Mary Cain Was the Fastest Girl in America. Then Nike Called

DAVID GREENE, HOST: Elle Duncan, okay, here’s my first question for you. When you are getting ready to travel across the world, are you like, are you the last minute kind of packer or are you planning out a trip to Australia, like, you know, for weeks ahead of time?

ELLE DUNCAN: I, David, work so much better under pressure. I love deadlines, and so I know what I’m gonna do. I’m going to wait until the day before, and then I’m gonna go, “I need to pack,” but I’m gonna do it efficiently. And I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna pray that I have everything that I need. In a case like I’m in a major city, anything that I leave, I can just get in Melbourne.

DG: I love that. Well, the procrastinator by nature we’re talking to is the fabulous Elle Duncan, who is the lead host and sports anchor at Netflix. And as you said, Elle, you’re getting ready to go to Melbourne because you’re going to be doing it all for Netflix. I mean, pregame, halftime, postgame, all the things, when the NFL lands in Australia for the first time for a regular-season game in Week One, this is exciting.

ED: Oh my gosh, it’s so exciting because I think, you know, my natural inclination, I’ve been to Australia before, I know how, you know, prideful they are about their rugby and their Australian rules football. But when I first found out the NFL was going to Australia, initially I was kind of like, what’s the connection, right? Like, are they, is there an appetite? Or, you know, like we all love Jordan Mailata, but like what’s that connection? And in doing research and then like in the buildup to this event, I’ve learned that specifically the great people of Melbourne are just like into any sport. They’re like, if it’s cricket, if it’s football, if it’s soccer, it really doesn’t matter. Like, they are all in. This kickoff is at 10.30 in the morning, Australia time. And from what we’ve been told, the city is so excited that we should expect like a hundred thousand people just out there celebrating at eight o’clock in the morning getting ready. So it’s just to be a part of history, to be at the famous, the G is what they call it, but of course the Melbourne Cricket Ground to see. I think that’s what’s gonna be interesting David, when you see the shots of the field. Because this field is famously enormous and they don’t need the NFL does not need the size of this field. And so to see all the extra field around the football field is so interesting in and of itself. And so I think it’s just going to be a really cool thing. Great concert happening at halftime, but I just can’t wait.

DG: That sounds amazing. No, I was in Melbourne years ago and went to an Australian football game, and I went in thinking, like, I’m an NFL fan. I’m not going to understand this. I’m not going to connect at all. And once I was there in that stadium, and it might’ve been the same stadium. I can’t even remember. It’s been so many years I’m dating myself, but yeah, there was just a sports culture that felt like, you know, anything on a field or a pitch or whatever, it was just the city and a culture that, that was ready to buy in and, and get into it.

ED: Yeah, they told us, you know, listen, you’re going to because we asked is there maybe in the same way that Londoners will support Jacksonville because they play so many freaking games there. We asked, like, is there any, you know, do they lean towards one team? And they were like, you are going to see Cowboys jerseys, Niners jerseys, Texans jerseys. It really is going to run the gamut. Based on my desk. I’m hoping we see some Packers jerseys and some Eagles jerseys and some Cowboys jerseys. But I think it’s really interesting. I actually honestly, David, think that it’s also interesting that maybe you’re the one person that cracked the code on what the hell Australian rules football means. Because I tried really hard when I was there to understand it, and it’s kind of impossible.

DG: I didn’t crack a code. Let me be clear, I cracked no code. I still have no idea what I was watching.

ED: (Laughs) Right!

DG: And I was drinking a lot of beer. Yeah, so I cannot claim to be an expert, but yeah, it’s bizarre. I mean, the NFL seemed simple to me.

ED: Yeah, it’s so clean and simple, like for anyone that says it’s convoluted, there are too many rules, I’m like, just sit down and watch Australian rules football. I promise you, you will be lost

DG: Yeah, 100%. I do want to say this is a weekday, right? I mean, so you are talking about people being out in the streets and drinking beer in Melbourne and getting ready for this game at eight in the morning on Friday.

ED: Friday morning. It’ll be Friday there.

DG: What most of us think of as a workday. (Laughs)

ED: Correct.

DG: The weekend beginning early, yeah. But if I remember, there was no acceptable beer drinking begins at this hour, but God, what a great city. I think it’s gonna be an amazing time. Well, let’s talk a little football. I mean, the game is the LA Rams and San Francisco 49ers. You kind of couldn’t ask for a better opening game. These are two teams, division rivals, and also a lot of people talking them up as, you know, potentially getting late into the playoffs and, you know, maybe being even a preview for the NFC Championship Game.

