All language subtitles for Nikes Big Bet 2021 (Nikes Big Bet 2021) (ENGLISH)

The craziest thing about this whole
story is how it plays out in Doha.

You've got the most powerful coach in the
world, Alberto Salazar, backed by the most

powerful company in the world
that basically runs the sport, Nike,

and he's at the absolute
pinnacle of his career.

His athletes are
tearing up the track.

What a time!

It's a new US record!

Constance Klosterhaufen
crosses the line in third.

We're watching something
very, very special here.

It's a championship record.

We have seen
history in Doha tonight.

And bam, all of a sudden he's
kicked out of the world championships.

His accreditation is torn away.

Breaking news tonight involving one
of the biggest names in track and field.

Alberto Salazar, pretty much the most
prominent athletics coach in the world.

He has been sent home
from the world championships.

The United States anti-doping
investigation has concluded.

Salazar has been orchestrating
and facilitating doping.

But none of his athletes are
found to have broken any rules.

Hell yeah, I thought
I was suspicious.

We're in Doha, right?

And I'm like, what?

Now?

It certainly sent a message and certainly
captured everybody's attention who thinks

about track and field
distance running and doping.

You also have to remember you're
dealing with a huge company like Nike.

It baffles my mind why Nike
is sticking by Alberto this hard.

You never saw anything.

I never saw anything.

How can you have the biggest cheater in
the sport but none of his athletes cheated?

The whole point of
someone who pushes himself

to the extreme is
that he's not a cheater.

Cheating is a strategy
for not giving your all.

He's not a shortcut guy.

One way to think about the U.S.

anti-doping investigation
into Salazar is, did he do it?

And second, why is Nike willing
to place such a big bet on him?

That's the question we
have to try and figure out.

My name is Amby Burfoot.

I won the 1968 Boston Marathon.

And I was editor of Runner's
World magazine for about 20 years.

When I started running in the mid-60s
actually, runners were, you know,

were not active parts
of the sports community.

We were looked down upon.

We were skinny little freaks in
our underwear running around town.

People tossed beer
bottles out the window at us.

And if anything, they
yelled, hey joggers, go home.

Of course, we did not
love the word joggers.

There was none of the notoriety or the
purposefulness or the understanding that

running was both a competitive
sport and an incredibly healthy lifestyle.

In 1972, Frank Shorter
won the Olympic Marathon.

And for those of
us who were paying

attention, it was a
glorious, glorious moment.

And then a little kid
named Bill Rogers started

winning lots of races
in the United States.

And he was this fun-loving, kind
of strange, loopy, but friendly and

accessible guy who made
the sport more popular.

Americans did very well.

Bill and Frank and Joan Benoit and
Patti Catalano and the list goes on.

The 70s were a time
for American culture.

They started to
understand running.

And it was the beginning
of the company of Nike.

You know, Nike is a company that
truly does have its roots in running.

They started with the
famous Bill Bowerman

waffle iron making a
sole to a running shoe.

And they've gone on from there.

Steve Prefontaine, Phil Knight,
Jeff Johnson, Jeff Hollister.

People all have
running in their DNA.

My name is Bob Williams.

I ran track at the University
of Oregon for four years.

I was around when
Bill and Phil Knight

brought these shoes and
opened these shoes up.

They said, we want
you to run in them.

So we started running.

Of course, we loved them.

They were light, flexible.

They loved it.

Bill and Phil created
that innovation.

They created the Nike
brand, so to speak, by

collaboration and working
together in shoe development.

I first got involved with Nike in 1973
when I first came to Eugene, Oregon.

Nike, at the beginning, was
a very innovative company.

Back in the early 70s, it was about
running and serving the athlete's needs.

The good of the athlete
was what the aim was.

And that meant making
the best product we could.

Nike is called Nike after
the Greek goddess of victory.

Track and field is very
much the DNA of Nike.

They took that brand, that idea,
that thought, and they put it together

with the athletes who
were performing really well.

They were able to actually show the country
and the world that Nike is very special.

Prefontaine all the way.

And Prefontaine
wins brilliantly.

359.2.

Prefontaine sets a
new world last time.

This is Pre's Rock.

The location where Steve Prefontaine
unfortunately met a very early and

untimely death when his sports
car flipped after hitting this rock.

This shrine is very much part of the
DNA of Eugene and the DNA of Nike.

And today, still, Nike brings down its top
new employees and they come here to the

shrine of Pre's Rock to commemorate
his life and his achievements.

Ferran leads for Finland.

Prefontaine is next.

Prefontaine now stating
his case as he goes in front.

Driving for home.

If I think back to 1972
and the Olympic Games in

Munich, Steve Prefontaine
was a very, very young runner.

And with one lap to go, he took the lead
to go for the gold medal and committed

himself with three other
runners chasing him.

A long straight they're facing for
the last time and this is the final lap.

As he came around the top bend,
he was overtaken by two and then

eventually, just before the
finish line, overtaking by a third.

The pin wins for 30 seconds.

Prefontaine dies
in the final slide.

So he finished fourth, which
could be considered failure.

But actually, it really
epitomizes what Pre was about

and what Nike was about
then, which is just going for it.

Just do it.

If they had a patron saint, it was
Steve Prefontaine who finished fourth.

But he finished fourth
because he was trying to win.

And that's sort of what Phil
Knight, I think, sees as Nike's ethos.

My name is Alex Hutchinson.

I'm a science journalist
who focuses on running.

So I'm a columnist with Outside
Magazine and The Globe and Mail.

The original embodiment of
Nike was Steve Prefontaine.

This idea of making every
race a fight to the death.

Prefontaine died in 1975.

And so for a while, there was a
kind of hole in Nike's pantheon.

Alberto Salazar was
perfectly positioned to fill that.

In the 11th New York City Marathon,
there are over 16,000 entries.

They come from 50
states and 43 countries.

Alberto Salazar, Eugene,
running his first marathon.

Before the race, he claimed that
the marathon is overestimated.

In the late 70s, as a high schooler
and then in college at the University of

Oregon, this fierce kid from outside of
Boston named Alberto Salazar suddenly

burst onto the scene
with this bold, brash ego.

Before the race, Alberto
made two predictions.

That he would beat Bill
Rogers at his own game.

That he would run under 210.

At 25 miles, Alberto is on his way to
the fastest first-time marathon in history.

Right after college, he
strode into the New York City

Marathon and said, I'm
going to win it first time.

And then he sets a world record
at New York a year or two later.

And he seemed
almost unconquerable.

He ran to win.

He ran to destroy people.

That's how Nike branded
itself and saw itself.

He's the greatest
runner in the world.

And so he steps into that role.

He becomes Nike's poster boy.

Quite literally, he stars in one of
their very first broadcast commercials.

He is the guy who takes over
the mantle of Steve Prefontaine.

Oh, he was like the superstar.

Everybody remembered
his great races.

It has come down to this.

This is Salazar.

The motorcycle's got
to get out of the way.

Salazar kicking good.

Pushing off the final challenge.

He wins.

Alvaro Salazar has won.

