
I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike - laurex
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/nike-running-mary-cain.html
======
The_Amp_Walrus
So, the coaches of an athletics program underfed an athlete to the point where
she "lost her period for three years and broke five bones". Sounds terrible.
The article claims:

> 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.

I wish they would expand on this a little more - are the coaches broadly
incompetent or do they have a specific misconception about how to train women?
What do they belive that is causing them to underfeed their athletes?

~~~
tburmeister
Thinner is faster, up to a point, but as noted in the article if you take it
too far it leads to injury. I suspect a lot of the grey area stuff NOP was
infamous for, i.e. abuse of prescription drugs and therapeutic use exemptions,
allowed Salazar to be more successful with this approach with other athletes.
For most runners, the short term speed gains of losing weight ultimately do
not outweigh the lost training from injury, but if you can get a shady doctor
to help with the negative side effects then the calculus changes.

Also, I wouldn't say Salazar is incompetent, but he was supposed to be this
distance running genius and it seems more and more like he was no better than
the dozens of crappy DI college coaches out there who get a lot of talented
athletes, grind them up, and see who survives, leaving a trail of injury and
burnout in their wake. Salazar just had access to better talent and drugs.

~~~
The_Amp_Walrus
Interesting, thanks!

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Is there a high profile, competitive environment where children perform that
has not resulted in a lot of damaged children?

Examples from music (Jackson Five), TV and Movie child actors, this example,
and the USA gymnastics all come to mind.

~~~
LanceH
Wrestling. I've found that the people that fall short at each level leave the
sport with a discipline and sense of accomplishment unlike any other sport.

While the unhealthy weight cuts aren't completely in the past, they have been
addressed and greatly mitigated.

~~~
smileysteve
Wrestling is notorious for eating disorders, performance enhancing drug use,
dehydration (via cutting water weight - sweatsuits specifically), etc.

But also has its own historical accusations of drug use, abuse, murder with
its own documentary
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxcatcher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxcatcher)

If we choose time periods closely enough, most sports are probably scandal
free 5-15 years at a time.

~~~
LanceH
Your right, I misread. Historically wrestling has been awful. It's the rare
example of something coming out better from lessons learned.

------
hiei
No dietician? That's honestly shocking for a "program" coming out of Nike.

------
RickJWagner
Wow. With programs like that, sweatshops, and general bad acting, Nike is some
rotten company.

~~~
nickthemagicman
But their marketing is great! That's really all that matters anymore.

------
PopeDotNinja
No pay wall:

[http://archive.is/6JMAR](http://archive.is/6JMAR)

------
jbob2000
She thought she was joining Nike to be an athlete, but she was really joining
to sell shoes. Can’t have a thick muscular woman as a poster girl, that won’t
sell shoes!

Edit: It’s sarcasm. Clearly Nike doesn’t actually care about athletic ability
if the only goal of their coaching was to get their female athletes to lose
weight.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>Can’t have a thick muscular woman as a poster girl, that won’t sell shoes!

Serena Williams would beg to differ.

Instead of shrinking from her body shape or her age or her motherhood, she has
embraced them and she and her brand are stronger for it. Of course, not
everyone has the ability and confidence of Serena Williams.

~~~
jbob2000
Yeah she jumped out to me as the exception. I don’t really think she
represents “fitness” in the eyes of the consumer though, she’s more of a
“power and determination” person. Her sponsors are a bank, Gatorade, and a
sporting goods company. None of those companies sell their product based on
beauty/fit-ness.

------
im3w1l
So is the story that the coaching was more ambitious than she could take or
was it just misguided in general?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> In a program that should be tailored to every individual athlete, "more
> ambitious than [any given athlete] can take" sounds like a fundamental
> failure.

~~~
im3w1l
It _may_ have been a calculated "go big or go home" gamble.