ED: Yeah. And how important is this game? Typically like Game One, right? We can throw things out. But when you’re talking about this particular division, that being the NFC West and what I think is probably the best division in all of football, this game is 100% going to matter in the race for division supremacy come December. So this is a big, and then on top of that, you’re putting them in these, like these conditions with all these variables. I mean, one team, that being the Rams, is approaching it by going out super early. They’re supposedly going to post up for a solid week before the game. And you’ve got the Niners whose approach supposedly is gonna be to come in like 36 hours ahead of time and just try to muscle through and not worry about the adjustment, exactly. And we can argue over which approach is better, but no one knows. No one’s ever had to play with this 14-hour time difference. So I think, you know, it’s definitely gonna be really interesting to see which approach works better, but what a hell of a game. I mean, we have. Myles Garrett going to L.A., and the biggest blockbuster trade maybe of all time in an offseason. I mean, it was ridiculous. The reigning defensive player of the year, maybe, being joined by Aaron frickin’ Donald coming out of retirement.

DG: So crazy.

ED: How about Matt Stafford? There’s the story, of course, with Puka Nacua, who’s trying to work his way back in redemption after spending time in rehab. There’s the Ty Simpson Effect: if Matt Stafford can’t be healthy in any way, we have a Wally Pipps situation, right? So and then, for the Niners, you know, you’re talking about a team, David, who like, yes, have they kind of always been the bridesmaid, at least of late and never the bride? Sure. But when you consider how banged up they’ve been, how injured they’ve been, the idea they were 12 and five last year is kind of a miracle. The idea they won a playoff game. And so, and they’re doing this now with Brock Purdy back in the fold. So I just think, like, when you’re talking about big impact games, this is not an exhibition game. Like, yes, it’s going to be in Australia, and we’re going to do our thing. It’s a real game that is going to matter in January.

DG: It’s amazing. Brock Purdy is like always that quarterback who’s gonna have this funny, unfair asterisk. It’s like, you know, the San Francisco 49ers win despite having like, just a good quarterback and not a great one. It’s, like, come on. Like, when does he get rid of that label?

ED: Thank you.

DG: I mean, he leads this offense, whatever this offense looks like.

ED: Thank you. I literally had this argument earlier, David, with my guys, with Nick Foles and Clay Matthews. And I’m like, I don’t understand why we use a system quarterback as a negative connotation behind it. That system is why, despite being decimated by injuries almost every single year, they are still a playoff team almost every single year. And a couple of years ago, we were in the Super Bowl. So I think Brock Purdy being Mr. Irrelevant, that’s always going to be something that follows him around. And Kyle Shanahan being such a genius in that offensive space, I think, is always going to lead people to minimize his contributions. But Brock Purdy is a fantastic quarterback. And I think like he is key to them winning because while they brought Deebo back and of course you’ve got CMC, he’s the straw that stirs the drink on offense and we know that. Brock Purty is not nearly a plug-and-play type of guy. Like, I think he is a really solid quarterback. But in general, the Niners just have so much swirling around them that has nothing to do with what’s happening on the field right now, and I wonder how that’s going to come into play. So in terms of storylines, like we are at no dirts. We have so many.

DG: Can I ask you a little bit of the sausage-making? I watch broadcasts like the one you’re gonna be doing. And I mean, you’re handling pregame, you’re handling halftime, you are handling postgame. I know as a broadcaster how much prep goes into that. When the game is actually playing, I mean, can you watch and take it in as a fan? Or are you and the team just constantly kinda putting together the next on-camera moment that you’re going to have and being just like in it and not even able to watch what’s going on?

ED: This is a great question, actually, and it’s true. We sit together; once we’re done with our pregame show, we will all sit in a room together. We’ll sit with researchers, and we’ll sit with producers, and we will watch this game together. And it’s honestly, it’s verbal diarrhea. It’s like a stream of consciousness dump. Like, what plays are they interested in and potentially showing again? You know, what are they reacting to? So no, I’m not watching as a fan more so than I’m watching as a producer and as a host. What do they want to talk about? How do we make this happen? We’ve got like a four or five minute halftime before we get it to the Jonas brothers, right? So, like, how do we have high impact? And then same thing as we get ready for the post-game show, which is, you know, what are the storylines everyone’s going to be talking about? We are talking about the second game of the NFL season. So on top of the game that we’re talking about, how are we looking ahead to the other 14 games you’re going to see this weekend? So I think like in general, what’s really exciting about the Netflix gig for me is like, I am a diehard NFL fan. NFL has been my favorite sport probably since I was like eight or nine years old and typically when you’re covering the NFL, you can’. Like you do— you have to watch it in a way that is much more analytical than it is as a fan. And so doing this Netflix job means that like those four games that I’m working, I’m definitely going to have to like look at it from that approach. But the other rest of the weeks like the 14, 15 rest of the weeks of the season I get to truly just watch as a fan and so but but during that process it’s much more transactional. What do you want to do here? What tape are you pulling? Who are we spot shadowing? Who are you freezing? Who’s talking first? You know, where are we going with this interview question? It’s much more logistics.

DG: Hmm, who’s your team?

ED: The Broncos.

DG: Wow, that’s impressive.

ED: Yeah

DG: You guys have an exciting, I think, an exciting year ahead.

