Nike's Win-At-All-Costs Culture : Matt Hart - 2020-12-15

Is Nike too big to fail?


Matt Hart is a freelance journalist whose new book Win at all
Costs investigates Nike’s Oregon Project, diving into its culture
of cheating, lying, and misogyny. The book is a page-turning
sports thriller reminiscent of a Shakespearean drama with one of
the top coaches in the world felled by hubris.


Coach Claire talks to Matt about the rise and fall of former
coach Alberto Salazar, if he is indeed a villain through and
through, the win-at-all-costs mindset of sports today, how young
athletes are affected, the women at Nike, if Nike has some
redeeming qualities as an organization, and if most people even
care about any of this. It’s a fascinating discussion that is
sure to appeal to true crime fans!


Matt Hart’s writing covers sports science, human-powered
adventure and exploration, performance-enhancing drugs,
nutrition, and evolution. His work has appeared in The Atlantic,
The New York Times, National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and
Men’s Journal magazine, among others. His reporting on the
investigations into Salazar appeared on the front page, above the
fold, of The New York Times in May 2017. In addition to his
access to the Gouchers, other sources for the book include former
Nike employees, athletes, and coaches; famed sports-scientist and
Oregon Project whistleblower Steve Magness; and Olympic marathon
gold medalist Frank Shorter, among many others.


About Matt’s Book WIN AT ALL COSTS:


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). It was part of an investigation into legendary running
coach Alberto Salazar, a Houston-based endocrinologist named Dr.
Jeffrey Brown, and the cheating by Nike-sponsored runners. The
file began Hart’s reporting on the Nike Oregon Project and led
him to uncover a win-at-all-costs culture of greed, corporate
malfeasance, and abuse. 


WIN AT ALL COSTS is an explosive and revealing narrative
depicting the deception and performance-enhancing drug use at the
Nike Oregon Project. Hart writes richly detailed portraits of
athletes Kara and Adam Goucher, Galen Rupp, and Mo Farah, as well
as the coaches and doctors at the root of the cheating. The book
recounts how the  secretive program began to unravel when
Steve Magness, an assistant coach to Salazar broke the code of
silence by alerting USADA. He was followed by Olympians Adam and
Kara Goucher who, risking their prosperous careers, became
whistleblowers on their former Nike running family at
headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. 


Combining sports drama and corporate exposé, WIN AT ALL COSTS
uncovers a relentless culture of deceit and drug misuse at Nike;
as well as abuse of power, gender discrimination, medical
malpractice, and systemic cheating at the highest levels of
professional athletics. The book is also a cautionary tale about
the excess of greed, corporate malfeasance, and the pushing of
athletic boundaries. Deeply researched, unsettling, and
ultimately entertaining, WIN AT ALL COSTS will astonish readers
by the extremes that coaches and athletes will go to achieve
athletic greatness—no matter the cost.


 
 

Questions Matt is asked:


 


3:20 On your website, you say that humans learn through
storytelling.  What made you want to tell the story of Nike
and its infamous coach, Alberto Salazar?
 

4:28 Your new book, Win At All Costs, is a fascinating deep dive
into the world of Nike, from its scrappy, rebel beginnings to the
behemoth brand that it is today.  Essentially, it's a "David
becomes Goliath" story.  How would you describe the changes
that the company went through from its humble beginnings to
today?
 

6:33 Let's talk about Alberto Salazar.  When he started out
as an athlete he became one of the greatest American marathoners,
and then became an absolute legend as a coach. I was struck
reading your book how Skakespearean he really is. He’s like this
man in power brought down by his hubris.  How would you
describe him as an athlete, coach, and father?
 

10:18 It’s easy to paint Alberto Salazar as the evil cult leader
who got everybody under his spell, but how do you see that?
Obviously there were people complicit in it and athletes at the
top of the sport, some of them are willing to do anything to get
ahead too. So how do you see it? Do you see Alberto as just the
evil cult leader or is it more complicated than that?
 

13:25 Galen Rupp was what, 15 or 16 when he began to be coached
by Alberto? That’s a child, and you’re not really able to make
decisions, especially when somebody who has a reputation like
Alberto comes into your life and says, “Hey, I see something
special in you. Let me take you under my wing.” I have a lot of
sympathy for Galen Rupp. I know not everybody in the running
community does, but I do. But he’s an adult now, so we’ll see
what happens with his career. 
 

15:12 It’s like you want to hate Nike for all of the things that
they’ve done, but yet they also have the Bowerman Track Club
which is like women supporting women. Shalane Flanagan is now one
of the coaches there. If you look at them on Instagram, it’s just
like picture perfect empowerment and everything that it’s
supposed to be. It’s just like how can you have two things like
that in the same town and in the same company?
 

