What do you think?
Rate this book
Behind the Swoosh
"After years of rumors and speculation, Matt Hart sets out to peel back the layers of secrecy that protected the most powerful coach in running. What he finds will leave you indignant—and wondering whether anything in the high-stakes world of Olympic sport has truly changed." —Alex Hutchinson, New York Times bestselling author of Endure
Game of Shadows meets Shoe Dog in this explosive behind-the-scenes look that reveals for the first time the unsettling details of Nike's secret running program—the Nike Oregon Project.
In May 2017, journalist Matt Hart received a USB drive containing a single file—a 4.7-megabyte PDF named “Tic Toc, Tic Toc. . . .” He quickly realized he was in possession of a stolen report prepared a year earlier by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for the Texas Medical Board, part of an investigation into legendary running coach Alberto Salazar, a Houston-based endocrinologist named Dr. Jeffrey Brown, and cheating by Nike-sponsored runners, including some of the world’s best athletes. The information Hart received was part of an unfolding story of deception which began when Steve Magness, an assistant to Salazar, broke the omertà—the Mafia-like code of silence about performance-enhancing drugs among those involved—and alerted USADA. He was soon followed by Olympians Adam and Kara Goucher who risked their careers to become whistleblowers on their former Nike running family in Beaverton, Oregon.
Combining sports drama and business exposé, Win at All Costs tells the full story of Nike’s running program, uncovering a corporate win-at-all-costs culture.
Game of Shadows meets Shoe Dog in this explosive behind-the-scenes look that reveals for the first time the unsettling details of Nike's secret running program—the Nike Oregon Project.
In May 2017, journalist Matt Hart received a USB drive containing a single file—a 4.7-megabyte PDF named “Tic Toc, Tic Toc. . . .” He quickly realized he was in possession of a stolen report prepared a year earlier by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) for the Texas Medical Board, part of an investigation into legendary running coach Alberto Salazar, a Houston-based endocrinologist named Dr. Jeffrey Brown, and cheating by Nike-sponsored runners, including some of the world’s best athletes. The information Hart received was part of an unfolding story of deception which began when Steve Magness, an assistant to Salazar, broke the omertà—the Mafia-like code of silence about performance-enhancing drugs among those involved—and alerted USADA. He was soon followed by Olympians Adam and Kara Goucher who risked their careers to become whistleblowers on their former Nike running family in Beaverton, Oregon.
Combining sports drama and business exposé, Win at All Costs tells the full story of Nike’s running program, uncovering a corporate win-at-all-costs culture.
320 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 15, 2020
164 people are currently reading
1626 people want to read
About the author
Matt Hart
1 book28 followersMatt is a journalist based in the Front Range of Colorado. His work has appeared on the front page of The New York Times, as well as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and Outside magazine. He is represented by the Cheney literary agency.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews
November 28, 2020
"Win at All Costs" purports to provide a behind the scenes look at the shady training practices of the Nike Oregon Project, and more specifically its head coach, Alberto Salazar. Hart portrays Salazar as a bumbler of sorts, always casting about for ways to give his runners a competitive edge, even if it means asking them to ingest supplements and pharmaceuticals that may have questionable short term benefits and long-term serious health consequences. Hart makes a compelling case that Salazar exploited "therapeutic use exemptions" (TUE) that allowed his runners to take prescription medications that likely boosted their running performance. On top of that, it appears that Salazar used his sons and a coach as guinea pigs to determine whether certain medications boosted performance, and just as importantly, showed up on drug tests. Salazar, it seems, was looking for the "black edge" of what was legal, that is, what he could get away with.
When compared to books like "The Secret Race" by Tyler Hamilton or "Cycle of Lies" by Juliet Macur, "Win at All Costs" seems more like a hatchet job against Nike and Salazar rather than an honest accounting of doping or cheating in athletics. Even though it really doesn't play into the theme that Salazar (and by proxy, Nike) want to win at all costs, Hart also lards his narrative with numerous vignettes about Salazar and Nike people generally being assholes. That Hart included a story about Meb Keflezighi complaining about Galen Rupp crowding him during the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials seemed of a piece of a depiction of Nike people as generally being off-putting.
Hart's accounting of Kara Goucher's experience with the Nike Oregon Project betrays his facade of journalistic neutrality. Hart appears to uncritically accept Kara Goucher's account that she saw all sorts of shenanigans but she did not partake. It seems almost coincidental that almost all of her best performances occurred when she ran with Nike Oregon Project. Kara is hailed as a whistleblower, even though she did not start complaining until after she was dropped from NOP. Interestingly, Hart did not seem interested in similar questionable conduct taking place in the Bowerman Track Club.
To me, though, the biggest weakness of "Win at All Costs" is the lack of linkage between Salazar's shady practices and the performances of his athletes. In "The Secret Race" we learn how cyclists dope, how it improves their performance, and how they escaped detection. In "Win at All Costs," we learn of potential doping violations involving non-athletes, and we are invited to extrapolate. Galen Rupp and Mo Farah blossomed under Salazar, but we are lead to believe that they likely benefited from sort of dubious pharmaceutical regime that is never really specified. While Hart plays up that Salazar was banned for four years by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, he did not discuss the findings in much detail, likely because Salazar was not found complicit in anything that appeared to affect the outcome of a race.
I think I would have like this book better if Hart was more upfront about his animus against Nike or portrayed the Nike Oregon Project as emblematic of a systematic problem in competitive running. Instead, "Win at All Costs" portrays the Nike Oregon Project as emblematic of Nike's "just win, baby" attitude, when actually that attitude preceded Nike and is pervasive worldwide.