ED: I think so too. And let me be very clear. I’m not a bandwagon Broncos fan. Like my whole family is from Denver and then they moved to Atlanta and they had me. So they brought the Broncos with them. I inherited every other Georgia team except for the NFL, which has always been Broncos in my family. And it’s been great. Look, I’m not audacious enough to be a Patriots fan and think that we’re going to be in the Super Bowl every single year. But to win in 2016 and then literally not be like relevant for 10 years was pretty heartbreaking. So to see a sort of return and I think ahead of schedule is exciting and like, I mean, I don’t know, maybe I’ll die on this hill. No one can ever prove it. But without Bo Nix getting hurt and a freak freaking storm coming through Denver, we’re in the Super Bowl.

DG: I totally agree. The Patriots did not belong there. You belonged there against the Seahawks last year, and if Bo Nix was healthy, you would have been there. One of my dear friends in the world is a Broncos fan, and I’ve been telling him that this entire offseason, like you were robbed last year. And you deserve everything. You deserve everything this year.

ED: Thank you, David. I’ll take it.

DG: It’s my pleasure. Let me just ask you, like Melbourne, I’m gonna say it as clearly as I can.

ED: You did it!

DG: Just one of many international games this year. I mean, we’ve got nine games scheduled across four continents in the 2026 NFL season. I mean, we’re talking about Munich and Paris and Rio and Madrid and Mexico City. You know, obviously the NFL wants to expand its audience. Obviously, money is a big motivator for that. But like, what is the meaning of this? Is this something we should celebrate? Is this kind of expansion anything we should be worrying about?

ED: No, I mean, I think it’s super exciting, especially because along with sort of trying to make football, American football a global sport, I think what they’re also offering is the idea of introducing flag football onto these spaces as well. Because when we talk about accessibility, my soccer friends always talk about that, right? Soccer is the most popular sport in the world because of its accessibility, because you can just pick up a ball and you can do this, and maybe football is not that way, or hockey or some of these other sports. But I think that the initiative is a yes to growth the fan base, obviously on a global scale. All of these, you know, respective sports, the big four anyway, are all trying to do that. But I do, like I said, think that it’s also about trying to make the game approachable to fans that maybe don’t have the the hope dream of playing football, American football, don’t have the resources to play football, but can play flag and in many cases you know I’m talking about my demographic that being women. And so you know there’s going to be a component when we’re talking about Australia about talking about the flag football in Australia and these you know, women who are trying to qualify for the Olympics. And I think they kind of go hand in hand and that football realizes, the NFL realizes, is the makeup of the fan base of NFL viewership. It is almost 50-50, male and female. And for women, it’s just finally an opportunity to touch the sport in a way we’ve never been able to.

DG: I love that as someone who learned to be a football fan from my mother; that resonates a lot, and I love it.

ED: Yes.

DG: Elle Duncan is the lead host and sports anchor at Netflix. She has headed to Australia. You’re gonna be able to watch Rams and 49ers in Week One from Australia on Netflix. Elle, thank you. It’s always great having you on the show. Really appreciate it.

ED: David, like I always say, please have me anytime. You took me up on that, and I am so glad you did. (Laughs)

DG: We will be reaching out, I swear, and good luck with that packing. Just don’t do it too soon. Keep it less.

ED: I will not. I’m going to do it last minute for Melbourne. Let’s go!

DG: There we go. Let’s go. All right, again, the fabulous Elle Duncan, and we are definitely gonna take her up on her offer to have her back on the show again, hopefully many times. Coming up next on Sports in America, my conversation with Mary Cain, an extraordinary and at times really painful story. She was recruited by Nike to run as a teenager, but faced abuse from her coaches. It really decimated her mental health, and we’re gonna hear her story coming up next here on Sports in America.

Hey everybody, just a heads up here. In this episode of Sports in America, we are going to hear about emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, as well as extreme weight loss practices, self-harm, and thoughts of suicide. So please listen with care.

There was a time when Mary Cain seemed like one of the fastest girls in the country.

BROADCASTER: And Cain leading now, beginning to ease away. She came here as favorite, and my god, there are women here almost twice her age being left in her way.

DG: Mary was a middle-distance runner from New York, and she was a phenomenon before she even graduated from high school.

BROADCASTER: And a 16-year-old has taken the title. She hasn’t just taken it; she’s thrashed them.

[MUSIC]

DG: At just 16 years old, she qualified for Olympic trials. She was the first American high school girl to run 800 meters in less than two minutes. Then she became the youngest American track and field athlete to make a world championship team.

MARY CAIN IN INTERVIEW: I’m so excited to represent my country. This is the best country in the world! So I’m getting to wear that Team USA. That’s amazing.

DG: Her ascent continued. Before Mary graduated high school, she was signed as a professional runner with Nike. She was recruited to the Nike Oregon Project, an elite long-distance running program where she could train and compete with renowned marathon champion Alberto Salazar.

BROADCASTER: This was the crowning moment for Alberto Salazar, his two biggest stars taking gold and silver at the London Olympics.

BROADCASTER: Standing next to me is the great Alberto Salazar, who was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award tonight. Congratulations, Alberto.

ALBERTO SALAZAR: Thank you, Matt.