The duel in the sun.

Three New York City wins.

And running himself so hard.

Last rights were
administered at Falmouth.

So we knew he was tough
and we knew he was fast.

When Phil Knight was a
younger guy and Nike was

just getting started,
Alberto was like the guy.

I mean, as a kid, I would see Alberto
Salazar win the New York City Marathon and

hear these stories of him, you know,
dying after the Falmouth Road Race.

It's crazy.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell.

I am a writer,
podcaster and runner.

I have written about
running and Alberto Salazar.

Alberto Salazar was the guy
who showed American distance

runners it was possible for
them to run with the big boys.

I don't think he had the natural
talent of many of his peers.

I don't think if you, on paper,
compared him to Frank Shorter or Bill

Rogers or any of the marathoning
greats of the 70s, he's in their league.

But as a performer, if he
could get 98% of his ability

and they could only get 95
or 90, that makes him better.

As an athlete, he got more out of his
ability than anyone of his generation.

Most of us, it's almost
impossible to give your all.

You never really want to give
100% because then you're destroyed.

But he's someone who
actually gives 100%.

And that's what is different
between him and the rest of us.

There's been one instance
in my running career when

I was very young when I
gave what I think was 100%.

And I found the
experience so devastating.

That I could never
go back to that place.

If you've never raced, you have
no idea how painful it can be.

You discover this thing.

And then that memory stays
with you pretty much forever.

He went to the edge and
realized he could go to the edge.

And that was going to be his
great advantage as a runner.

After the very strong American running
in the late 70s and the early 1980s,

we hit a rough patch.

I don't think I know.

I don't think anyone
knows exactly why.

But we stopped winning races.

And so you had other countries doing very
well in the marathon for about a decade.

My name is Mike Joyner.

And I'm a physiologist
and anesthesiologist

at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota.

One of the things we do in
my lab is to study human limits.

And understand the edges of human
potential and what humans can tolerate.

The question is, why did the United States
have kind of a wasteland period of time in

terms of distance running, which you could
say roughly happened from the middle 80s

to maybe the early 2000s.

And frankly, I just don't think
people were training as hard.

There comes Hussain with a kick.

And it's Abraham Hussain who has
won New York and is about to win Boston.

In the 80s and in the early 90s, the
Africans really come in force and in mass.

In the early 90s, the Kenyans
start showing at the Boston.

And winning there.

And of course, after one Kenyan
and one marathon, you get two and two.

And then four and four
and then 16 and then 32.

I've commentated on
Boston marathons in the past

where there's 20 Kenyans
running down the road.

And it's like, this is the
African championships.

You know, it's like the
Kenyan championships.

Well, you know, the USA is
the third power, the third force

in the world distance running
after Kenya and Ethiopia.

I retired in about 1990.

And I'm very lucky
because I was sort of...

a top distance runner just before the
African revolution happened, before they

started swarming all over the running
scene, the world of track and field.

So I came fourth in the
Olympics in 1311 for 5000.

And when I did it, I was the 10th
fastest man in history running 1311.

Now I think I'm
outside the top 300.

People like Alberto Salazar were
of course trying to solve this riddle.

Alberto was frustrated with it.

He said, There's no reason why
the Americans can't be number one.

In the early 80s, late
70s, Alberto was the guy.

He was the number
one runner in the world.

What happened to American distance running
in the sense that we were off the map?

The early 2000s, Nike talked about creating
this club that would take over all clubs.

It would create the
best runners in the world.

It was a big thing to him.

It's like, I think that I can
create a system with my

coaching and all of the
support that Nike can provide.

To get Americans
back on top of the scene.

And create the best runners, the fastest
runners in the world right here in Oregon.

Nike ended up
deciding to fund a team.

And who is the best person to fund
the team from Nike's perspective?

The one guy they know who's
been the best marathoner in the world.

And who is a Nike
guy right to his bones.

Alberto Salazar.

Nike has the resources to
do whatever Alberto wants.

If they choose to back him.

And they do.

And so he takes off in the early
2000s with this Nike Oregon project.

They realized that
they could put together

with innovation, with
science, a great program.

And they did.

The Nike Oregon project began to get better
and better as people came to Alberto.

Or he found them and said,
let's put you under contract.

Let's see how great
we can make you.

The purpose of this team is to
develop American marathoners.

To develop some Americans that can go
back and run like we did 22, 23 years ago.

Knowing everything that we know now
scientifically and sports medicine wise.

I think we can get guys running as
fast at least as we did 20 years ago.

There's no reason we can't.

I think the Nike Oregon project
under Alberto was fabulous.

If you look at results, it's one
of, if not the most successful.

Distance group in the history of
United States distance running.

Galen Rupp, the first American to
win the Chicago Marathon since 2002.

Centrovitz can sense glory.

Centrovitz is the
Olympic champion.

That's a new
American course record.

Jordan Hussey.

That is an astonishing run.

Galen Rupp has won
two Olympic medals.

Matthew Centrovitz has
won the Olympic gold medal.

Mo Farah, he's not American,
but he's won four Olympic titles.

Mo Farah has the lead.

Farah's too much.

He's starting to pull away now.

Mo Farah has the double.

Mo is very talented,
obviously, and at the pinnacle.

And Alberto took
him to the next step.

Would Mo Farah have been
four-time gold medalist without Alberto?

I doubt it.

I doubt it.

Canibia 1-2 for
the Salazar group.

It's Mo Farah takes
gold for Great Britain.

Galen Rupp takes second.

I mean, Galen Rupp's amazing.

He found this kid in high
school and took him to the top.

Matthew Centrovitz, I mean,
they've done an amazing job.

The Nike Oregon project also had
Cara Goucher, world bronze medalist.

Dathan Ritzenheim,
American 5,000-meter record

holder and world
half-marathon medalist.

Shannon Rauberry, three-time
Olympian and world 1,500-meter medalist.

Mary Kane, the world
junior record holder.

And let's not forget about
the athletes who flocked

to the Oregon project
after these successes.

Cam Levins, Canadian
marathon record holder.

Donovan Brazier, world
800-meter champion.

Constance Clasterhouthen, 5K medalist
at the world championships from Germany.

And maybe the greatest female performer
of all time, Sifan Hasan from Holland.

Never have we seen a man or woman
win the 10,000 meters and the 1,500.

It's one of the fastest
times we've ever seen.

That was the most amazing
double in the history of world athletics.

I mean, she wins the 10,000 and then comes
back and crushes everybody in the 1,500.

Never been attempted before.

He succeeded at what
he went out to do, right?

He's at the
pinnacle of the sport.

Salazar is the guy who stood up and
said, I'm not going to concede defeat.

I think we can compete.

And that is an idea that's transformed the
face of track and field in this country.

Breaking news tonight
involving the world.

One of the biggest
names in track and field.

Alberto Salazar, renowned
track coach of the Nike Oregon

Project, has been banned
from the sport for four years.

Following a four-year investigation
and two years in court, the U.S.

