rojo wrote:
I'm glad the NY Times is giving the sport some publicity but didn't like a lot of things about the article.
1) To me, a big elephant in the room is why didn't Cain run for the super successful Bronx team in HS and the article came up way short in answering that.:
I've heard a lot of speculation over the years but never heard anything close to definitive. This article certainly came up way short on answering that question. The way the author described it was unbelievable to me:
NYT wrote:For Cain’s sophomore year, the high-school athletic department decided that she would be better off training with the boys’ coach. But according to New York State high-school sports rules, a girl can’t compete against girls if she trains exclusively with boys. Not wanting to risk Cain’s eligibility, the school switched her back to training under the girls’ coach at the start of her junior year. By this point, however, Cain had outgrown her high-school program.
Her needs departed so wildly from those of the other runners that the coach, for reasons that nobody would talk about, didn’t even prescribe workouts for her. “She’d show up to practice and do her own thing,” her father told me. “It was heartbreaking to be a parent of a kid who has all this potential and see her not getting any coaching at all.”
That is worded so weird. The HS athletic department 'decides she would be better off training the boys.' Why? Cause she didn't get along with her teammates, she or her parents didn't like the coaches, the coaches didn't like her, etc? Cain's older sister had been on the team so I'm assuming there likely is a back-story there that was totally missed.
The author admits no-one will talk about but I feel like it's her job to figure it out. Either figure out why or don't act like she was simply abandoned by the coaching staff. Just ignore it or get to the bottom of it. Don't present 2 paragraphs that make little sense.
2) I thought many training theories were stated as fact when they aren't fact and many that are fact were stated as open to debate.:
For example, this is stated as a fact.
NYT wrote:
Gone, too, is the outdated idea that the best way to make a girl run faster is to make her skinnier, so that she carries fewer pounds around the track. The dominant philosophy now is that girls, like all other runners, should train to become very strong by lifting heavy weights. Running mechanics are fairly simple: Speed comes from a foot hitting the ground, loading with energy, like a spring, then exploding off with propulsive power.
I've never known it was a fact that people should lift heavy weights, and do believe many runners - both men and women - are still very much concerned with weight..
Yet look what was viewed as not a fact
NYT wrote:
She lays her head in while she sleeps, to mimic the low-oxygen atmosphere found at high altitude. (Some runners believe that breathing low-oxygen air will boost their performance.)
The author even put that in parenthesis ().
3) I thought the author came up most short in the fact that she talked a lot about doped up records, talked a lot about Mary Slaney, but didn't talk about Slaney's doping positive and her being coached by Salazar.
Perhaps the legal department at the Times didn't want her to go there but how can Slaney's doping suspension not be mentioned?
There had to be one line in there like "Late in her career, Slaney, who was coached by Salazar, was convicted of a doping offense."
(I believe Salazar may deny he was the coaching her at the time)
Now it's easy for me to say that has to be in there when I'll admit I'm guilty of not following up on this myself. At the Armory Track Invite press conference, Cain once again talked about idolizing Slaney.
I should have asked her something about doping, "Does it make you a little uncomfortable that Slaney was eventually convicted of a doping offense and also was coach by your coach?"
I'm sure Cain would either not comment or say it was a contested finding but it just seems that the Times glossed over Slaney's doping but talked a lot about it for Chinese. I mean how do you talk about doped records, slaney, but not mention Slaney's doping and Salazar's coaching of Slaney?
-Rojo