DG: Mary came up fast, and this was just the beginning of a prolific racing career.

BROADCASTER: Mary Cain has once again proven that she is one to watch and that she is absolutely the future of American distance running.

DG: Or at least it was supposed to be. Like a shooting star, Mary burned bright and then seemed to burn out. Her racing times started to slow. She failed to qualify for the 2016 Olympic Games at all. Just a few years into her training with Nike, she quit racing altogether. What happened to the girl who was supposed to outrun everyone?

MARY CAIN: I didn’t believe that my relationship with Alberta was abusive until probably like six to eight weeks before the New York Times piece came out. And that really like forced me to sit down and be like, what else was a lie? What else was bad?

DG: Mary didn’t just suddenly lose interest in competing. In 2019, she revealed to the world why her performance took such a hit and why she stopped running completely. She came out with a New York Times op-ed detailing abuse that she experienced by her coaching staff at Nike. She alleges that they insisted she lose weight and keep losing it, and ignored her pleas for help when her mental health declined. Now, I wanna be transparent with you all from the jump. At times, this episode is a hard one to listen to. It is never easy to hear the particulars of abuse against another person, especially against someone who’s young and vulnerable like Mary was. But I also think it’s important that we take the time to sit with these really difficult stories. A lot of the time, we expect athletes to be superhuman, to push through pain and discomfort at a level that we regular people can’t even fathom. This mentality can be dangerous, right? If an athlete thinks they have to endure pain, they might not recognize when their conditions have moved past the point of being healthy or safe, or when a person in power, like a coach, is starting to take advantage of them. They might think this is just another challenge of being an elite athlete. If we wanna really support the athletes we love when they leave the arena, that means listening to them when they tell us that their sport has hurt them. It took Mary years to realize that what she went through at Nike was not normal. She went on to sue the company and came out with a memoir about her experience called “This Is Not About Running. Today on Sports in America, Mary Cain’s story and how she survived.

Can we go back? I’m curious like your early relationship with running because freedom is a word that you’ve used, that that was the beginning of the relationship. What did that mean? And what does that mean to you as someone who loves running?

MC: Yeah, I think as a young person, there’s so many restrictions that you like start to feel as you’re kind of growing up, and I’m talking like truly young, like elementary school-aged, especially as a girl. There was kind of a certain point where it’s like, you weren’t allowed to roughhouse in the same way in school, and like your male friends maybe were no longer comfortable kind of doing that with you. By the time you’re like in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and I think sports kind of became this like outlet for me. To me, it was just like an opportunity to, like, truly be myself because I could be so physical and also be so locked in with something and not have, like, all these other distractions.

DG: As running became more about competition and less about community, Mary started to see her peers distancing themselves from her.

Say more about the bullying in high school and in your high school team. Like, what was that about, and why were you being targeted?

MC: I think there was a couple issues, but it really all stemmed from, like, the problem with adults. I think there’s a certain point where, if a parent is vicariously living through their kid and or just like is personally jealous of the success of another child.

DG: That’s a bad recipe.

MC: It’s a bad recipe. It’s a bad recipe, and I unfortunately, you know, became the target then of these adults’ children, who God knows what their home life was like. Like, God knows how they were coming home and how their parents were talking about me to them. All I know is how the parents were talking directly to me, and it was usually yelling at me, incredibly disrespectful, putting me down, just speaking to a child from the time I was like 13, 14, in just completely inappropriate ways. And then I had a coach who just like completely condoned it and ultimately I kind of left the girls team because I had a confrontation with my coach where he was like “It’s your fault you’re unlikable you should just kind of go along with the girls and do what they’re saying.” And I was like what they are saying is for me to slow down and I don’t think you want that, like, you are my coach; I’m the best kid in the country. I think maybe that’s not a good option. And instead he would just like twist it into, you know, it somehow being like I was the weird kid.

DG: Well, not to get ahead of ourselves, but that really is powerful. Like, it, maybe that’s a measure that if you’re an athlete and you’re not the person who’s being hardest on you, that’s a red flag.

MC: I think it is now because I do feel there’s a certain point where, and this is true with most things in life, like you should probably care the most about your hobby. And I know running, you can like ultimately enter into this like professional world with, but compared to other industries like, you know, I’ll use the one I’m in now, medicine. Like in medicine, if I mess up, I could really hurt someone. There’s like higher standards to it, where I understand that there’s, there almost like, should be more. Like care and emotion from like a team perspective. But even within that, it’s like, we almost assume everyone who has signed up for this is like trying to be the best that they can to help others. But in sport, there’s this very odd dynamic where it seems so often like these other people are using young people’s bodies to like dictate their success versus just celebrating and trying to blossom those young athletes.

DG: So take me to the moment in your life when the names Nike and Alberto Salazar came into your world.

[MUSIC]

MC: Um, very late, very late in the game, or at least late in so much as like he called like a month or two later, I think the first time I ever was aware of Alberto was at the U.S. Olympic trials in the summer of 2012 and I took a picture with him and I remember being like, I have no idea who this guy is, but my coaches were like really excited to meet him and was like, he’s old, like I don’t think he’s running, like, why aren’t we taking a picture with him?

