Regarding her love for Alberto Salazar, She understands Now it was about control & manipulation w/ him & how her lack of a father figure made her more vulnerable to his tactics. She came off like a pick me girl on the NOP. It was fun to get the extra attention & favoritism until it wasn’t, & then when it wasn’t fun anymore she started to speak out about it
This sort of cult of personality thing is always fascinating. What is it about that skinny sprig of a man that could inspire such blind loyalty? Was he really that charming, manipulative, whatever?
Salazar had success, the greatest motivator of all time.
He had success. Hahahaha.....
Translation: He cheated enough to get him banned for life, so his "success" is canceled.
Are pro coaches known for giving massages to their athletes? A company like Nike could surely afford to have a top notch masseuse employed full time, no?
This story honestly makes no sense. He was giving out pills to people that weren't even on the team? What happens if an athlete just immediately reported him for that? Feels like something got lost in translation here
It also sounds like it could be one of Alberto's pranks.
That's nothing. SafeSport pulls way better ribs, brother!
I think the massages were exclusively an Alberto thing & aren’t normal for coaches to do. the message he sent was that if you got a massage from him then you were his favorite. Kara consented to the massages for this reason.
The thing I don't really understand is that she didn't complain/tell after the first incident. Kept getting massages. Then it happened. Still no police reports, allegations, etc. Only now - once the gravy train of running has slowed - are the allegations coming out.
Not saying it happened or didn't happen. It's just odd to me.
Fanagan, does she mention sharing that first incident with Adam? Does she comments on that at all? I'm guessing if Adam knew he would try kill Alberto, no?
It can take many years for victims of sexual abuse to come forward, including to those close to them. A big part of that is women being conditioned to give men the benefit of the doubt, blame themselves, think others will blame them (like here on LetsRun is a good example), etc.
Just listened to the audiobook myself. You can certainly find stuff to criticize Goucher for — I personally found it off-putting when Salazar and Treasure repeatedly trash-talked Adam in front of her (and sometimes Adam) and she didn’t do more to immediately shut it down, and there’s some eyebrow-raising lawyerly ass-covering on a couple of key issues. But the core of this book is absolutely devastating to Salazar and Darren Treasure, who come off as the frick-and-frack of a wildly toxic coaching environment.
Between this and Matt Hart’s WIN AT ALL COSTS, it’s difficult to imagine anyone continuing to credibly defend Salazar, who comes off as a driven guy who accomplished remarkable things as an athlete unafraid to push himself, but also as an absolute undisciplined disaster as a special-projects coach working with an unlimited budget and no guardrails. In both Goucher’s and Hart’s books, Salazar is depicted playing favorites and mind-games with his runners. He demands unquestioning loyalty. He’s subject to whims, needlessly cruel out of nowhere, drinks on the job, blurs personal and professional boundaries, and seemingly recruits Treasure to share intel on his runners that the runners believe they were sharing in confidence. (Darren Treasure also comes off horribly in both books, which of course share sources, and I’ll be curious if this new book invites greater scrutiny of him.)
In Goucher’s telling, Salazar takes an Ambien and drinks wine before two different cringe-inducing incidents on airliners. Goucher’s additional allegations of sexual assault feel credible, as are her depictions of her self-doubt and reluctance to share the incidents with her husband, regulators, and the world at large. Her and Adam’s entire career fortunes are tied up with Salazar, and as described the nightmare arc of their relationship is 100-percent in line with the stories of people who escape cults (and cults of personality). Whether Salazar was breaking doping rules or simply seeing how far he could push legally tolerated limits is almost beside the point — in these books, he comes off as someone with narcissistic tendencies who should never hold a position of authority like this again, full stop. He’s constitutionally unsuited for the gig, and his experimentation should be limited to his own body.
The frank talk about money is also really interesting; Goucher very credibly conveys the stress of trying to negotiate contracts while also trying to keep your head in the game for training and racing, and my main takeaway was that professional running is a grief-inducing way to try and make a living. Nike refusing to pay her during her pregnancy while actively building marketing campaigns around that pregnancy may have been contractually allowed, but it’s ethically extremely gross. She also breaks down her racing performances, and it’s interesting to see where she thinks she blew it. Most pro athletes have careers full of also-ran moments and regret, and she’s pretty honest about hers.
There’s all sorts of little stuff to criticize in the book if you have it in for the Gouchers, and this is the LetsRun message boards, so you know who you are, but the core of the story is absolutely brutal.
my main takeaway was that professional running is a grief-inducing way to try and make a living. Nike refusing to pay her during her pregnancy while actively building marketing campaigns around that pregnancy may have been contractually allowed, but it’s ethically extremely gross.
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Baseline 320k, just her, not even including husband. Cry me river.
Anyway, if Salazar is dirty, then I'm not buying the poor Gouchers story, and I'm afraid every coach they were involved with from Wetmore to Schumacher were dirty as well. The whole things comes off as Gouchers being dirty, and wanting to get back at Nike (Kara) and Salazar (Adam) and thinking they could take down Salazar, profit/15 min fame, without destroying their own reps and everyone else from Wetmore to BTC.
my main takeaway was that professional running is a grief-inducing way to try and make a living. Nike refusing to pay her during her pregnancy while actively building marketing campaigns around that pregnancy may have been contractually allowed, but it’s ethically extremely gross.
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Baseline 320k, just her, not even including husband. Cry me river.
