazar denied many of Cain’s claims, and said he had supported her health and welfare. Nike did not respond to a request for comment.)
The culture that created Salazar remains.
Kara Goucher, an Olympic distance runner who trained with the same program under Salazar until 2011, said she experienced a similar environment, with teammates weighed in front of one another.
“When you’re training in a program like this, you’re constantly reminded how lucky you are to be there, how anyone would want to be there, and it’s this weird feeling of, ‘Well, then, I can’t leave it. Who am I without it?’” Goucher said. “When someone proposes something you don’t want to do, whether it’s weight loss or drugs, you wonder, ‘Is this what it takes? Maybe it is, and I don’t want to have regrets.’ Your careers are so short. You are desperate. You want to capitalize on your career, but you’re not sure at what cost.”
She said that after being cooked meager meals by an assistant coach, she often had to eat more in the privacy of her condo room, nervous he would hear her open the wrappers of the energy bars she had there.
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.”
We don’t typically hear from the casualties of these systems — the girls who tried to make their way in this system until their bodies broke down and they left the sport. It’s easier to focus on bright new stars, while forgetting about those who faded away. We fetishize the rising athletes, but we don’t protect them. And if they fail to pull off what we expect them to, we abandon them.
Mary Cain is 23, and her story certainly isn’t over. By speaking out, she’s making sure of that.
On Thursday, Nike released this statement:
These are deeply troubling allegations which have not been raised by Mary or her parents before. Mary was seeking to rejoin the Oregon Project and Alberto’s team as recently as April of this year and had not raised these concerns as part of that process. We take the allegations extremely seriously and will launch an immediate investigation to hear from former Oregon Project athletes. At Nike we seek to always put the athlete at the center of everything we do, and these allegations are completely inconsistent with our values.
On Friday, Mary Cain responded to Nike’s statement:
For many years, the only thing I wanted in the world was the approval of Alberto Salazar. I still loved him. Alberto was like a father to me, or even like a god.
Last spring, I told Alberto I wanted to work with him again — only him — because when we let people emotionally break us, we crave their approval more than anything.
I was the victim of an abusive system, an abusive man. I was constantly tormented by the conflict of wanting to be free from him and wanting to go back to the way things used to be, when I was his favorite.
Last month, after the doping report dropped that led to his suspension, I felt this quick and sudden release. That helped me understand that this system is not O.K. That’s why I decided to speak up now.
People should never have to fear coming forward. I hope this Nike investigation centers on the culture that created Alberto. Nike has the chance to make a change and protect its athletes going forward.
The video led to an outpouring of stories and eyewitness accounts from other athletes.
Shalane Flanagan, Olympic medalist, New York City Marathon champion and Nike coach.
Cam Levins, Olympian and former Nike athlete.
Amy Begley, Olympian and former Nike athlete.
Steve Magness, former Nike coach.