DG: I love that first impression.

MC: We’re being like, oh, okay

DG: Why am I? Why do I need a photo?

MC: I was like, who is this guy?

DG: That guy was Alberto Salazar, and he was a racing legend. He won the New York City Marathon three times back in the 80s. He set the American records for the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races. Then he became a coach, helping other runners reach new milestones. Like Mo Farah, a British long-distance runner whom Alberto helped coach to four Olympic gold medals and six world titles. At those Olympic trials back in 2012, Alberto saw something in Mary. He got in contact with her family and offered her some coaching tips from his home in Oregon. The next year, he recruited Mary to his prestigious Nike Oregon project. To Mary, it sounded like a dream. I mean, getting signed to run professionally with Nike before she even graduated high school?

DG: And you’re what age at that point when you get this call? And Nike becomes a possibility?

MC: I was 16.

DG: Sixteen. Like, how does a 16-year-old even have the agency to make it like a decision like that, to kind of invest in a brand, a company, a training program?

MC: You’re asking a really great question, and it’s something that I think about a lot now, especially even in medicine, when we talk about capacity, or we talk about, you know, like even just like a patient’s ability to choose. And I think so much of, you know, our understanding of like, human development is that there’s a reason that children are called children and adults are called adults. And it is because there is this, like, separation of, you know, identity and development. And so, I think in so many ways, as a minor, you just, you don’t have the same agency. You don’t have the same capacity, and yet I felt so strongly in my, like, of course I’m going to move forward with this person. This is such a no-brainer to start working with him. Partly because my high school experience leading up to that was so horrible.

DG: Oh, wow. There was like a savior aspect to it.

MC: Fully.

DG: Like you weren’t, you weren’t enjoying the sport at all in school, and he was the way forward.

MC: Exactly. And he was a savior who had, you know, a multi-billion dollar company backing him. Nike, which is a multi-billion-dollar company, is encouraging me. Like, the biggest power players in the sport are all, you, know, propping this person up and saying like, yes, of course, we are trying to develop women’s distance running. You should go there.

DG: So you get out of it, and you join, you know, you’re in these Alberto’s Nike program. Like, what those— those early days, what did it mean to you? Did it feel freeing? Like you’ve been liberated from this bad situation.

MC: Incredible. It was like a complete dream come true. I was truly on cloud nine because I was, you know coming out of this environment where just people treated me so poorly and like I was just like a freak. And to find this environment, where people like actively wanted me and they were quite literally my role models, like I was waiting to like wake up from the dream because it just felt so… It felt so special and Alberto was someone who really, I mean, gosh, he made me feel like amazing. He would talk to me every day. He would fly out to meet me. I took trips out to meet him in those early days. And to say he like built me up was like such an understatement. And when you have just, like, the icon of icons in the sport saying, like I want you, the way you were treated was horrible, we’re going to make this team a family for you, and we want you. What kid doesn’t want that?

DG: Sounds loving. I mean, it sounds compassionate. It sounds, yeah, it’s sounds beautiful.

MC: And I think it’s interesting because I think so often people will ask me like, when did that change? And I think in retrospect, and now having done years of advocacy work to end abuse in sport, I recognize that, like, within a few days of us having a call of him taking me on the team, he sent me the old gloves of an athlete he sexually assaulted.

DG: Oh, God.

[MUSIC]

MC: So I think for me, it’s been really traumatic in its own way, like rewiring in my brain the fact that there wasn’t a moment where he changed. It was just this was always a part of the grooming process, right? Like it was always I’m reaching out, I’m going to make you feel really special, I want you to be a part of this and like there’s not necessarily a moment where that like because they have changed, it’s just a part of really the abuse process.

DG: What started as a dream became destructive for Mary. Alberto and his coaching staff seemed oddly focused on her weight above all else. Mary says her coach demanded she meet an arbitrary weight goal of 114 pounds, and they scolded her in public if she couldn’t. They allegedly policed her food intake and tried to get her to take pills to lose weight. Now we should say we will hear at length from a Nike spokesperson later in this episode. But Mary says that this abuse, it all took a massive toll. Her extreme weight loss made her lose her period for three years. That lack of estrogen decimated her bone density, giving her osteoporosis and contributing to five separate bone fractures.

I mean, how do you process what you’re describing now— these feelings of warmth and love in those early days, but realizing that it was just part of his cruel plan?

MC: It’s really dark, and it’s very sad for me. And I think I try to be very forgiving of myself for even having fond memories, because I think that’s the thing that’s so difficult sometimes when you go through something just so unnecessarily cruel and dark, is like, you’ll almost feel bad that you remember something fondly. And I do actively kind of like re-acknowledge that elephant in the room. For moments, but I also try not to like have it take fully away from any moments of joy. I try to like let myself still own those if I can.

DG: Can you give us a window into a day of kind of the training that would sort of just help us understand the pressures and horrors that you were facing?