Anti-Doping Agency announced
Salazar and endocrinologist

Dr. Jeffrey Brown would
both face a four-year ban.

According to the report, both men
kept Nike CEO Mark Parker in the loop on

experiments with
performance-enhancing drugs.

One involved the use of
a topical male hormone.

I'm Weldon Johnson.

I'm one of the founders
of LetsRun.com.

LetsRun.com is the home of
running on the internet in the

United States for the passionate,
hardcore, competitive runner.

People who follow
running as a sport.

When you heard in the middle of the 2019
World Championships that Alberto Salazar

was banned in the middle of the
championships, did you find that

suspicious that that report
dropped right at that time?

Yeah, hell yeah, I
thought it was suspicious.

And at the time...
I mean, it was...

We're in Doha, right?

And I'm like, what?

And it was...

Alberto Salazar has been
banned for the sport for four years.

And I'm like, now?

Like, are you kidding me?

Of course they go after
him because of who he is.

They want to catch big fish.

But also because of who he is,
you're going to get more speculation.

He's been coaching forever.

Nike keeps backing him.

When I heard the announcement,
I was totally shocked.

Why would USADA do that?

Why would they choose that
timing when the athletes he's

coaching are getting ready on
the biggest stage in the world?

It came out of nowhere.

Because there had been rumors about
Alberto Salazar for a number of years,

but they'd kind of died
down and been put to rest.

The investigation by the U.S.

Anti-Doping Agency, it
was like five, six years old.

If they'd banned Alberto Salazar in
2015, it would have been huge news.

But to let it sleep and
then hit him right in the

middle of the World
Championships took it up a notch.

They came away with some
actually pretty technical violations.

Two of them involved non-athletes,
and Alberto conceded in both cases.

The L-carnitine experiment with Steve
Magnus, who was a coach, and the

testosterone experiment with his
sons, who were not track athletes.

They were able to
show that, and Salazar

admitted, he had performed
a test on his own son.

Rubbing testosterone
cream on his shoulder to

see whether that would
lead to a positive test.

The explanation was, he was
worried that someone might

sabotage his athletes by
rubbing cream on their shoulder.

So he wanted to know how much
cream would cause a positive test.

That's one way
of seeing the story.

The other way is to say, he
wanted to know how much cream he

could rub on his athletes
before they had a positive test.

The funny thing about the
Alberto Salazar case is that it's

not really a question of
trying to figure out, did he do it?

We all know what he did.

The report is pretty clear.

This is the first time in my career, but
none of his athletes have been banned.

He apparently did
something wrong without

actually crossing the
line for his athletes.

Galen Rupp was the most tested
person that was an American citizen.

I mean, they were
tested all the time.

Well, I mean, no, again,
I'm focused on the race.

You know, I think it's
a... I will reiterate that, you

know, no Oregon product
athlete has ever tested positive.

They've never been, you know, found to
use a banned substance, a banned method.

Are there tons of
questions to be asked?

Yes.

But Alberta would say, it's like, look, no
competing athletes actually took anything.

And that's sort
of the crazy thing.

Through all of this, we
still can't prove anything.

There's not one time throughout
that, my time with the Oregon Project,

was I ever offered anything or saw
anything that seemed shady, illegal,

or anything that you might be reading
about right now, or else I would have left.

What do people think?

Do they think I
don't get tested?

No.

I believe in clean sport.

I'm always clean.

I will be clean.

Since I saw Alberto,
he worked really hard.

That is what I know.

How can you have the biggest cheater in the
sport, but none of his athletes cheated?

You need to
understand two things.

What makes Alberto tick?

And you also have to understand why
Nike was willing to trust him so much.

However you can train
to train better, that's great.

I mean, the only other
obvious problem is when people

take performance-enhancing
drugs and substances.

And that's just something that we
would never even come close to doing.

That just is not an option.

I would say that Alberto Salazar
was the greatest coach in the world.

Being coached by Alberto Salazar,
to me, was a childhood dream.

He was the first guy
I ever saw run on TV.

I remember my dad calling me into the
living room and saying, Hey, there's a guy

from Oregon and he's
going to win this race.

And it was Boston Marathon.

Alberto was more of a teacher.

It was almost as having 50%
running coach, 50% mentor life coach.

I made my first world
championship team and medal.

It was like a dream come true.

I started getting on the
covers of magazines.

Alberto had
everything to do with it.

I mean, he's the one that
made me think that big.

I would be a liar to pretend like he
wasn't a huge part of my success.

He was absolutely
a father figure.

I mean, we told each
other we loved each other.

He called my mom and would tell
my mom how much he loved me.

We spent so much time together.

I could talk to him
about not just my hopes

and dreams and
running, but about my life.

About things from my past.

About things I
hoped for the future.

It seems crazy now because I
don't know him at all anymore.

But at the time, there's nothing
that I couldn't talk to him about.

Everybody knows
that Al drove himself to

perfection, to what he
thought was greatness.

And his comment to me in the
past was, why would I coach at 90%?

To be great, you have to coach at
100% and demand 100% from the athletes.

I think he's a hard
person to love.

I think he's an easy
person to respect.

But he's uncompromising
and he's an extremist.

You could call him
a flawed genius.

And that is often the
case with geniuses or

eccentrics or people who
explore and push barriers.

You know, they will achieve
great things, but they will

also make mistakes and
step over the line occasionally.

My name is Rick Lovett.

I coach a local running club.

And I wrote two books with
Alberto, which is how I know him.

He would be like one of these
runners who has to get within

a millimeter of the line and
worries about that millimeter.

And the problem with that is that when
it comes to some of these rules, the lines

are not quite as well defined
as the paint stripe on the track.

In 1999, Salazar was
making a speech at Duke

related to the limits
of human performance.

And he said he felt that he did not think
it was possible for somebody to compete at

the highest level
without using some sort of

performance-enhancing
drugs or technology.

The question is, should
Alberto Salazar have been

criticized for making
this sort of statement?

Alberto said you can't be the best in
the world without bending the rules.

When Alberto made
that comment, I believe it

was in the mid-90s,
and it was a big deal.

I was running at
Oregon at the time.

A lot of people were
talking about that comment.

And truthfully, what we all
said was, he's absolutely right.

Certainly there was a widespread belief
in the 1990s that doping was ubiquitous.

There are many, many
track and field records

from that time that have
not been surpassed.

EPO stands for erythropoietin.

Erythropoietin is a hormone
released by the kidney which

stimulates your bone marrow
to make more red blood cells.

Red blood cells
transport oxygen.

To have more red blood
cells, you can transport

more oxygen to improve
human performance.

EPO becomes approved
for clinical use to treat anemia.

It was immediately
repurposed for athletic use.

It was the Wild West
because there was no test for it.

If you read narratives about Lance
Armstrong and the sorts of things they

were doing to beat drug testing,
it was in fact cloak and dagger.

A lot of people use
that famous statement, if

Salazar has proof that he
cheated with his athletes.

But that's not accurate at all.

What he said in the 90s is
simply a factual statement.

The boost given by things
like EPO is so enormous.