When compared to books like "The Secret Race" by Tyler Hamilton or "Cycle of Lies" by Juliet Macur, "Win at All Costs" seems more like a hatchet job against Nike and Salazar rather than an honest accounting of doping or cheating in athletics. Even though it really doesn't play into the theme that Salazar (and by proxy, Nike) want to win at all costs, Hart also lards his narrative with numerous vignettes about Salazar and Nike people generally being assholes. That Hart included a story about Meb Keflezighi complaining about Galen Rupp crowding him during the 2016 Olympic Marathon Trials seemed of a piece of a depiction of Nike people as generally being off-putting.
Hart's accounting of Kara Goucher's experience with the Nike Oregon Project betrays his facade of journalistic neutrality. Hart appears to uncritically accept Kara Goucher's account that she saw all sorts of shenanigans but she did not partake. It seems almost coincidental that almost all of her best performances occurred when she ran with Nike Oregon Project. Kara is hailed as a whistleblower, even though she did not start complaining until after she was dropped from NOP. Interestingly, Hart did not seem interested in similar questionable conduct taking place in the Bowerman Track Club.
To me, though, the biggest weakness of "Win at All Costs" is the lack of linkage between Salazar's shady practices and the performances of his athletes. In "The Secret Race" we learn how cyclists dope, how it improves their performance, and how they escaped detection. In "Win at All Costs," we learn of potential doping violations involving non-athletes, and we are invited to extrapolate. Galen Rupp and Mo Farah blossomed under Salazar, but we are lead to believe that they likely benefited from sort of dubious pharmaceutical regime that is never really specified. While Hart plays up that Salazar was banned for four years by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, he did not discuss the findings in much detail, likely because Salazar was not found complicit in anything that appeared to affect the outcome of a race.
I think I would have like this book better if Hart was more upfront about his animus against Nike or portrayed the Nike Oregon Project as emblematic of a systematic problem in competitive running. Instead, "Win at All Costs" portrays the Nike Oregon Project as emblematic of Nike's "just win, baby" attitude, when actually that attitude preceded Nike and is pervasive worldwide.
October 31, 2020
This is a meticulously researched and reported takedown of the vaunted Nike Oregon Project and its head coach, Shady Alberto Salazar, who last year was banned for four years for doping violations. The book chronicles the lengths he goes to to bend the banned substance rules...often outright breaking them. If you're a runner, this book will absolutely infuriate you. It's not just the doping -- it's the frequent emotional abuse and the crazy mind games he plays with his athletes, as well as the unproven, junk science he uses. Literally nothing is off limits to try to get an edge. Nike itself doesn't look great here either -- as Hart reveals the brand's almost cult-like corporate culture. Fascinating read. Maddening read. I run in Nikes. I may not run in Nikes anymore.
July 18, 2020
A look behind the scenes at The Nike Oregon Project, disgraced coach and running legend Alberto Salazar, and the rot in the richest company in running. While carefully researched and documented, and telling in many ways an all too familiar story, this reads as quick as a thriller or a jacked up runner. Read from an Advance Reader's Copy.
December 31, 2021
Very well-written and probably fascinating for anyone actually interested in the running world. The bottom line of this book was Nike runners used many illegal substances to run real fast. How boring is that?
Was so excited to finish this book, which was gifted to me by my dad…my parents’ picks have been rough as of late. However I quickly realized I was now stuck on vacation with NO NEW BOOKS and had to read some dumb thriller book that someone left at the house. I shan’t even bother to review that one. Happy New Year’s Eve to all and to all a good night.
Was so excited to finish this book, which was gifted to me by my dad…my parents’ picks have been rough as of late. However I quickly realized I was now stuck on vacation with NO NEW BOOKS and had to read some dumb thriller book that someone left at the house. I shan’t even bother to review that one. Happy New Year’s Eve to all and to all a good night.
October 31, 2020
I "started" this book on October 24 but, after just finishing reading the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, I needed something simple. From the prologue, Win At All Costs comes in blazing with names, testimonies, and rumors. I don't think I was equipped to deal with it so suddenly so I shelved it knowing I could pick it back up soon. Then this week I finished "Ascent 1980" which gave me the grounding needed after Electric Kool Aid Acid Test mushed my brain to a pulp. Refreshed, I picked back up Win At All Costs and finished the book in 2.5 days. I was gripped. I'd put this book in the same class as anything by Krakauer, a person who can take a topic you're not very interested in and suddenly captivate your imagination.
While running is my favorite sport TO DO, I don't invest very much time or interest on running culture, especially track and field. The book is a gap-bridger. If you have basic knowledge about Adam Goucher's career (I finally read Running with The Buffaloes this year), Frank Shorter (his image is literally painted to a building I've passed by thousands of times in my life), Lance Armstrong, the company and culture of NIKE (a couple years ago I read the book "Swoosh" and Phil Knight's bio "Shoe Dog") then you have a foundation to connect the dots in Win At All Costs. For me this was a huge benefit. But Matt does what successful authors do best in this genre. He tracks fallible characters whose high stakes decisions create moral quandaries. While reading I was simulatensouly digging a rather deep rabbit hole I’d never ventured; all of the sudden I’m watching a video from 2007 of Alan Webb on the Letterman Show and listening to a Let’s Run podcast interview with the “big 3” (Ryan Hall, Webb, and Dathan Ritzenheim). A latent interest in track and field culture emerged.
I haven’t mentioned bias or reporting integrity in this review because it’s a non starter. There are 353 (!) citations/notes. Matt is literally the person who broke the story about USADA’s investigation of the Nike Oregon Project. You are reading the work of a beat journalist’s longtime investigation.
