Matt Hart (4)

**.5

The author clearly has it out for Nike, and especially for Alberto Salazar. Way beyond the actual evidence for any wrongdoing. Multiple times he describes standard elite training methods such as running twice a day, training for multiple hours a day, undergoing VO2_max testing, fast tempo runs, etc. as "gruesome" or "tortuous" as if these ideas were unique to Salazar's twisted "Cuban" mind. For instance, he makes a point several times to remark with horror on how Salazar forced his show more athletes to run up to 130 miles per week, while praising the Hansons who pushed for even higher mileage. In a different section he feigns shock that an IV was delivered "directly into the vein," as if there is anywhere else it would go. Was there doping going on? Probably, as subsequent scandals have revealed widescale uses at the pro level. But in the instance described, it was just glucose and saline for hydration. Technically against the rules, but not the heinous crime it's purported to be in the book.

While there is certainly plenty to criticize, he too often takes the word of disgruntled former employees who were fired by Nike, with no evidence beyond their griping that they were mistreated. There's also a lot of hearsay, and a lot of attributing nefarious motives to actions that he interprets as being bad, ignoring any alternate interpretations that would potentially paint Salazar in a less damning light. And then on the other hand, there's virtually no mention of the far more serious allegations of sexual misconduct by Salazar. I didn't research the chronology so perhaps they weren't known when the book was published, but it seems like a conspicuous omission.

By making it personal, Hart provides a contradictory narrative. On the one hand, he delights in portraying Salazar as a bumbling semi-crazed hot-blooded "Cuban" (he uses this identity as a slur on multiple occasions, even though Salazar was brought up and lived in the US his entire life) who mercurially changed his mind on a whim and made up training plans as he went along. Which he blames for the poor performances by Nike's star athletes at major competitions. And then he turns around and documents the stunning success of Salazar's athletes, shattering records and sweeping up medals by the armload, as evidence that he masterminded an insidious doping scheme on the par with East Germany, one so sophisticated that it managed to transform mediocre athletes into superstars, all without failing a single drug test for decades. Either of these scenarios is plausible, but they can't both be true at the same time.

The book would have been a lot more effective had it zoomed out a bit and provided some broader context. There is mention at one point that the business practices of other major brands were just as odious as Nike. So maybe it just seemed worse because Nike is the largest, and it's really an industry wide problem and not a single bad company. But we don't know, because this is more of a vendetta than an investigation. None of this is to excuse any of the documented wrongdoings, but it would have been a much better read had it taken a more objective approach, and attempted to answer the question of whether Salazar was a well-meaning but highly competitive athlete and coach striving to push the envelope to eke out every last bit of performance from himself and athletes, who got carried away and crossed the line into unacceptable practices, vs. the a priori assumption that he was a serial cheater who methodically and meticulously covered up his crimes for decades, with the complicit backing of Nike's power, money, and prestige. show less

Having already read "The Longest Race" by Kara Goucher, this book felt like a lot of duplication (at least as far as the doping part goes). Sometimes the thread was hard to follow, but the book was a fast read.

I do wish the author had waited a little longer to write the book as the Salazar story was not concluded at the time of publication. He has now received a lifetime ban from coaching (thank goodness). I also would have appreciated specific follow-up about actions taken against the NOP show more athletes. It appears from a brief search online that none of them were ever found guilty of doping, but that would have been good to explicitly state in the book. show less