There's no way you can
beat them if you're not doping.

Then I think what he did is he said,
okay, is there a way for me to get

American runners to
catch up within the rules?

And I think that was
what his project was.

130.

131, Mo.

As a pure coach, Alberto is probably
one of the best there ever was.

He was innovative.

He was brilliant.

He was determined.

He was hyper-competitive.

He was kind of a mad scientist.

When I knew him, he was just
starting with the altitude house.

And he got in a big fight with the
authorities over whether altitude training

without actually leaving
home was appropriate.

And he won that fight.

The Nike Oregon project starts, and Alberto
has set up an altitude house in Portland.

Each room could be set at a different
altitude, and the athletes could live and

sleep to gain the
advantages of not having

to travel to altitude
to get the same effect.

He had Galen running 50
miles a week under water.

You know, they put the treadmill in a
pool, because that was the way to get an

extra whatever it was,
30 miles or 40 miles a

week in, without putting
a stress on your body.

Like, that's how
he was thinking.

Stuff like the Alter-G, for example, that
was a company that was non-existent.

And it's created opportunity
for people to stay healthy,

train through injuries when
they wouldn't be able to.

Stuff like that is
super important.

My job is to write about
the science of sport.

And most of that means, hey, tell me
ways I can get faster by using technology.

Every time I would hear a wacky
rumor or news of a study that suggested,

hey, you know, you can take allergy
meds and it's going to make you faster.

And I'd look into it, and I'd try and find
some studies, and then I would realize,

oh wait, look, Alberto
Salazar and the Nike

Oregon Project have been
doing this for two years.

They're doing whole body
light pods with infrared light.

Cryo sauna is basically a
shower stall where you get smoked

by liquid nitrogen a couple
hundred degrees below freezing.

It's supposed to aid recovery.

After he discovered it, he
calls up the company and

he says, Ritzenhain's going
to the New York Marathon.

We need him to get his cryo sauna
in the days leading up to the marathon.

So they trucked a cryo sauna.

Cryo sauna from Texas to New York so that
Dathan Ritzenhain could have like three

minutes with liquid nitrogen bubbling
around his legs before the marathon.

I mean, I remember
watching Galen Rupp break

the American record
for two miles indoor.

06, 07.

He's got it.

Galen Rupp takes it.

And then a videotape of him doing
mile repeats, you know, shortly after that.

And I thought, this
is crazy, you know?

Four flat.

Oh, wow.

What I knew about running and
working out has now been shattered.

I know nothing.

There's no way that my
coach would ever have

me do a workout right
after a race like that.

And I don't know that
my body could handle it.

You see these gym videos of Alberto
and Moe and people in the past in the gym.

Diligence in terms of
balance and strength.

We never did any of that.

Balance for me back in the 80s and
strength was picking your pints up with

your right hand and
then with your left hand.

It's just a different world.

And yet, I'm here.

I admire it.

I'm envious.

I would love to have been part of a setup
where I had somebody who was that clever

and that conscientious with
that much attention to detail.

I've got to run a
hell of a lot faster.

Could I?

Yeah, of course I could.

12, 13, 14.

Keep it under control.

One thing that just epitomizes Alberto and
the way he thinks is when Galen was in the

marathon in Rio, he comes to his
first drink station, he grabs his bottle,

and there's a cap with an elastic
band holding it up to his bottle.

So he grabs his bottle
and he keeps running.

And, you know, we
all know this now.

He took the cap off and
took the one that was

on his head off and put
a new one on his head.

And as I understand it, there
was some cooling factor in the cap.

But nobody had ever thought, well, that's
an hydration station and nothing more.

It's not an equipment station.

It wasn't in the rules.

Nobody had thought to
write that into the rules.

But Alberto saw that as a
little gap in the rules and an

opportunity to help his
athlete, and he got away with it.

It was clever.

Galen Rupp is the
marathon bronze medalist in

an event in which he
is still a total novice.

If you take an EPO, you're not
putting your treadmill in a pool.

You know, you're... right?

So he's kind of thinking about all
these other ways of getting even.

That doesn't make him a cheater.

It just means that he frankly
understood the nature of the problem.

I think he tried very hard to
stay within the rules, but I think

he tried to get as close to the
edge of the line as he could.

And that's a risky strategy
because sometimes when

you're doing that, you
will accidentally step over.

Nike does some good stuff, and
Nike's got an ugly side to it, too.

My name is Chris Chavez.

I'm a staff writer
at Sports Illustrated.

In November of 2019, I reported on
Mary Kane and the allegations of a toxic

culture at the Nike Oregon
Project under Alberto Salazar.

The New York Times dropped a op doc
featuring Mary Kane speaking about the

mental and physical abuse that she
suffered under coach Alberto Salazar in

her time with the Nike Oregon Project,
and the video was pretty powerful.

I was the fastest
girl in America.

I joined Nike because I wanted
to be the best female athlete ever.

Instead, I was emotionally
and physically abused by

a system designed by
Alberto and endorsed by Nike.

And a 16-year-old
has taken the title.

She was one of the
future stars of the sport.

And then all of a
sudden, she kind of faded.

The sort of Kane sanity that was
dubbed in 2013 had gone away.

And...

there wasn't really too much of an answer
as to where she went or what happened.

At the 2015 Occidental
Classic out in

California, Mary Kane,
I think, had a bad race.

And Mary Kane will
wind up in 11th at 4.16.48.

After the race, Alberto Salazar was angry
about Mary and I think made comments about

her weight in public, in front
of other athletes and coaches.

Who were present there.

After this race, it was the first time
Mary Kane had told Alberto Salazar that

she was hurting herself
and cutting herself.

And in that case, she was expecting them to
get her some professional help or advice.

And it just didn't happen.

I think they kind
of brushed it off.

They had dinner at
the hotel after that.

And Mary Kane never got
the help that she needed.

To me, if I got that from one of my
runners, that would be a, how much

caffeine do I have to
mainline and stay up all night?

I would want to have
that discussion right then,

find out what's going on
and refer them for help.

When you're a professional, your contract
depends on how you handle that pressure.

And she was thrown
into it as a high school girl.

And there aren't too many high
school girls that could handle that.

And then on top of
that, she moved away.

For whatever reason, her parents thought
the best place for her was with Alberto.

I remember when she
signed with Salazar.

And my first thought was,
she's not a Salazar athlete.

She's got too much
spark and independence.

And you don't go to Alberto Salazar if
you're looking to enjoy yourself, right?

It's just a bad match.

This is a guy who, when he's running the
Comrades Marathon in South African heat,

declines to drink water
because he doesn't

want the water adding
weight during the run.

An amazing victory.

A very good time of just
over 5 hours and 38 minutes.

He is on a level of
craziness about weight.

And if I was a parent and I read that and I
had a 15-year-old who was contemplating

going to work with Salazar, I would
read that long and I would say, no.

It's not like he's
hiding how crazy he is.

It is totally on the surface.

This ties into Alberto's
mad scientist tinkerer thing.

He tries to get very
close to Alberto.

To the edge.

