She was still a teenager but seemed destined to make history in the world middle distance. At 17 years old, Mary Cain became the youngest American athlete to participate in an absolute World Championship, in which she was ninth in the 1,500 meters.
That season he broke a youth world record (indoor 1,000 meters) and two youth continental records (800 and 1,500 meters). Cain had just joined Alberto Salazar’s training group, the Oregon Project, which also had stars like Mo Farah and Galen Rupp in its ranks.
But what seemed like it would be the beginning of a meteoric sporting career, however, turned into a nightmare. Years later, in 2019, without the expected progression, the causes of this slowdown in sports results transcended when Mary Cain denounced Salazar’s brutal training and abuse.
The athlete went public in a devastating video in the ‘New York Times’ the brutal training methods of Alberto Salazar’s dismantled Oregon Project, long the star training group created by Nike.
She lost her period for three years and broke five bones. I was developing osteoporosis and even infertility. Salazar forced her to take birth control pills and diuretics to lose weight. She was so distraught that she even considered suicide.
I feel like I didn’t have the opportunity to be a girl, and that I wasn’t treated particularly well growing up.
Now, the former athlete, away from the elite and focused on her medical studies, has published her memoirs ‘This is not just about running’, in which he recounts his tormented youth with his coach, Alberto Salazar, and the Nike Project. “I feel like I didn’t have the opportunity to be a girl, and that I wasn’t treated particularly well growing up,” Mary Cain said in an interview with Runner’s World.
I looked for ways to excuse bad behavior because I was just trying to understand the world around me.
Thus, the young woman explains that she was trying to convince herself that “they (Salazar and Nike) are doing this because they care about me. They are doing this because they want the best. I was looking for ways to excuse bad behavior because I was just trying to understand the world around me.”
Mary Cain noted that “during the New York Times article, I had never told my parents that I had had suicidal thoughts. They knew it wasn’t right. They knew he had a strange relationship with food. “I was giving them enough clues that they knew something was very wrong.”