Anyway, if Salazar is dirty, then I'm not buying the poor Gouchers story, and I'm afraid every coach they were involved with from Wetmore to Schumacher were dirty as well. The whole things comes off as Gouchers being dirty, and wanting to get back at Nike (Kara) and Salazar (Adam) and thinking they could take down Salazar, profit/15 min fame, without destroying their own reps and everyone else from Wetmore to BTC.
For those saying she made enough money to not complain, I’d argue no 30+ year old works for an entire year unpaid for a company that makes billions. And even when she made $320k+/year it was only for a few years and Prior to winning a global medal in 2007 she wasn’t making much. I believe in the book she said she was making less than 50k/yr prior to 2008. There’s enough evidence that Nike marketed her during her pregnancy & profited off her pregnancy yet didn’t compensate her for it. I don’t blame her for trying to get compensated when she owned real estate & clearly worked to represent the brand. I appreciate her being so forthcoming about the money
It is interesting to hear real figures. She said in her podcast that Nike basically added a zero to her contract after the World medal. So it was roughly 32k to 320k.
Definitely agree Nike was taking advantage of her if they were marketing her pregnancy but not paying her for an entire year. That blows and she must have felt awful with her own coach saying that was a money grub to ask for her due contract. At that point they're paying for her persona, not every piddly race.
Baseline 320k, just her, not even including husband. Cry me river.
Anyway, if Salazar is dirty, then I'm not buying the poor Gouchers story, and I'm afraid every coach they were involved with from Wetmore to Schumacher were dirty as well. The whole things comes off as Gouchers being dirty, and wanting to get back at Nike (Kara) and Salazar (Adam) and thinking they could take down Salazar, profit/15 min fame, without destroying their own reps and everyone else from Wetmore to BTC.
Lazy, go actually read it and come back
I don't need to read it, because unlike your lazy self, I've read many other things over the years and remembered them, like the Gouchers being among the pioneers of asthmatic thyroid patients in distance running, while same time pushing the narrative that everyone else with those conditions were doping (usually from their own doc).
Wetmore- allegations, sent Adam to shady thyroid doc in the first.
Goucher is one of the most prominent voices to speak out, not just against doping, but also against the surreal marginal and medical gains some teams engage in for athletic improvement.
"Like Pavey, [Goucher] spoke out about use of thyroid medication for athletes who don’t show symptoms of hypothyroidism and over use of asthma drugs. Goucher said: ‘All of these short cuts, these advantages. We no longer see who is the hardest trained, most talented on that day. We’re seeing who has the most money, the best doctors, who’s willing to take the most risks and that is just so disappointing.’ "
Some well-known American distance runners, including former U.S. 5,000-meter record holder Bob Kennedy, two-time Olympian Kara Goucher, and U.S. 10,000-meter record holder Galen Rupp, are known to have been prescribed thyroid medication for hypothyroidism or other thyroid-related conditions.
. the Nike Oregon project, among other things, is portrayed as a team with no boundaries. The athletes had blind faith in Alberto & she believes mo farah & Galen could’ve gone as far as take epo if Alberto told them it was ok. Even for herself, she thinks it’s possible Alberto rubbed testosterone cream on her during one of his massages. They were quick to ingest whatever unmarked pills Salazar gave them & she fears even she herself took a banned substance at some point. she has nothing bad to say about jerry Schumacher, mark wetmore & shalane Flanagan. Joining Jerry’s group was the first time she experienced a professional team. Also she originally wanted to join the mammoth track club after leaving nop but they rejected her.
Yeah, yeah. Why doesn't she talk about how she and Adam were the ones who brought the thyroid doc into contact with Salazar/NOP, because they were existing patients of his, Adam having been sent there by Wetmore?
Then Shumacher, the rumors were always that his group was the more aggressive in doping, which is why they were spun off from NOP into their own project. Did Adam get jealous of Rupp and Mo, and think Salazar was giving them the "good stuff" and holding out on him and Kara?
lol.. never spun off … never part of NOP; they came in after 2008 games on their own. Jerry was to be the replacement for AlSal if his heart wasn’t going to make it through Rupp career.
Fanagan, does she mention sharing that first incident with Adam? Does she comments on that at all? I'm guessing if Adam knew he would try kill Alberto, no?
It can take many years for victims of sexual abuse to come forward, including to those close to them. A big part of that is women being conditioned to give men the benefit of the doubt, blame themselves, think others will blame them (like here on LetsRun is a good example), etc.
That's a solid explanation--initially I thought she'd go to Adam who would address the situation but it must have affected her to the point where maybe she compartmentalized it away, hoping to address it later and bring Al Sal to justice.
One key thing to note about the sexual assault accusations and people saying why didn't she say something after the first instance... If someone had massaged you many times and maybe many times around the groin area as that can get sore from running and "hit" the wrong spot and quickly corrected, you probably would think that's weird even if they said oops sorry about that and continued massage the right place but you probably wouldn't think that was their intension especially if they had massaged you without incident many times... So I can understand Kara not realizing that that was intentional or sexual assault at the time. But the 2nd time it happened you would then probably think that that first time wasn't an accident.
Now for safesport... they should have banned Alberto Years before they did... That guy tested Testosterone on his minor children and that was known and safesport did nothing! Why they waited to ban him is crazy to me. SafeSport really doesn't keep sports safe from sexual abuse if they are cool with sex hormones being handed out to minor children.