Weight is one of the
things that is on the edge.

He's looking for
the extra ounce.

Because that's a step in a 10K.

It could be the step
between silver and gold.

But it could be the ounce
that breaks somebody's bones.

Anybody who's run
professionally will tell you that if

you're too heavy, your
performance is going to go down.

With women athletes, you've got to
be very careful how you address that.

And I think there's very few
men probably equipped to

handle that and especially
a coach as driven as Alberto.

Alberto might have been the wrong
person to be discussing those issues.

Alberto would always
talk to me about my weight.

And it was typically
because I was a little high.

You know, I was always
dancing around 142, 144.

And I remember one day I
got to 137 and I was so excited.

And I came to practice and I said,
Alberto, I was 137 this morning.

And he looked at me
and he said, well, if you're

going to run the 5K,
you need to get to 133.

He was weight
conscious with everybody.

So was there pressure on you to
lose a few pounds occasionally?

Uh, yeah.

Yeah, there was.

I don't really know necessarily
what the number was based

on, but yeah, there was
certainly pressure to do so.

But none of it was surprising,
I think is all I would tell you.

You want to make
sure that Alberto Salazar

isn't paying for the
sins of an entire culture.

Some of the obsession about
body weight among the female

athletes and things like that,
he was certainly not alone.

He was the highest profile person, had
been outspoken, had a history and so forth.

And the bigger they
come, the harder they fall.

There's a certain
species of coach who has

a very, very specific
and narrow motivation.

And that is to absolutely maximize
the performance of their athletes.

Many coaches
behave like parents.

And the job of a parent is not to maximize
the performance of the child, right?

It's to create a happy,
functional human being.

Salazar is a coach who
does not behave like a parent.

And people, I think, are constantly
confusing him with the parent coach.

He's not the parent coach.

He's the maximizing coach.

As a kid, he has a kind of consecutive
day running streak and he has strep throat.

And he's basically in
bed with a fever of God

knows what and it's a
snowstorm going on outside.

He sneaks out of bed.

In the middle of the
snowstorm with a fever of

whatever and a strep
throat and gets his miles in.

You know, that's what
we're dealing with here.

He will tell you
what he's all about.

He's the dude who crept
out in the middle of a

snowstorm with a temperature
of 103 to get his miles in.

He's the dude who ran an ultra marathon
through the desert of Africa and would not

drink water because he
didn't want to add weight.

He's the dude who ran so hard that they
gave him, in a road race, that they gave

him last rights and
thought he was dead, right?

That's what you're
getting into, right?

You know?

So, like, everything
follows from that.

If you're not game for that, then you
don't go and run with Alberto Salazar.

So this is the approach
that Nike is taking in trying

to help its athletes win
by any means necessary.

And that's the environment
that Al Salazar is operating in.

I think it's fair to say that, uh, you
know, you can view Alberto as an

embodiment of Nike's
principles in some way.

Once he started the Nike
Oregon project, his entire

philosophy was that we're
going to do everything.

We're going to harness all
of the science and technology

and knowledge and innovation
we have to make runners faster.

L-carnitine is a
perfect example of that.

One of those substances he
used was L-carnitine, designed

to speed up muscle and
heart recovery for athletes.

It's considered legal in doses which do
not exceed 50 millimeters over six hours.

Salazar, however, reportedly invented a
new method of administering L-carnitine

through intravenous injections,
which itself sparked questions from U.S.

anti-doping authorities.

Carnitine is a substance used
in muscle metabolism, which

theoretically could influence
fatigue during exercise.

The question is, if you gave people
a large bolus through their veins,

would you be able to
influence things quickly?

That becomes the question,
did Farrah participate in this?

And people seem to have trouble
remembering or variable memories of what

did or did not happen,
and stories are changing.

He made a statement
to the doping authorities

that, no, he hadn't
taken L-carnitine.

And he was asked very directly, have
you definitely never taken L-carnitine?

And they went, no,
no, I definitely haven't,

I never would, no,
100%, blah, blah, blah.

Went out of the room
for ten minutes, spoke to

somebody, came back
and went, oh, actually...

And he used a careless phrase.

He used the phrase,
I've got to come clean.

Now, that could have
been a slip of the tongue.

And Mo is not the most eloquent
individual, but to say, I've got to come

clean, implicates yourself, whereas
saying, do you know what, I've had to

think about it again and
I can remember more

clearly now is a much
better way of expressing it.

To be honest, it's very
disappointing to see this.

You guys going at it again and again
and headlines far out, far out, far out.

As I said, there's no
allegation against me.

I've not done anything wrong.

This allegation is
about, let's be clear here,

it's about Alberto Salazar
and Oregon Project.

It's a perfectly
legal substance.

It's found in foods.

There's some suggestion it
might enhance performance.

Uh, nobody really thinks that anymore,
but Salazar thought it was worth a try.

Problem is, the anti-doping
rules say you cannot inject

more than 50 milliliters of a
substance every six hours.

It's trying to prevent you from
injecting things directly into your body.

A report by the United States Anti-Doping
Agency has concluded that renowned track

and field coach Alberto Salazar used banned
drugs to boost athletes' performance.

Lance Armstrong and Salazar apparently
conversed about the newest gray area

doping techniques as Salazar emailed
Armstrong before the seven-time Tour de

France champ was outed as a doper,
saying, quote, Lance, call me ASAP.

We have tested
it, and it's amazing.

Salazar continues to
contend that the use of a drug

in question has always fully
complied with the WADA.

So with Mofara, you take this already icky
thing of injecting L-carnitine into your

body, and then you're also denying it, even
though there's evidence that you did it.

You get this situation where it's like,
well, that makes it look even shadier.

Other people say he totally was lying
about it, because the investigators are

like, butterfly needle,
we're giving you L-carnitine.

You have no memory of this?

And he's like, nope.

And now maybe Mo's trying to be technical
and say, kind of like Bill Clinton,

like, I did not have
sex with that woman.

Like, oh, L-carnitine?

Oh, I thought it
was something else.

I thought it was just a
vitamin injection, you know?

Like, I mean, that's the most favorable
reading you could give Mo there.

But the other athlete
that admitted that he

took L-carnitine shot
was Dathan Ritzenheim.

Correct.

Is that correct?

Yep.

I'm Dathan Ritzenheim.

I'm the head coach of
the On Athletics Club.

I made three Olympic teams.

I had American records and bronze medal
in the world half marathon championships.

The one thing that popped
up was the L-carnitine.

Can you speak to that?

I can't totally.

I mean, the appeal is
still going on, honestly.

So, like, I can't
really talk about that.

I mean, I'm going to be called
to testify again, you know?

And so I'm not going
to talk about that.

Taking the shot at the
L-carnitine and put it in your butt?

If it's legal, it's legal.

You know, yes, you're pushing,
but all athletes are pushing.

I'm not overly concerned
by L-carnitine per se.

It sounds to me like Alberto
dabbling or experimenting or

trying to figure out if something
makes an athlete faster.