While running is my favorite sport TO DO, I don't invest very much time or interest on running culture, especially track and field. The book is a gap-bridger. If you have basic knowledge about Adam Goucher's career (I finally read Running with The Buffaloes this year), Frank Shorter (his image is literally painted to a building I've passed by thousands of times in my life), Lance Armstrong, the company and culture of NIKE (a couple years ago I read the book "Swoosh" and Phil Knight's bio "Shoe Dog") then you have a foundation to connect the dots in Win At All Costs. For me this was a huge benefit. But Matt does what successful authors do best in this genre. He tracks fallible characters whose high stakes decisions create moral quandaries. While reading I was simulatensouly digging a rather deep rabbit hole I’d never ventured; all of the sudden I’m watching a video from 2007 of Alan Webb on the Letterman Show and listening to a Let’s Run podcast interview with the “big 3” (Ryan Hall, Webb, and Dathan Ritzenheim). A latent interest in track and field culture emerged.
I haven’t mentioned bias or reporting integrity in this review because it’s a non starter. There are 353 (!) citations/notes. Matt is literally the person who broke the story about USADA’s investigation of the Nike Oregon Project. You are reading the work of a beat journalist’s longtime investigation.
December 26, 2020
Wow. The drama is so delicious. Excellent journalism writing. Like a thrilling race, this book takes you through the journey of cheating, sexism, manipulation and the toxic sport culture most present in no place other than... Nike.
May 29, 2021
If this was a fanfiction, it would probably be tagged Bashing!Nike.
Unfortunately it isn't fanfiction.
I say unfortunately, because it depicts despicable behavior by people in power both on the level of a single person leading a group, and a market leading company dominating at least one sport.
Exactly because there has been so much well-documented, often systematic, bad behavior within the Nike ecosystem, I think it's a shame that Matt Hart often succumbs to the temptation of writing subjective little snipes at Nike and its employees. It undermines the story, and raises read flags to its believability. For example:
- The random paragraph describing that Prefontaine's ex girlfriend who for a (short?) time worked as a secretary to Knight had bad things to say about Nike/Knight/Knight's relationship to Bowerman (p. 100). In a global mega-corporation it's not hard to find disgruntled ex-employees, and this part honestly seems petty and irrelevant.
- Hart gently skips over evidence that this kind of cheating may be VERY wide-spread in his attempt at painting Salazar and Nike leadership as the boogeyman. A short paragraph quotes Kara Goucher: "That year that I left Nike I was running with Chris Solinsky and Matthew Tegenkamp," Kara told me. "They were like, 'Just so you know, USADA has been sniffing around so you might want to lower your Advair dose.' I was like, "I'm not on Advair.'" Kara said they seemed shocked, as they were both on a high dose of the asthma drug. (p. 277)
Solinsky and Tegenkamp were BTC/Schumacher runners.
- Every now and the Matt Hart employs some very flowery writing that does not fit in at all with the rest of the book, and gives the section a "personal attack"-feel. On page 324 Phil Knight is described as looking every bit his advanced years, with watery, red, swollen eyes. Come on, Hart. Do better.
The reason I'm coming down hard on stuff like this is, that it completely undermines the important bits of narrative, and muddies the waters of what should be clear, and what I expect is the goal of this book: Exposing that Alberto Salazar is a man who shows despicable behavior towards the people entrusted in his care, and a cheat, and that Nike has repeatedly backed him.
Unfortunately it isn't fanfiction.
I say unfortunately, because it depicts despicable behavior by people in power both on the level of a single person leading a group, and a market leading company dominating at least one sport.
Exactly because there has been so much well-documented, often systematic, bad behavior within the Nike ecosystem, I think it's a shame that Matt Hart often succumbs to the temptation of writing subjective little snipes at Nike and its employees. It undermines the story, and raises read flags to its believability. For example:
- The random paragraph describing that Prefontaine's ex girlfriend who for a (short?) time worked as a secretary to Knight had bad things to say about Nike/Knight/Knight's relationship to Bowerman (p. 100). In a global mega-corporation it's not hard to find disgruntled ex-employees, and this part honestly seems petty and irrelevant.
- Hart gently skips over evidence that this kind of cheating may be VERY wide-spread in his attempt at painting Salazar and Nike leadership as the boogeyman. A short paragraph quotes Kara Goucher: "That year that I left Nike I was running with Chris Solinsky and Matthew Tegenkamp," Kara told me. "They were like, 'Just so you know, USADA has been sniffing around so you might want to lower your Advair dose.' I was like, "I'm not on Advair.'" Kara said they seemed shocked, as they were both on a high dose of the asthma drug. (p. 277)
Solinsky and Tegenkamp were BTC/Schumacher runners.
- Every now and the Matt Hart employs some very flowery writing that does not fit in at all with the rest of the book, and gives the section a "personal attack"-feel. On page 324 Phil Knight is described as looking every bit his advanced years, with watery, red, swollen eyes. Come on, Hart. Do better.
The reason I'm coming down hard on stuff like this is, that it completely undermines the important bits of narrative, and muddies the waters of what should be clear, and what I expect is the goal of this book: Exposing that Alberto Salazar is a man who shows despicable behavior towards the people entrusted in his care, and a cheat, and that Nike has repeatedly backed him.
October 14, 2020
Win at All Costs kept me on the edge of my seat. Masterfully researched and written in such a way that I thought that I might be reading a suspense novel.
I learned a lot from this book about high level competitive running and even more about the human condition when our pursuit of glory has run amok.
I encourage you to read this book. You will be glad that you did.
I learned a lot from this book about high level competitive running and even more about the human condition when our pursuit of glory has run amok.
I encourage you to read this book. You will be glad that you did.
October 14, 2020
Congratulations on your first book, Matt. It was really well done! While I'm a long-time anti-Nike runner, I think your book came off as persuasive and balanced. Great writing and narrative.
July 16, 2021
a really well researched and interesting book!! really liked this one. only thing was that it mentioned so many different people it was exceptionally hard to keep track of them all. may have been better if i had read rather than audiobooked it?