MC: Yeah, so my freshman year of college is when the training really changed and it suddenly became all about weight loss. I started running a lot more than I ever had and I started training a lot and a lot intensely. So I got to the point where I was running closer to 70, 75 miles per week. I was doubling every day. I had to do an extra 30 minutes of core so that I could try to lose an extra however many calories Alberto determined that that equaled. I got to a point where I was doing a cryosauna every day, which is when you go into this like, big metal tube and they pump in nitrogen gas, and it’s supposed to drop your temperature because he was convinced that would help me lose weight. I have since realized that the position that he was, he could see down into the tank and see us naked. And so, like, you know, that’s a wild thing to have realized only a few years ago. But, you know, I was doing all this kind of like, odd extra cross-training, like the elliptical, and what was so weird about it was it wasn’t a, we’re trying to make you faster. It was like, you need to lose weight. And that mentality I’ve looked back on, and I have so many different feelings about probably why that was happening, but it was so bizarre in retrospect from like a training capacity.

DG: Yeah, what are some of your theories? I mean, if these coaches really wanted success and losing weight was not making you faster, what was motivating them aside from cruelty?

MC: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I have always kind of wondered is, was I being torn down to build back up? You know, there was always an undercurrent of just, like, odd conversations around medications at the time. And, you know, anytime like I was offered an inhaler or something like that, I would just always say no. And I just, I don’t know if I was being tested and I like failed some tests I could never understand because the number of times I’d go to my teammates being like, “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Like, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong; can you please help me?” And they’d be like, “You just have to buy into the system,” and my sports psych was always like, “Just buy in, just buy and just buy in.” And I’d be like, you see me starving myself. Like I am fully bought in. What am I not buying into that you don’t think I’m buying into? And there was never a direct answer to it. And then the second, and kind of in my opinion, darker thing is that often my body was being compared to other women’s, including the athlete who he was accused of sexually assaulting. And it wasn’t just like your weight is low; it was also just like how I looked. And so I think from a completely irrespective of performance perspective, I don’t know if just like, he was disappointed in the way that I looked and he wanted me to look like someone, and I wasn’t that person.

DG: There’s an incredibly dark day that you describe, where you walked into a hotel room with Alberto and some colleagues, and I think it comes across as such a cry for help that is extraordinarily painful to even read about or think about. But you told them, I want to kill myself most days; I am cutting myself. I— remind us how they reacted to you in that room.

MC: Yeah they essentially were like i want to go to sleep, it’s late like we’re tired it’s been a really long day and i could just see how like annoyed they were and like how much shame that brought me and being like i just feel so bad for them in this moment that i’m like putting this on them and I feel so bad that you know, they used to tell me stories of girls who came before me who were crazy and who developed eating disorders or who were fat and just this vitriol against almost every woman who they had previously coached. And I just couldn’t believe in that moment that I was becoming one of those crazy women. And I could see it in their body language; I could see it in the faces that that was in that moment how they were seeing me. And I think it’s horrifying now, as an adult, to just see that I quite literally was going to them and telling them something that they should have like reported and gotten me help with, and that they didn’t. But I think what’s most horrifying is that I didn’t, in the moment, think that they were wrong to be ashamed of me, and I didn’t think it was wrong for them to respond that way because I had just been beaten down to a degree that I really just did think like I was the problem, not them. And in so many ways, that’s why I wrote this book, is that I think so many people who are in abusive relationships and survive abuse feel that way, and it’s why you feel so trapped

DG: So how did you find the, the clarity, the courage to say enough is enough? I have to end this and speak out.

MC: I think for me, it was a mix of having really started legitimately good therapy, and then ultimately the US Anti-Doping Agency’s report coming out. I didn’t believe that my relationship with Alberta was abusive until probably six to eight weeks before the New York Times piece came out, and it was very much on the heels of reading the USADA report and suddenly being like, oh my gosh, there’s stuff in here that, like, I was not told or was told differently to me or were just kind of outright lies.

DG: Let me explain what Mary is talking about here. In 2019, before Mary spoke out about her abuse, the United States Anti-Doping Agency published an investigation into Alberto Salazar. The agency found that he had been trafficking testosterone for the athletes he was coaching, administering illegal IV infusions, and tampering with the doping control process. As punishment, Alberto was banned from coaching for four years.

MC: And that really, like, forced me to sit down and be like, what else was a lie? What else was bad? And then, in talking to people like the therapist who I’d started working with, and just being able to, like, have this open space where I could, like, express my discomfort at some of the things that had made me so uncomfortable for so long.

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MC: I think it put me in this position where I was really, really, really upset that I didn’t know I had been abused. And I felt really scared for other people that they might have been in similar situations to me and just like didn’t have the words and the tools yet to understand that what they were experiencing was incredibly wrong. Because sports normalizes this abuse. Like the number of folks who’ve come to me have been like, I relate so deeply to your story. Like, this isn’t unbelievable to me because this happened to me too, in this way and that way. And so I think for me, it was really just this, like fear driving me, but not like a fear for myself, but a fear for others that they might be trapped just like I had been trapped.