I have absolutely no doubt that if there's
a regulation that says you can take one

gram of something or other a day,
that Alberto's athletes were taking 0.

99 grams.

My name is Jake Riley.

I'm member of the U.S.

2020 marathon team.

I think, yeah, you can make the
decision like, yeah, it's an amino acid.

You could probably get it from food if
you ate a certain number of, you know,

whatever the
supplement is, but instead

you're getting it in
this concentrated form.

That's not naturally occurring.

Lots of things aren't
naturally occurring.

But yeah, once you're
starting sticking syringes in your

body, that does seem like the
start of a very slippery slope.

If the goal is to just obey the letter and
not the spirit of the law, I think there's

a pretty good chance
that, yeah, at some point

along there, you've
probably gone too far.

Do I think Alberto
pushed it too far?

All I can say is it sounds
like he might have.

I think in his mind it wasn't.

It was part of that 100%.

I'm going to give
the athletes 100%.

I want them to give me 100%.

Athletes in the program, Kara Goucher,
they think something more was going on.

It was like the inner sanctum.

There's no proof of anything.

There's two people who
know what happened, right?

If there comes a stage where you're invited
to go under oath, would you testify?

I would welcome
that opportunity.

I would welcome that opportunity for
myself, for every former Oregon Project

member, for every
doctor that's been involved.

Go under oath.

I would welcome
that opportunity.

I actually started to see
things that made me really

uncomfortable, culminating with
the World Championships in 2011.

And then a year and a half later I went to
USADA and spoke with investigators with

what I witnessed there
at the Oregon Project.

And then in 2015 I went public.

What were you seeing
that made you feel

uncomfortable with Nike
and the project itself?

I started to see
people taking a lot of

prescription drugs that I
didn't think they needed.

I started to witness teammates faking
dehydration to get IVs before competitions.

My coach tried to get
me to take someone

else's prescription
drugs that I did not need.

I had seen the testosterone gel,
but I was told that was for Alboro.

And I believed that.

I had seen vials in the
refrigerator, and I was

told they were allergy
shots, and I believed that.

But as I started to see some of these
other things that were definitely crossing

ethical lines, where my teammates
were taking pills I had never seen,

that I just had to leave.

And what were those pills?

They were supposedly
vitamin B, but they were not.

What were they?

I don't know.

It was a hard-pressed pill.

And what I've learned is that
vitamin B is not in that form.

My coach wanted me to
take a drug called Cytomil.

It's a prescription drug for
someone with a thyroid condition.

But one of the side effects is
that it can help you lose weight.

For me, that was a very clear
line that was being crossed.

As an athlete, that's
how Alberto was.

You know, like, he pushed to
the edge on everything, right?

And he was the
same way as a coach.

He was very supportive
of me most of the time.

I really think he wanted
the best for me, just probably

didn't always know what he
was doing or how to get there.

That's probably
his biggest flaw.

I think he cares, actually.

It's just being able
to separate that.

I think what happened with him and
his sanction, I think they got it right.

I know Alberto Salazar and have
known him since the mid-1970s.

And if somebody like Cara Goucher chooses
to leave his program and leave the support

of Nike, then it's because she probably
felt that her own position, her own

ethics, her own morality
were being pressured.

How hard has this
been on you personally?

It's been really hard.

You know, there's like
good days and bad days.

I can't believe, like it's really
weird that this is what my life is.

You know, I always thought that I would
retire from racing and help Alberto coach

or work at Nike, that I would, he and I
would be in each other's lives forever.

And...

Yeah, it's just, some days I just can't
believe this is how my life ended up

because I thought my life
would be very, very different.

Do you miss him in some ways?

I miss who I thought he was.

He was just a very
important person in my life.

But he's, that's not who he is.

So, it's like missing
something that wasn't real.

What do I think
about the reports?

I think they are just
that, they're accusations.

For me personally, I've
house sat for Alberto Salazar.

So, when Alberto calls me and
says, hey, can you come over tonight?

We're going to be out
of town for a couple days.

I need you to house sit for me.

And I'm over in 45 minutes.

And he says, you know,
Ben, the place is yours.

Here's where the food is.

Here's where the dog food is.

There was no mention of, I
don't want you to go in this room.

I don't want you to
look in this drawer.

I don't want you to do anything.

It was, Alberto trusted me.

So, just that alone makes me feel
very confidently and very strongly that the

time that I was involved with
Alberto, there was nothing going on.

You never saw anything?

I never saw anything.

My name is Cameron Levens.

I'm a 2012 Olympian from Canada.

And I'm the Canadian
record holder in the marathon.

I ran for the Nike Oregon
Project from 2013 to 2017.

And I'm currently
sponsored by Hoka One One.

I never felt any pressure.

And I didn't see anything.

In fact, when I joined
the group originally,

Alberto and I had a
conversation about this.

And he, more or less, was just
like, hey, if you see anything happen,

like, just refuse it,
say something about it.

Did you see anything
that should be of concern?

No, I never
experienced anything.

Oh, I mean, I was tested every
couple of weeks, I would guess.

And then also being
tested for races.

Being tested is uncertainty
of being a clean athlete.

But I definitely
tried to prove it.

It's almost just uncomfortable to talk
about the Oregon Project at this point in

my time there, because
I didn't necessarily

have a really negative
experience in general.

When things went well,
they went really well.

I had some great performances, a
Canadian record and a 10K at that time.

But I'm forever associated and
kind of tainted by being a part of it.

And it's always something
I'm going to be asked about.

And unfortunately,
that's just how it is.

No, I'm not a cheater.

I never would be.

And that's enough for me.

I'm Chris Derrick, and I
am a professional runner.

I run for the Bowerman Track Club,
which is a group sponsored by Nike,

and I am personally
sponsored by Nike as well.

I do think that we have made big strides
in drug testing in the last 20 years.

Basically, you have to
provide an hour window where

you guarantee that you will
be where you say you are.

So for most people, that's
generally in the morning at their home.

Every day?

Every day.

And you're out at the supermarket and
they come to your house and call you,

you need to be within range
to come and take a test.

My position on gray area stuff, there
are a lot of things which supposedly help.

As an athlete, what
am I worried about?

It's like if I see someone taking an
inhaler before the race, I'm not like,

oh, God, I can't compete
with that guy today.

What I'm worried about is,
like, is someone taking EPO?

And, like, are we
catching that person?

Is someone taking testosterone?

Are we catching that person?

That is where I would like to see the
energy put is into, like, better testing

for that stuff because that's,
like, what really moves the needle.

It is so typical of the dysfunction in
track and field that we will bring down

the house on the guy who's
operating at the margins.

You're gonna bring down the
hammer on Alberto Salazar.

For something that is so
complicated that I couldn't...

I can't even follow half of the
arguments against Alberto Salazar.

Kip Ropp gets flat-out busted
for using EPO, the worst

crime you can commit in
the world of distance running.

And we don't even
take away his medals.

Like, I'm sorry, what the fuck?

If anyone ever uncovered evidence that
Salazar was using legally, impermissible

performance-enhancing drugs
in a way that clearly contravened

the kind of rules of track
and field, I would be stunned.