17:56 It’s easy to kind of say, okay, Alberto was the bad apple,
but we’ve got Jerry Schumacher and he’s the best, and he’s
wonderful, and still that Nike is just that one guy. But a lot of
the stuff you talk about goes higher up than just Alberto
Salazar. It goes to everybody above him, and I thought that it
was really eye opening when you talked about salaries. In the
world of running, it’s very secretive how much pro runners make,
and you were able to find out that Kara Goucher got paid $35,000
while her husband Adam got paid $90,000 when they joined. Can you
talk about that and about why they were willing to tell you that?
 

20:11 Compared to just about any other professional sport,
coaches’ salaries all seemed incredibly low. And maybe it’s
because obviously running doesn’t bring in the money that the NFL
does. We don’t sit around watching running, at least not too many
people do, which still I think is very bizarre that there’s
millions and millions of runners in the United States and yet
track and field and running is not that interesting to people.
Why do you think that is? Why doesn’t running have the fan base
that baseball or the NFL or something like that does?
 

22:24 I coach a lot of athletes and many of them just simply
aren’t interested in what the elites do. And this leads me to my
question for you. This whole scandal with the Nike Oregon
Project, has it affected Nike at all as far as sales? People are
still buying their shoes, right?
 

24:28 Nike is still paying for the defense of Alberto Salazar.
Any insight on why?
 

26:13 Did you interview Mary Cain for the book?
 

26:57 Alberto was a son figure and a father figure and so many of
the athletes say that, “He’s like a father. I love… “ Even Kara
Goucher was like, “He’s a father figure to me. He’s the best,”
and all of that, and now it’s a very different story.
 

28:26 You talk in the book about how Alberto Salazar who has $1
million budget or something, he has access to the latest
technology, and massage therapists, and all of that, he would
personally massage Galen Rupp, and there’s a couple things that
you might be suspicious are going on there when that happens, but
it seems like that was the testosterone. Is that what you found?
It just seems weird to me.
 

31:29 There were stories of athletes being prescribed things for
ailments that they didn’t have. Everybody on the team had a
thyroid problem all of a sudden. And then there were the
L-Carnitine infusions, and obviously infusing yourself with
anything is against clean sport. But when they were caught, they
just said, “Oh, it didn’t do anything for me.” Do you want to
talk a little bit about the whole infusion story?
 

34:26 Is there a USADA test for L-Carnitine, because it’s an
amino acid?
 

35:06 I’m surprised L-Carnitine hasn’t become more of the thing
because to be perfectly honest, when this whole story broke, I
was training for a marathon and I went to GNC and got myself some
L-Carnitine. People see this and hear this, recreational runners
or sub-elites, and they’re like, “Huh, that’s interesting.” And
yet, they go ahead and follow that gray line. It’s almost like
exposing the truth encourages more people to cheat, do you think?
 

37:44 I’d love to talk a little bit about the women at Nike. We
learned all about Kara Goucher and her reduction clause. So when
she decided to have a baby, she basically was not paid. So she
was not paid for a very long period of time while she still was
technically working for Nike. Again, this goes back to the
contracts being super, super secretive. Do you think at least
that has changed in the world of running for women as far as how
they’re treated when they decide to have a family?
 

40:09 What do you feel is the future of sports and running and
Nike?
 

42:52 Hopefully with the good example of the Bowerman Track Club,
Nike might be able to change for the better from the inside, and
then with work like yours, hopefully will change for the better
from the outside.
 

44:13 Matt, what’s next for you with your running and your
writing?




Questions I ask everyone:


 


45:01 If you could go back and talk to yourself when you started
running, what advice would you give?


 


46:15 What is the greatest gift running has given you?


 


46:51 Where can listeners connect with you?
  Quotes by Matt:
 

“As an athlete, I learned this through the reporting, that
Alberto Salazar would try basically anything to try to improve
performance. Now that’s not all drugs and illicit means. That’s
kind of anything from massage to dry needling to whatever else
might be in the popular culture of athletes at the time.”
 

“Athletes at the end of the day are 100% responsible for what
they put into their body. Any athlete that’s working with Alberto
Salazar, it does want to aggressively pursue hard training and
they’ll do kind of whatever they’re asked or whatever they think
can help them stand on top of the podium, and that’s the win at
all costs sort of zero sum game that sports have become.”
 

“Of the $36 billion Nikes makes a year, some $4.6 billion of it
is the run category, and so that’s I think their largest
category, to sell to runners. Now it’s a different question of
whether we want to watch those runners run.”
 

“You have to imagine years of training at a level you simply
couldn’t maintain without drugs changes you physiologically.
You’re steps ahead or you’re stronger or you’re faster. And so,
that’s a whole other discussion, the long-term benefits of drugs
and is someone still a cheat if they’ve gotten off them.”





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Mentioned in this podcast:

Matt Hart's website with links to book: Win at All Costs: Inside
Nike Running and Its Culture of Deception


Bowerman Track Club


Runners Connect Winner's Circle Facebook Community


RunnersConnect Facebook page


claire@runnersconnect.net


https://www.precisionhydration.com/



Follow Matt on:
 

Instagram


Twitter




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