DG: I was struck by some of Nike’s early reactions to you saying essentially like, oh wow, but so much of this wasn’t reported to us at the time. We didn’t know this was happening. Does that say something larger about kind of the reporting and accountability structures in elite sports like this?

MC: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think I will say their comments, like, took things so much further and were like, “Her parents knew everything that was going on,” which was crazy to have Nike tweet about my parents. I was, like, guys, what is like, wow, you really are invested in this man, I guess.

DG: Do you ever imagine the conversation with him that you would have if you had the chance to confront him?

MC: No, because I just have no interest in it. For me, I think often forgiveness is more for the other person than it is for you. And I think for a lot of these people who I write about, I hope they feel some remorse. I hope they learn from it. Unfortunately, based on the emails I get, I don’t think that’s true. But I would hope that people can learn. But I don’t feel in my healing journey, ever interacting with these people would benefit me; that would be more for them, and I think I’ve given them way enough of my time and mental health.

DG: Would having more women around in leadership roles have made a difference?

MC: What I believe is we need cultures that want women because those are two very different things. If you have women in positions like on my team, my assistant coach’s wife was actually working with me on nutrition. She wasn’t a nutritionist, but she was the person I was going to for nutritional guidance. Like, that was a female figure. I had teammates who were women, and those women were not making my experience any better; if anything, they were often making it so much worse. And so it’s not to me that just like having women in rooms makes rooms better, because if those women feed into the very systems that are toxic and they just climbed their way through the ranks to be in the room because they condone this behavior, then they are not your friend. But if you create cultures in which cultures see the value of having women leaders, then that’s an environment that, of course, the answer would be. Yes, I think I would have been much safer and in much better hands.

DG: God, that’s such an important distinction that I think is an important reminder for all of us. Like, if you see certain people just in the room, don’t assume that the problems are solved.

MC: No, and I think that’s what sports marketing has been trying to do over the last few years is, like, I mean, the number of programs, at least in track and field, that will just find one professional female runner to now, like, serve kind of as a coach. And, like, for some women there, they understand that that’s what’s being done, and they’re trying to, like, fight against that and climb up. So it’s not to say that like all of these women aren’t fighting the good fight. But some of them are in those roles because they’re really okay with how the boys’ club has been behaving this whole time, and they’re happy to get paid; they’re like happy to be the ponytail in the picture, but they’re not actually fighting to make it better for the next girl.

DG: This is Sports in America, and we are going to be right back with more from distance runner Mary Cain.

Welcome back to Sports in America, and here is more from our conversation with Mary Cain, former distance runner at the Nike Oregon Project.

What do you feel you need in terms of justice, in terms of healing, what are you seeking personally?

MC: Honestly, the reason I felt that I was ready to write this book is there’s nothing anyone can give me Right like at this point I am incredibly proud of myself for like standing up for myself for being a whistleblower for writing this book and i’m proud of my self for like using my experience to hopefully prevent this for the next kid based on the advocacy work I do with the non-profit Atlanta that I founded and the Athlete Survivors Assist. Like for me, this book was a little bit for me in that it was a kind of therapeutic to write it, and I love writing. So it was like a joy to be able to like create a book and put it into the world. But this book wasn’t written because it was for me, or it was spiteful or anything like that. It was really written so that like people can learn that we still have a really, really serious problem and hopefully work to change it. And because I almost knew I was at that point where I was like, nobody can give me anything to heal. That was kind of the moment I was like, I think I can create this book. Because I’m not looking for an apology; I’m not looking for praise. I’m almost so emotionally removed from it. And I think this is my story, but it’s a story that somebody else can use to hopefully protect themselves and protect the next kid.

DG: In 2019, the same year that Alberto was banned from coaching for violating doping rules, Mary came out with her New York Times Op-Ed exposing Alberto and his staff’s abuse. She went on to sue Nike for $20 million and settled out of court. Alberto has since received a lifetime ban in events or sports governed by the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee. In response to Mary’s allegations of abuse, a Nike spokesperson provided the following statement: “Mary Cain joined the Oregon Project in 2013 and left in 2016. Nike is aware that her account raises concerns about coaching practices, athlete support, and the involvement of medical and performance resources during that period. Based on Nike’s review of public records and available information from that time, the company did not find that these concerns were raised or reported to Nike at the time. Since that time, Alberto Salazar is no longer associated with Nike. The Oregon Project was discontinued in 2019, and related litigation involving Nike was resolved in 2023 on mutually acceptable terms.” That, again, is a quote to us from a Nike spokesperson. Let’s get back to Mary’s story now. She went on to begin a nonprofit that connects professional female runners to serve as mentors for young girls. Now she is pursuing a career in medicine at Stanford University.

How do you tie what you went through and describe your whole journey in the book to your interest in medicine?

MC: Yeah, I mean, I think it’s twofold. I think part of it is I had a really horrible journey with all sorts of providers, from mental health to medical to even just, like, support, like PT, AT, etc. And I think having a really bad patient journey kind of inspired me to be like, I want to be a part of the solution. Like, I wanna be able to like pursue this career in a way that, you know, it’s one more person in the profession who’s going to…

DG: Do the right thing.