December 25, 2020
A fascinating book which tears down the veil over the Nike Oregon Project and Alberto Salazar. Although essentially everyone in the running world had heard vague rumors, it was enlightening to read detailed reporting.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this book was reading about Nike and how they defend Salazar and many other cheating athletes. It leaves me wondering whether sport would have been better off if Blue Ribbon Sports never made it off the ground back in the 1970s.
A must read for people obsessed with running, or just people who love some good gossip.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this book was reading about Nike and how they defend Salazar and many other cheating athletes. It leaves me wondering whether sport would have been better off if Blue Ribbon Sports never made it off the ground back in the 1970s.
A must read for people obsessed with running, or just people who love some good gossip.
November 22, 2020
This was an engrossing and fast read about the 'win at all costs' culture at Nike. Central to the story are Kara and Adam Goucher, Galen Rupp, and of course, Alberto Salazar, whose impressive pedigree included success at running and now coaching. Before reading this book, I had heard stories about Rupp and Salazar and doping; there's plenty of discussion surrounding that in this book. Salazar comes across as a tyrant who walks away from runners who don't do his bidding and/or win. I kept thinking to myself: why didn't these runners run away from him? Was it the lure of gold? Truly mindblowing as well is the culture at Nike with the highly paid executives and the poorly paid runners. It makes me glad that I don't wear Nike.
October 13, 2020
Enthralling book about culture at Nike. Having read a few other books and articles (and listened to the Clean Sport Collective podcast), I knew a fair amount about the doping allegations, so a lot of the content wasn't 'new'. However, the author's writing style - and the quality of the research and storytelling made it a pretty interesting read.
September 12, 2024
Knew a lot of this from Kara Goucher’s newer book, but definitely some things that were new. So maddening all the things that happened at Nike. Book was a bit scatter shot and the transitions were slightly abrupt, but a well done and well researched read for sure
December 21, 2020
Great read. Took off after about 150-200 pages. Prior to that I thought the author ripped too much off of other books about Nike. At times too long sentences too. You end up not not knowing who did what. And a bit too biased in favor of the Gouchers.
But that does not take away the immense depth of research that took place to complete this book and story-telling. And after finishing I am left with this nauseating feeling whenever I lay my eyes on my Nike items.
No more Nike for me. Thats a fact. And it shows how really corrupted the world of sports (an athletics in particular) is.
I can not believe how easy Mo Farah n Galen Rupp has gotten off the hook. Farah even got knighted (for Gods sake!!).
But that does not take away the immense depth of research that took place to complete this book and story-telling. And after finishing I am left with this nauseating feeling whenever I lay my eyes on my Nike items.
No more Nike for me. Thats a fact. And it shows how really corrupted the world of sports (an athletics in particular) is.
I can not believe how easy Mo Farah n Galen Rupp has gotten off the hook. Farah even got knighted (for Gods sake!!).
February 18, 2021
Hart did a lot of research and interviews to attempt impartiality as he wrote about the Nike project scandal, but his book feels scattered and agenda driven. I finished the book depressed about the unhappiness that seems to abound in the world of world class running and the obsessions that drive athletes and coaches to try anything in order to get faster. It is hard to judge Salazar, his athletes, and Nike as a company. since no one has admitted any wrong doing, and none of Salazar's athletes have been banned. The politics of what is allowed is quite complicated. For example, why was Mo Farah excused from using injected creatine? Simply because there was no record of the size of the injection? Salazar seems to really have believed that what he was doing with his athletes was completely legal and even to be praised. What can be done to make sport fair is unclear since current drug testing is a failure.
February 17, 2025
I’m torn on this one. On the one hand cheating ruins sport and people who cheat should be punished. On the other hand, the rules around doping are so hard to define or interpret, so when people try to find the limits of what is legal their situation can be spun to look like cheating and discredit incredible athletes trying to do the right thing.
This level of using supplements in sport is nowhere near the level of Lance Armstrong cheating, and although lots of it doesn’t sit right, I can’t say I’d call this cheating. The nike culture can bread some negative actions, and I came away disappointed in some of the Nike coaches, but I feel for the athletes caught in the middle.
The book does a good job of covering the history of American running and laying out the facts of the situation. Still hard to not be a little skeptical with the obvious heavy negative bias.
This level of using supplements in sport is nowhere near the level of Lance Armstrong cheating, and although lots of it doesn’t sit right, I can’t say I’d call this cheating. The nike culture can bread some negative actions, and I came away disappointed in some of the Nike coaches, but I feel for the athletes caught in the middle.
The book does a good job of covering the history of American running and laying out the facts of the situation. Still hard to not be a little skeptical with the obvious heavy negative bias.
April 28, 2025
3.5! fascinating book on a topic i knew next to nothing about outside of running trivia my husband's told me over the years. incredible amounts of research unfortunately hampered by the need for another strong edit. there were too many figures involved in the narrative for it to jump around the way that it did with all of the callbacks to emails and phone calls mentioned hundreds of pages earlier, not to mention the confusing penchant for referring to proper nouns by monikers. nevertheless, a really interesting read!
March 30, 2021
It is an interesting experience to read Shoe Dog first and then immediately followed by this book. Both were riveting and fascinating stories with differing recollections of the same events or incidents.
July 11, 2021
Wow wow wow. I absolutely DEVOURED this. I found myself pausing it to look more details up about the things that were being discussed in the book. I vaguely remember the BALCO stuff and all the doping accusations (and of course remember Lance Armstrong), but I didn't really pay attention to it.
The drama and shit that went down is straight out of a movie, only it's real life. I feel bad for so many of these people. Some for what was done to them and others for what they did and became.
The drama and shit that went down is straight out of a movie, only it's real life. I feel bad for so many of these people. Some for what was done to them and others for what they did and became.
February 7, 2022
I am enraged.
April 3, 2021
Takeaways:
Alberto Salazar once was the brightest star among US distance runners.