Cheating is a strategy
for not giving your all.

The person who gives their all
has the exact opposite mindset.

They're going further
within the system to succeed.

Salazar's way of
compensating for your

inadequacies as a
runner is to kill yourself.

It's not to take a shortcut.

He's not a shortcut guy.

Psychologically, I find it implausible that
that's the route he would ever have taken.

Salazar's desire to use every means at his
disposal to get every last second possible

out of his athletes, to look for any edge
possible, this doesn't exist in isolation.

It doesn't come out of nowhere.

It's actually a perfect
expression of Nike's

corporate culture that
he exists in the middle of.

And so there's examples that have nothing
to do with Alberto Salazar that follow

exactly the same template, whether it's
Nike introducing shoes with carbon fiber

plates or deploying a
whole lab of scientists

to try and run a
sub-two-hour marathon.

You know, a lot of the people inside the
sport are very critical of the influence

Nike has, but Nike pays
for that influence, right?

You can't understate
how important they are.

Some of the things they do come
across as bullies, the 100-pound gorilla,

but without them,
there isn't anything.

It's hard to imagine the
world of running without Nike.

They put more money
into it than anyone else.

I ran at Nike Team
Nationals when I was a kid.

It's now Nike Cross Nationals.

It's this big meet for, you
know, 300 high school kids.

You know, Nike is making a commitment
to make not just, like, the top 20 kids in

the country, but, like, the seventh person
on the 18th best team in the country feel

like a rock star at this event,
and to really elevate them as,

like, this is an elite
and worthy endeavor in

a way that often doesn't
happen in America.

Nike's spending is
exceptional because Nike

is dedicated to the
sport of track and field.

So no regrets signing
a contract with Nike?

No, not at all.

Nike can be masters
at marketing, and I think

they can wield that
power for good sometimes.

Breaking 2 was Nike's big experiment
to break the two-hour marathon barrier.

In 2017, it decided to fund millions of
dollars into this optimized attempt to get

the fastest marathoner in the world, Eli
Kipchoge, the Olympic champion from

Kenya, to run 26.2 miles
on a Formula 1 course.

It's amazing how far money can
get you, and in the case of Breaking 2,

it got them within 26 seconds
of a sub-two-hour marathon.

At least they're there, at least Nike
has cared and wants the sport to succeed.

Without that, I don't know how
professional running makes it.

Nike not only invests in athletes,
but they force the other companies that

want to compete with
Nike to invest in them, too.

They love to push the barriers.

They love to see
how far they can go.

And Nike has just become a marketing
behemoth, and they've got new shoes with

new soles that nobody
expected, and are

really kind of blowing
up the sport right now.

There is an international debate
raging over a $280 pair of running shoes,

the Nike Vaporflies.

They are turning the shoe
industry on its head, with

Nike's claim that the shoes
offer runners a 4% advantage.

The single most controversial
story in sports science

over the last five years has
been Nike's Vaporfly shoes.

And that's because they've
completely upended the sport.

And they completely changed what
we think of as a fast running shoe.

You'll notice it has a
massively thick sole.

Until three years ago, you
would never see a sole like this.

The whole goal of
running shoes, to run fast,

was to make them
as minimal as possible.

You want to feel like
you're running in a sock.

This sole is somewhere
around 40 millimeters thick.

And what Nike did is they developed
a new foam that's particularly springy.

It can really give you
a lot of energy back.

And they embedded a carbon
fiber plate in the middle of the foam.

The thicker the sole, the
more energy it can hold.

When you squeeze it
down, you land, and then

when you step up, it
releases that energy.

So you want to have
the thickest sole possible.

It's a game changer.

They're not breaking rules
by making fast running shoes.

Their scientists
are doing their job.

They're giving their athletes the
best technology possible to perform.

But the effect that it's had on the sport
in terms of lowering times around the

world in road races has been unlike
anything I've seen since covering it.

Bridget Koske will shatter the
world record in the marathon.

For the first time in
history, a Ugandan

becomes the world
champion over 10,000 meters.

Incredible from Sifan Hussain.

A brilliant time.

By far the quickest run
we've seen so far this year.

The technology availability
issue is always an

issue whenever there's
new technology in a sport.

It's certainly come to the forefront
again with these new innovative shoes.

There's concern that people didn't have
access to them unless they ran for Nike or

were sponsored by Nike and that there
wasn't a level playing field as a result.

There have been advances in shoe
technology, but I can't remember until

2017 anyone really
thinking that shoes had an

outcome in terms of who
won a race and who didn't.

If someone runs a fast time in the Nike
shoes, the Vaporflies or the Alphaflies,

and the runner-up
was wearing a different

brand, did that affect
the outcome of the race?

Imagine running in sand.

Now you land in the sand,
you have plenty of time

for your foot to strike,
and you can push off.

But the sand absorbs a lot of that
force and you can't run very fast.

So what happens if you have a surface
of a track that recoils slightly or deforms

slightly and right as
you push off it recoils?

That's the sweet spot.

And people run about
3 or 4% more efficiently.

So they can go faster at the same
oxygen consumption without fatigue.

I wasn't running in the shoes,
but I was analyzing the data from it.

Because I always thought, well, I
don't know, you know, maybe it's there.

It looks like this study says that it's
there, but then when we did it in Provo

and it showed that the shoes were on
average 2.7% more economical, then I was

like, oh, man, there is
something to these shoes.

Nike's ethos seems to
be win at all costs, right?

Now with the Super Shoes, if you have
a shoe, no one else has it, and you win,

that's okay.

I want to tell you a little story about
the 2016 marathon trials in Los Angeles.

I was there, as I've
been at most marathon

trials, and I'm watching
the athletes warm up.

And Galen Rupp is running in
his first Olympic marathon trials.

And I'm looking at him, I'm looking at
his shoes, and I'm thinking, holy crap,

this dude is confident
he's wearing training

shoes in the Olympic
trials marathon.

Because they were big,
thick, cushioned shoes.

And nobody ever wears
those in the Olympic trials.

The shoes are as thin and
narrow and light as can possibly be.

We had no idea what Galen was running that
day for, what, two or three years later.

We had no idea that he and the other
two Olympic medalists in Rio were wearing

shoes possibly dramatically better
than anybody else's shoes in the world.

So the biggest,
baddest, and worst

transgression in the
shoe world was in 2016.

At our U.S.

Olympic marathon
trials, and then in Rio.

They had a shoe.

No one else really knew
the technology even existed.

They kept it secret.

They even made the shoes
sort of look like the old shoes.

And then only their
athletes ran in it.

That's not fair to me.

And now we're getting
rules put in place, but, like,

you can't go back and redo
the 2016 Olympic marathon.

It's unfair.

I mean, you look at someone like
Kara Goucher, fourth at the 2016 Olympic

marathon trials, all the
women in front of her

were wearing these shoes
that nobody knew about.

They were disguised
prototypes of the Vaporfly.

You never know.

You can't rewrite history, but
there's a pretty strong argument

that she would have had a very
good chance of making the team.