MC: Hopefully meet a woman and say, like, “I believe you.” Yeah, and so I’m I feel very like passionate about like going into Anything career-wise in which like really the baseline is caring for others and trying to help others. And then I think the second piece of it is that, like, I always was really interested in medicine Like, I was always really interested in academics. I always loved school, and there is something really nice about, like, feeling like this whole journey is my own. And it’s not a do-over. I’m not, like, going to school to, like, get back my college years. Like, none of that like unhealthy mindset is why I’m doing this. And yet there’s something like really beautiful about being able to be, like, I’m a student again. And I’m starting from, like, the bottom of the hierarchy and gonna be working my way up. And I think that’s like really cool to have this like really audacious goal in this whole other space and have the guts to pursue it.

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DG: How does running feel these days? Are you running differently, either physically or emotionally, than you used to?

MC: I definitely am. I mean, I’m having a lot more fun with it again. And I’m also very protective of it. Like, it’s mine. And I love that. It’s no one else’s. And I think for so long, that wasn’t true. For so long, it was, you know, somebody else felt like they made Mary Cain, or they were involved in the process in ways that I love sharing in my successes. Like, I was a girl who would bring a teammate for a victory lap because that just made it so much more fun. And I also believe now that I’ve gone through enough that it’s okay for me to be like, this is my special thing right now.

DG: I guess I just wonder if you could, speaking of the trajectory of your life, if you could talk to your 16-year-old self now, I mean, would you tell her to make different decisions about Nike, about Alberto, about anything?

MC: No, I wouldn’t, and I think that surprises people, but I often like really push back against that question because I think if you read the memoir, like, I think so many people will understand, like, I had nowhere to go. I had nothing; I had no one. I would call a lot of other people, and I would have been like, ” Hey, maybe give me a heads-up that you experienced this at this time, or if you felt concerned for me, do this, do that.” There are a lot of other people I would called when I’m 16. But I think, so often when we kind of ask that question it brings in this almost like victim shaming um kind of like peace to it because it’s almost insupplying that like I as a minor had control over my own abuse if I just knew one or two more things and of course had somebody called me and been like, “This person has sexually assaulted someone” I’m sure my like situation would have changed pretty dramatically, but I think that’s such a low bar of a thing. For someone to, you know, kind of maybe warn me about. And nobody could; like, that was on no one necessarily to do. That’s not necessarily someone’s job, especially as a survivor, and I wanna make that clear. But I think to me, the person who I would go to is the 20-year-old version of myself, the one who had just left the Nike Oregon Project. And she’s the girl who I wouldn’t have sat down and been like, ” What you went through was not okay.” Because I think that was the first time that I kind of was free from this system, where I, like. in some ways, even though it didn’t feel like it, the world really was my oyster; I was an adult, and that’s the person who I’d be like, go to intense therapy.

DG: Thank you for sharing your story. Yeah, it’s really powerful. And best of luck with the book and in medical school.

MC: Yeah, thank you so much.

DG: That was Mary Cain; her memoir, “This Is Not About Running,” is out now.

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DG: Next time on Sports in America, Craig Woodall’s brother, Brent, was working in the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. When a plane struck the tower that morning, Craig thought surely his brother, a larger-than-life multi-sport athlete, would make it back home safely.

CRAIG WOODALL: I want to watch the TV because in a second here, he’s going to come running out the front door, you know, someone on each arm, like it just never crossed my mind. So yes, I was picturing him as the athlete and not just the athlete, the intense athlete.

DG: As we approach the 25th anniversary of his brother’s death, Craig Woodall tells us about his new book, “Overcome: Rebuilding Hope After Losing My Brother on 9/11.” He’ll also talk about the important role that sports played in his grief and healing.

CW: I’d been a teammate my whole life, but when it came to the biggest challenge of my life, I tried to do it alone. That makes no sense. So once I finally figured out how to be a teammate in how I approach grief and allow people in to love on me and support me, that was big.

DG: That is next time on Sports in America.

This is Sports in America. I’m your host, David Greene.

Our executive producers are Joan Isabella and Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa.

Our engineer is Mike Villers. Our theme music is composed by Emma Munger. Our talent booker is Britt Kahn. Our tile artwork was created by Bea Walling.

Sports in America is a production of WHYY in Philadelphia and is distributed by PRX. Some of our interviews were originally created by Religion of Sports with special thanks to Adam Schlossman. You can find Sports in America on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeartRadio app, wherever you get your podcasts.

And we also wanna hear from you. How about you drop us a line? You can write us at sportsinamerica@whyy.org. That’s sportsinamerica@whyy.org. Thanks, everyone. And we will see you next time for Sports in America.

Host: David Greene
Executive Producers: Joan Isabella, Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Talent Booker: Britt Kahn
Engineers: Mike Villers
Tile Art: Bea Walling
Theme Song: Emma Munger
Sports in America is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.