He lamented the fall of US runners from international prominence.
As a coach, Salazar used training methods that pushed the envelope of fairness.
Salazar embraced creative methods to get prescription drugs for his athletes.
Salazar took an obsessive interest in Galen Rupp, a runner he coached through high school and college.
The 2012 Olympics vindicated Salazar as an elite coach.
Runner Kara Goucher learned the limits of Salazar’s medical knowledge.
Salazar instructed athletes to take massive doses of Vitamin D.
After years of Salazar’s rumors and denials, the USADA sanctioned him in 2019.
Summary:
Alberto Salazar once was the brightest star among US distance runners.
Born in Cuba and raised in the United States, Alberto Salazar starred as a runner for the University of Oregon and burst onto the national scene. At one memorable race in 1978, he ran so hard in the heat that his body temperature spiked to 108 degrees. He won the Boston Marathon in 1982, when American runners dominated distance events.
At the 1981 New York City marathon, he set a world record of two hours, eight minutes and 13 seconds. Nike paid him a salary of $250,000, a huge sum in the early 1980s. Salazar embraced dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), which trainers used as an anti-inflammatory treatment for horses.
Nineteen-eighty-two proved the high-water mark for Salazar’s career.
Salazar won the New York City Marathon three years in a row, but fought chronic fatigue and illness. He failed to make the 1984 Olympic team. To revive his career, Salazar tried Prozac, an antidepressant, and prednisone, a corticosteroid allowed in certain instances. He took testosterone, which was a banned substance. In 1994, Salazar won a grueling 55-mile race in South Africa. He later admitted to using testosterone from 1995 to 2006.
He lamented the fall of US runners from international prominence.
Salazar and a Nike executive watched the broadcast of the 2001 Boston Marathon from Nike’s campus in Oregon. They grew discouraged that runners from Korea, Ecuador and Kenya took the top five spots. The glory days of US runners seemed fixed in the past. In the 1970s, American Bill Rodgers had won multiple Boston and New York marathons. Frank Shorter, also an American, won the 1972 Olympic marathon and placed second in 1976, losing to an East German runner later found to be a drug cheat. But from 1983 until 2001, Americans won just 4% of World Championships and Olympic golds in distance races.
Almost two decades of lackluster performances had made the US sports establishment desperate for a homegrown hero to challenge the dominance of Africa.
Salazar thought he could coach Americans back to prominence. Former marathoner Tom Clarke, a Nike executive, liked the idea. He made a list of what Salazar would need to do to restore the United States to glory in distance running. The conversation launched the Nike Oregon Project, intended to bring Nike’s competitive spirit and money to distance running under Salazar’s coaching.
Salazar had coached Mary Decker Slaney in her quest to win an Olympic medal. But, she was banned from competition for two years after a urine sample at the 1996 Olympic Trials showed impermissible levels of testosterone. She claimed birth control pills interfered with the results, but that didn’t persuade doping officials. Drug scandals often tainted Nike athletes. Sprinters Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin admitted cheating in the early 2000s, and cycling superstar Lance Armstrong also fell from grace.
As a coach, Salazar used training methods that pushed the envelope of fairness.
Promising runners moved to Oregon to live and train under Salazar’s close tutelage. Beaverton, Oregon, is at sea level, but many elite American runners had gone instead to Boulder, Colorado, to live and train at a higher altitude. Thin mountain air spurs the body to produce red blood cells. East African runners live and train at “7,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level” to gain a competitive advantage in sea-level competitions. Salazar spent $110,000 to turn an Oregon house into a high-altitude environment. Nike runners slept, ate and rode stationary bikes in the house, where Salazar set the altitude at 12,000 feet above sea level.
Whatever else might be said or written about Salazar, nobody has ever accused him of modesty; his confidence in himself is legendary.
Athletes discovered that the house’s air-thinning system had been set to 14,000 feet instead of 12,000. When he took the team to train in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Salazar and the athletes stayed in a hotel at an altitude of 8,000 feet. He brought an altitude tent, set it at 14,000 feet and instructed a star pupil to sleep inside it. Assistant coaches wondered about the scientific validity of Salazar’s methods, but he was the unquestioned boss.
Salazar embraced creative approaches to get prescription drugs for his athletes.
Salazar got his runners diagnosed as needing thyroid medication. His athletes visited Dr. Jeffrey Brown, a Houston endocrinologist. Brown saw Adam Goucher in 2004 and, although blood work showing that Goucher’s thyroid function was normal, the doctor diagnosed him with hypothyroidism and prescribed thyroid replacement therapy. Brown told Arianna Lambie that even though five tests in 2008 and 2009 showed she had normal thyroid levels, athletes needed thyroid medication. When Lambie felt side effects, another endocrinologist immediately ramped down her medication. Lambie soon left the Nike Oregon Project.
The high stress of running 130-mile weeks, sleeping at extreme altitudes and traveling to foreign places constantly pushed Salazar’s athletes into a physiological hole.
Salazar taught runner Lauren Fleshman how to persuade a doctor that she suffered from asthma. When pollen counts were high, Salazar took her to a track and told her to run to inflame her lungs. Salazar instructed Fleshman to run to the doctor’s building and sprint up the 12 flights of stairs to his office. Gasping for breath, Fleshman failed an asthma test – and the physician prescribed Advair, a corticosteroid, and Albuterol, an inhaler drug. The physician instructed Fleshman to take the medications only during pollen season; Salazar told her to take them year-round.
Salazar took an obsessive interest in Galen Rupp, a runner he coached through high school and college.
While Salazar primarily worked with post-collegians, he longed to develop younger athletes. In 2000, the mother of soccer star Galen Rupp, then 14, approached Salazar. The young athlete had run 200-meter sprints in less than 30 seconds. Salazar became Rupp’s coach, dictating nearly every detail of his training, racing and diet. As Rupp hit the 19-and-under circuit, he crushed longstanding records, but he was taking oral prednisone at the time.
