Former teen track prodigy Mary Cain is exposing a culture of abuse that nearly destroyed her

At 17, Mary Cain was considered the fastest girl in America. But years of psychological abuse, body shaming and being forced to train while injured and malnourished caused her to leave the sport she loved and excelled in. 

“Everything was so normalized that I didn’t leave thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m being abused, I have to leave,’” she told The Current’s Matt Galloway. “I left thinking, ‘I am going to die.’”

She first opened up about her experience at the Nike Oregon Project with revered running coach Alberto Salazar in a 2019 New York Times op-ed, which prompted other elite athletes who trained under him to come forward with their own stories of abuse. In 2021, Salazar received a lifetime ban from track from the U.S. Center for SafeSport for sexual and emotional misconduct, a decision he unsuccessfully appealed.

Now 29, Cain can call out “tough coaching” for what it is: abuse. But as she details in her recent memoir, This Is Not About Running, one of the reasons toxicity is accepted at the highest levels of sport is because it often begins in schools.

As a teen, she had competed against an international field of elite runners, making the World Championships in the 1,500-metre race — and she became the first high schooler to break two minutes in the 800 metres. 

Her talent drew hostility from other parents and peers, she said, which her high school coaches condoned. 

“In many ways it didn’t start with Alberto, because I had already gone through this really negative high school experience,” she said, “that just normalized parents yelling at me, other kids yelling at me.”

By the time she signed with Nike in 2013, she excused Salazar’s behaviour repeatedly because she feared disappointing him and yearned to earn his respect, she writes in her book.

Public shaming

Cain alleges Salazar’s focus shifted from wanting to “fix” her running form — telling her to tuck in her elbow for better aerodynamics — to an obsession with controlling her food intake and appearance. She claims he even weighed her in front of teammates and shamed her if she went above 114 pounds.

“Over time, it almost became so normalized,” she said. “I’m sure I was still fighting it emotionally in some capacity and deeply embarrassed [but] I think I almost became … resigned to it.”

She told her parents and they confronted her coaches. Instead of changing their tactics, Cain said, her coaches punished her. So, she learned to stay quiet. 

And the criticism for young, female athletes can seem inescapable, she notes. In her book she targets media commentary — highlighting how inappropriate it is to write or speak about a young girl’s body, including remarks that she would never be a “chiselled runner” or a “tiny gymnast.” 

Downward spiral

At the Nike Project, her physical and mental health declined. She alleges Salazar pushed her to keep running through “shin splints” and hid that an MRI found she actually had a stress fracture. Later, a doctor she visited at her father’s behest confirmed the fracture and the physician’s concern touched her, she said — something that has stayed with her now that she is at Stanford University studying medicine. 

“They were treating me as a product for Nike,” she says of the team in Oregon, where the doctor saw her as a person and his patient.  

Panic attacks, disordered eating, self-harm and suicidal ideation went ignored by her training team, she alleges in the book. Instead, she said she was told to “toughen up” and she left the Nike Oregon Project in 2015 thinking she was “broken.”

It wasn’t until 2019, when Salazar received a four-year ban from the track for doping violations, that Cain said she stopped defending him in her mind. 

“It forced me to kind of face this uncomfortable truth,” she said.

Salazar issued a statement in 2019 following the ban, but never apologized to Cain directly, she said.

“If any athlete was hurt by any comments that I have made, such an effect was entirely unintended, and I am sorry,” he told the Oregonian in that statement.

She settled a lawsuit against Nike and her former coach in 2023.

Moving forward

The intervening years have been focused on healing, something that the memoir helped her achieve, she said, though she credits therapy as well. 

“I’ve realized I don’t need to put the blame on that younger version of myself,” she said. “I trusted very powerful people and I always did the best that I could at the time.”

Now, she hopes to help dismantle the idea that abuse is a normal part of being an athlete. And she said she hopes parents of young athletes will speak out if they see inappropriate behaviour from coaches or others at a game or event — and to remind their children of their worth outside of sports, something her own parents always sought to do.

Running had initially been a type of meditation for her, she said, and she has recovered a sense of joy in it. But she said she now finds great meaning in her chosen career. 

“I love being in medical school,” she said. “I think it’s such a beautiful opportunity to embark on this career path in which really the underlying principle of it is to help others.”