Under Salazar’s watchful eye, Rupp didn’t partake in all of the team workouts as was normally required of a scholarship athlete.
As a college athlete, Rupp technically competed for the University of Oregon, but Salazar was his coach. Rupp didn’t participate in team workouts, and he slept in a high-altitude device. Rupp regularly received allergy shots, though no one was sure he suffered from any. In his final season at Oregon, he won national championships at 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
When Rupp turned pro, Salazar remained his coach. Salazar claimed Rupp suffered from asthma and, therefore, needed prednisone, which the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned in 2007. Salazar applied for a therapeutic-use exemption on Rupp’s behalf, but WADA denied the request. Salazar asked an assistant to deliver a vial of Rupp’s urine to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, presumably to determine if Rupp would pass a drug test. The assistant coach traveled to Germany to meet Rupp. Salazar shipped the assistant a Clive Cussler novel with a secret compartment containing pills.
The 2012 Olympics vindicated Salazar as an elite coach.
Athletes coached by Salazar – “Mo” Farah and Rupp – finished first and second in the 10,000 meters at the London Olympics. The coach called the one-two finish “the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life.” Nike displayed a giant finish-line photo at the Lance Armstrong fitness center on its campus.
The decade-plus effort to help top American distance runners not only compete with but defeat the Kenyans and Ethiopians had finally paid off.
However, Salazar’s athletes all seemed to suffer asthma and thyroid conditions that required prescription drugs. Other runners nicknamed him “Albuterol Salazar” because his athletes took that drug. Salazar ran through assistant coaches, bullied doctors and belittled athletes. Some former coaches and athletes criticized Salazar’s methods, either acting as whistleblowers or by speaking to the media.
Runner Kara Goucher learned the limits of Salazar’s medical knowledge.
When Kara Goucher suffered a calf injury in 2005, Salazar treated it by applying crushed aspirin and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to the area, then covering her calf in plastic wrap. When she complained about a burning sensation, Salazar told her to not to remove the dressing. Afterward, her skin blistered, and it took weeks to heal. Her calf still bothered her, so Salazar instructed her to have surgery. He dismissed the notion that Goucher was training too hard and needed rest.
They knew Salazar was the Oregon Project, and he answered to no one, and crossing him would result in an end to their professional careers.
Salazar experimented with a topical testosterone called AndroGel, using his adult sons as guinea pigs. Salazar rubbed the gel on his son Alex’s back, and sent before-and-after urine samples to a lab for testing. Dr. Brown, advising Salazar, was concerned; Alex’s wife was pregnant, and the topical testosterone could transfer to her and harm Salazar’s unborn grandson. Salazar increased the dose. He learned his son’s urine showed allowable levels of testosterone. Brown admitted he prescribed AndroGel to Salazar even though the coach said he would test the drug on other people.
Salazar instructed athletes to take massive doses of Vitamin D.
Salazar theorized that Vitamin D would increase testosterone. Despite the health risks of high doses, he pushed his runners to take large quantities. Salazar had Farah take 200,000 IU a week, though the recommended allowance is 4,200 IU per week. Salazar gave megadoses of Vitamin D to his children. Another runner felt ill after obeying Salazar and taking an infusion of L-carnitine, an endurance-enhancing substance. Runners knew better than to argue with Salazar; he brooked no dissent.
All the [Nike Oregon Project] athletes, it seemed, were on prescription medication with dubious justifications.
L-carnitine became a favored treatment. Two days before the London Marathon in 2014, Farah had an L-carnitine infusion in a hotel room. When the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) questioned him later, Farah claimed he’d never had an infusion and that Salazar never told him to have one. After five hours of questioning, Farah left the interview, only to return shortly to change his story and acknowledge that he had received the infusion.
After years of Salazar’s rumors and denials, the USADA sanctioned him in 2019.
In September 2019, more than 14 years after a USADA hotline got its first tip that Salazar was a drug cheat, the USADA banned Salazar – and Brown – from sports for four years. World Athletics and the USADA told Salazar’s runners that he could no longer coach them.
No last-minute advice. No pep talks. No pre-race pills. Instantly, Salazar was radioactive.
In 2020, the US Center for SafeSport scrutinized Salazar for emotional abuse of his athletes. Mary Cain, recruited by Salazar as a high school phenom, reported that he insisted arbitrarily that she could weigh no more than 114 pounds. He’d weigh her in front of teammates and, if she exceeded the weight, he’d tell her to take birth control pills or diuretics. After suffering broken bones, Cain became suicidal and began cutting herself. Another female runner, who weighed 112 pounds, said Salazar mocked her after a bad race for having “the biggest butt on the start line.”Kara Goucher reported that while she and Salazar were flying to a meet in South Korea, he got drunk and attempted to kiss her. His runners confirmed that the coach had emotionally abused them. Driven to win at nearly any cost, the coach had run too far outside the lines.
Alberto Salazar once was the brightest star among US distance runners.
He lamented the fall of US runners from international prominence.
As a coach, Salazar used training methods that pushed the envelope of fairness.
Salazar embraced creative methods to get prescription drugs for his athletes.
Salazar took an obsessive interest in Galen Rupp, a runner he coached through high school and college.
The 2012 Olympics vindicated Salazar as an elite coach.
Runner Kara Goucher learned the limits of Salazar’s medical knowledge.
Salazar instructed athletes to take massive doses of Vitamin D.
After years of Salazar’s rumors and denials, the USADA sanctioned him in 2019.
Summary:
Alberto Salazar once was the brightest star among US distance runners.
Born in Cuba and raised in the United States, Alberto Salazar starred as a runner for the University of Oregon and burst onto the national scene. At one memorable race in 1978, he ran so hard in the heat that his body temperature spiked to 108 degrees. He won the Boston Marathon in 1982, when American runners dominated distance events.
At the 1981 New York City marathon, he set a world record of two hours, eight minutes and 13 seconds. Nike paid him a salary of $250,000, a huge sum in the early 1980s. Salazar embraced dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), which trainers used as an anti-inflammatory treatment for horses.
Nineteen-eighty-two proved the high-water mark for Salazar’s career.
Salazar won the New York City Marathon three years in a row, but fought chronic fatigue and illness. He failed to make the 1984 Olympic team. To revive his career, Salazar tried Prozac, an antidepressant, and prednisone, a corticosteroid allowed in certain instances. He took testosterone, which was a banned substance. In 1994, Salazar won a grueling 55-mile race in South Africa. He later admitted to using testosterone from 1995 to 2006.
He lamented the fall of US runners from international prominence.
Salazar and a Nike executive watched the broadcast of the 2001 Boston Marathon from Nike’s campus in Oregon. They grew discouraged that runners from Korea, Ecuador and Kenya took the top five spots. The glory days of US runners seemed fixed in the past. In the 1970s, American Bill Rodgers had won multiple Boston and New York marathons. Frank Shorter, also an American, won the 1972 Olympic marathon and placed second in 1976, losing to an East German runner later found to be a drug cheat. But from 1983 until 2001, Americans won just 4% of World Championships and Olympic golds in distance races.
Almost two decades of lackluster performances had made the US sports establishment desperate for a homegrown hero to challenge the dominance of Africa.
Salazar thought he could coach Americans back to prominence. Former marathoner Tom Clarke, a Nike executive, liked the idea. He made a list of what Salazar would need to do to restore the United States to glory in distance running. The conversation launched the Nike Oregon Project, intended to bring Nike’s competitive spirit and money to distance running under Salazar’s coaching.
Salazar had coached Mary Decker Slaney in her quest to win an Olympic medal. But, she was banned from competition for two years after a urine sample at the 1996 Olympic Trials showed impermissible levels of testosterone. She claimed birth control pills interfered with the results, but that didn’t persuade doping officials. Drug scandals often tainted Nike athletes. Sprinters Marion Jones and Justin Gatlin admitted cheating in the early 2000s, and cycling superstar Lance Armstrong also fell from grace.
As a coach, Salazar used training methods that pushed the envelope of fairness.
Promising runners moved to Oregon to live and train under Salazar’s close tutelage. Beaverton, Oregon, is at sea level, but many elite American runners had gone instead to Boulder, Colorado, to live and train at a higher altitude. Thin mountain air spurs the body to produce red blood cells. East African runners live and train at “7,000 to 8,000 feet above sea level” to gain a competitive advantage in sea-level competitions. Salazar spent $110,000 to turn an Oregon house into a high-altitude environment. Nike runners slept, ate and rode stationary bikes in the house, where Salazar set the altitude at 12,000 feet above sea level.
Whatever else might be said or written about Salazar, nobody has ever accused him of modesty; his confidence in himself is legendary.
Athletes discovered that the house’s air-thinning system had been set to 14,000 feet instead of 12,000. When he took the team to train in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Salazar and the athletes stayed in a hotel at an altitude of 8,000 feet. He brought an altitude tent, set it at 14,000 feet and instructed a star pupil to sleep inside it. Assistant coaches wondered about the scientific validity of Salazar’s methods, but he was the unquestioned boss.
Salazar embraced creative approaches to get prescription drugs for his athletes.
Salazar got his runners diagnosed as needing thyroid medication. His athletes visited Dr. Jeffrey Brown, a Houston endocrinologist. Brown saw Adam Goucher in 2004 and, although blood work showing that Goucher’s thyroid function was normal, the doctor diagnosed him with hypothyroidism and prescribed thyroid replacement therapy. Brown told Arianna Lambie that even though five tests in 2008 and 2009 showed she had normal thyroid levels, athletes needed thyroid medication. When Lambie felt side effects, another endocrinologist immediately ramped down her medication. Lambie soon left the Nike Oregon Project.
The high stress of running 130-mile weeks, sleeping at extreme altitudes and traveling to foreign places constantly pushed Salazar’s athletes into a physiological hole.
Salazar taught runner Lauren Fleshman how to persuade a doctor that she suffered from asthma. When pollen counts were high, Salazar took her to a track and told her to run to inflame her lungs. Salazar instructed Fleshman to run to the doctor’s building and sprint up the 12 flights of stairs to his office. Gasping for breath, Fleshman failed an asthma test – and the physician prescribed Advair, a corticosteroid, and Albuterol, an inhaler drug. The physician instructed Fleshman to take the medications only during pollen season; Salazar told her to take them year-round.
Salazar took an obsessive interest in Galen Rupp, a runner he coached through high school and college.
While Salazar primarily worked with post-collegians, he longed to develop younger athletes. In 2000, the mother of soccer star Galen Rupp, then 14, approached Salazar. The young athlete had run 200-meter sprints in less than 30 seconds. Salazar became Rupp’s coach, dictating nearly every detail of his training, racing and diet. As Rupp hit the 19-and-under circuit, he crushed longstanding records, but he was taking oral prednisone at the time.
Under Salazar’s watchful eye, Rupp didn’t partake in all of the team workouts as was normally required of a scholarship athlete.
As a college athlete, Rupp technically competed for the University of Oregon, but Salazar was his coach. Rupp didn’t participate in team workouts, and he slept in a high-altitude device. Rupp regularly received allergy shots, though no one was sure he suffered from any. In his final season at Oregon, he won national championships at 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
When Rupp turned pro, Salazar remained his coach. Salazar claimed Rupp suffered from asthma and, therefore, needed prednisone, which the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned in 2007. Salazar applied for a therapeutic-use exemption on Rupp’s behalf, but WADA denied the request. Salazar asked an assistant to deliver a vial of Rupp’s urine to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, presumably to determine if Rupp would pass a drug test. The assistant coach traveled to Germany to meet Rupp. Salazar shipped the assistant a Clive Cussler novel with a secret compartment containing pills.
The 2012 Olympics vindicated Salazar as an elite coach.
Athletes coached by Salazar – “Mo” Farah and Rupp – finished first and second in the 10,000 meters at the London Olympics. The coach called the one-two finish “the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life.” Nike displayed a giant finish-line photo at the Lance Armstrong fitness center on its campus.
The decade-plus effort to help top American distance runners not only compete with but defeat the Kenyans and Ethiopians had finally paid off.
However, Salazar’s athletes all seemed to suffer asthma and thyroid conditions that required prescription drugs. Other runners nicknamed him “Albuterol Salazar” because his athletes took that drug. Salazar ran through assistant coaches, bullied doctors and belittled athletes. Some former coaches and athletes criticized Salazar’s methods, either acting as whistleblowers or by speaking to the media.
Runner Kara Goucher learned the limits of Salazar’s medical knowledge.
When Kara Goucher suffered a calf injury in 2005, Salazar treated it by applying crushed aspirin and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) to the area, then covering her calf in plastic wrap. When she complained about a burning sensation, Salazar told her to not to remove the dressing. Afterward, her skin blistered, and it took weeks to heal. Her calf still bothered her, so Salazar instructed her to have surgery. He dismissed the notion that Goucher was training too hard and needed rest.
They knew Salazar was the Oregon Project, and he answered to no one, and crossing him would result in an end to their professional careers.
Salazar experimented with a topical testosterone called AndroGel, using his adult sons as guinea pigs. Salazar rubbed the gel on his son Alex’s back, and sent before-and-after urine samples to a lab for testing. Dr. Brown, advising Salazar, was concerned; Alex’s wife was pregnant, and the topical testosterone could transfer to her and harm Salazar’s unborn grandson. Salazar increased the dose. He learned his son’s urine showed allowable levels of testosterone. Brown admitted he prescribed AndroGel to Salazar even though the coach said he would test the drug on other people.
Salazar instructed athletes to take massive doses of Vitamin D.
Salazar theorized that Vitamin D would increase testosterone. Despite the health risks of high doses, he pushed his runners to take large quantities. Salazar had Farah take 200,000 IU a week, though the recommended allowance is 4,200 IU per week. Salazar gave megadoses of Vitamin D to his children. Another runner felt ill after obeying Salazar and taking an infusion of L-carnitine, an endurance-enhancing substance. Runners knew better than to argue with Salazar; he brooked no dissent.
All the [Nike Oregon Project] athletes, it seemed, were on prescription medication with dubious justifications.
L-carnitine became a favored treatment. Two days before the London Marathon in 2014, Farah had an L-carnitine infusion in a hotel room. When the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) questioned him later, Farah claimed he’d never had an infusion and that Salazar never told him to have one. After five hours of questioning, Farah left the interview, only to return shortly to change his story and acknowledge that he had received the infusion.
After years of Salazar’s rumors and denials, the USADA sanctioned him in 2019.
In September 2019, more than 14 years after a USADA hotline got its first tip that Salazar was a drug cheat, the USADA banned Salazar – and Brown – from sports for four years. World Athletics and the USADA told Salazar’s runners that he could no longer coach them.
No last-minute advice. No pep talks. No pre-race pills. Instantly, Salazar was radioactive.
In 2020, the US Center for SafeSport scrutinized Salazar for emotional abuse of his athletes. Mary Cain, recruited by Salazar as a high school phenom, reported that he insisted arbitrarily that she could weigh no more than 114 pounds. He’d weigh her in front of teammates and, if she exceeded the weight, he’d tell her to take birth control pills or diuretics. After suffering broken bones, Cain became suicidal and began cutting herself. Another female runner, who weighed 112 pounds, said Salazar mocked her after a bad race for having “the biggest butt on the start line.”Kara Goucher reported that while she and Salazar were flying to a meet in South Korea, he got drunk and attempted to kiss her. His runners confirmed that the coach had emotionally abused them. Driven to win at nearly any cost, the coach had run too far outside the lines.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 8, 2020
You should hate the corporation and love mediocrity. Because some people agreed to some scheme your taxes should increase so more "experts" will be hired by the government to combat more First World Problems. Why bother with some brown people dying in some distant war?
August 20, 2022
BONKERS
October 4, 2021
This was certainly an eye-opener. There are many players in this book, but it centers on Kara Goucher and her husband, Adam who were the whistleblower on Nike and their coach, Alberto Salazar. Over many years in the Nike Oregon Project many of the runners were abused both verbally and physically with a variety of illegal drugs. Salazar always claiming his innocence and Nike backing him up was a sad realization.
February 10, 2025
A good read, but Kara’s “The Longest Race” was much, much better.
October 24, 2021
Corporate is not your family and friends
September 30, 2020
Provides an extremely insular one-sided view that feels like someone compiling a list of things they read online with no attempt to address anything balanced. The book is written from the standpoint of a person who didn’t interview or reach out to any contemporary people involved except the most controversial in an attempt to sensationalize it as much as possible. Full of more inferences attempting to paint a predetermined narrative than actual unique facts. If you are searching for reasons to hate nike, this is the teen-romance-novel version of fulfilling that interest.
October 15, 2020
Excellent
I could not put this book down. And excellent first book for this author. It is exceptionally well researched and written like a journalist should, without bias.
I could not put this book down. And excellent first book for this author. It is exceptionally well researched and written like a journalist should, without bias.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 142 reviews