And the difference between making another
Olympic team and being fourth and being a

brave also-ran, I don't know the exact
number, but I would say it's hundreds of

thousands of dollars, and it's money that
spreads out over the course of her career,

over decades as she goes around
giving talks and being an ex-runner.

And here comes Kara Goucher.

She says she will
finish in fourth place.

Just missed making the team.

I was no longer a Nike athlete because I
had been a whistleblower against my former

coach, Alberto Salazar, and the Nike
Oregon Project, and so I had left Nike,

and I was actually with
Skechers at the time.

The problem in 2016 was that we had
a set of rules, and the rules were broken.

The rules said it must
be available to all.

The rules said your shoe can't
give you an unfair advantage

or assistance over an
opponent that doesn't have it.

I didn't make the rules.

I just followed them.

And at the time, those
shoes broke those rules.

In March of 2017, we
learned of the shoes.

So a full year later, they had
already been won in competition.

They swept the podium at
the Olympic Men's Marathon.

All three people wearing them
were wearing these prototypes.

Jared Ward was sixth.

Jared Ward didn't
have that shoe.

Who knows where he could have finished
potentially if he had had that technology.

For my career, it was the same.

It was lighter,
lighter, lighter.

How light of a shoe can you
wear and still last for a marathon?

I didn't know what
anyone had on their feet.

I wasn't looking at
any of the Nike athletes'

feet, thinking, oh,
that's a different shoe.

Shoe companies pushing out prototypes to
their elite athletes as a launch mechanism

is not unprecedented.

But it did seem like this
was a little bit different.

Do you feel, looking back, that
you were at a disadvantage?

Well, you know, I guess looking
back, I feel a little bit of that.

This whole shoe thing, it just leaves a
kind of weird taste in your mouth because

the sport thrives on
history and being able to

compare performances from
one generation to the next.

When somebody produces something that
is going to create a massive leap forward,

a seismic shift, the authorities, of
course, IFF, World Athletics as they

are now, need to be able to look and say,
hold on, hold on, let's stop everything.

We need to reassess this.

After the Vaporfly was first introduced,
Nike kept coming out with new models that

kept getting thicker and
thicker and faster and faster.

And it got to a point where
it seemed like you couldn't

win a race if you weren't
wearing Nike's latest shoe.

And leading up to the 2020
US Olympic marathon trials,

Nike had its AlphaFly that
was scheduled to debut.

The newest,
thickest, craziest shoe.

So the question is,
how thick can you go?

And World Athletics
decided to set some rules on

how thick you can go and
came out with a new rule.

The thickest you can
go is 40 millimeters.

But lo and behold, the official measurement
comes out for the AlphaFly, it's 39.

5 millimeters.

So in an amazing stroke of apparent good
luck, the new World Athletics rules are

half a millimeter above Nike's
AlphaFly, and so the AlphaFly is legal.

And there's legislation being rolled out
that, funnily enough, accommodates the

shoes almost to the millimeter,
and everything's okay again.

And it's like, well, no,
it's not, but it's too late.

The records have gone.

World records have been
broken almost every week.

We were all engaged in
this fun guessing game.

What will the regulation be?

So when they came out with 40,
and then the next day I learned that the

AlphaFly is 39.5, it was
like, oh, is that a coincidence?

Or what the hell
is going on here?

It doesn't pass the smell test.

We live in a world of conspiracy theories,
so the question is always, was there

inside information that
somebody lobbied somebody else?

Well, the correlation
is a bit curious.

It was either awfully convenient or
teed up, and we'll probably never know.

Nike, in a brilliant marketing move
to kind of obviate the availability issue,

you know, essentially brought
a truckload of shoes and

is willing to give them to
anybody who wants to use them.

You can stand at the start line and look
around at who's wearing what, and it's no

good waving a flag or
putting up a red flag at the

start line and saying, hey,
can we rethink this again?

And someone
snapped the up-to-rama.

What a performance.

A personal best for
Riley in these conditions.

Why did you choose the Nike
shoe over anyone else at that time?

Because it was free.

At the trials, they were giving
away the Alpha Flies for free, so it's,

you know, it's, one, had the
reputation for being the best technology,

but also, you know, they're giving it
away, so, you know, why wouldn't I?

If you didn't wear those shoes,
would you be on the Olympic team?

That's a tough question.

And, yeah, I don't know.

I think it's easy to say
that I would have been

just as successful,
but, yeah, I don't know.

So the impact of these
shoes, I believe, is massive.

People have described
it as technological doping.

The general attitude is that anything that
is not expressly forbidden is permitted.

People are always looking for small
edges and small tweaks that either are not

covered by the rules or
somehow work their way

around the rules to
get a little bit of an edge.

We've seen it recently with the
explosion of much better golf clubs.

They've had to lengthen
courses and change things.

Tennis rackets are better.

And when you think about
endurance sports, aerobikes, clap

skates, tech suits in swimming,
and now the shoes in running.

What do aerobikes do?

They make you more efficient.

What do clap skates do?

They make you more efficient.

What do tech
suits do in the pool?

They make you more efficient.

And that's what these
shoes do, is that they

improve what's called
your running economy.

In plenty of sports and activities, whether
it's Formula One or NASCAR or golf

or baseball or cricket or track and field,
there are rules put in place to try and

control and limit technology
and create a level playing field.

If you've got to have
records set in these shoes and

accept them, they need to
have an asterisk beside them.

The times are dropping.

You can't compare it
to the past anymore.

You can't even compare
athlete to athlete.

For me, I feel like it's
just really sad because

we don't know what
we're witnessing anymore.

We don't actually know that
we're watching the best athlete win.

So the world is going through this
revolution now where a bunch of people are

putting on $250 shoes and
breaking their PRs by two minutes.

Like, that is a hell of a lot more
egregious than anything else.

I mean, Salazar
has been accused of.

Like, you buy shoes with carbon fiber in
them and then you're suddenly knocking at

the door of times that would have
been unheard of two years ago.

We're jumping up and down about a guy who
is creeping up to a line that we've drawn

and somehow blasé about
people who are using a

special kind of shoes
to leapfrog over the line.

Salazar chose to be ruthless
when he was at the top.

And a lot of other people think
that's wrong, right, to be ruthless.

But, you know, we're having an argument
about, like, this kind of gray area.

You can view Alberto as an embodiment
of Nike's principles in some way.

Alberto became the face of Nike
very early in the company's history.

Even though Alberto Salazar's original
mission was bring back American running,

Nike's mission was aligned
with Alberto's, but Nike was

also, like, make Nike a
dominant figure around the world.

Nike's ethos seems to
be win at all costs, right?

Second place is the first loser.

Don't get me wrong, Nike's done a
lot of really good things for the sport.

It's just, like, where's
their moral compass?

It baffles my mind why Nike is sticking by
Alberto this hard, I think, when over the

years we've just seen how they've come down
on previous people with doping sanctions.

And you can look at Lance Armstrong
and how long they stood by him.

It's very interesting to me, and I don't
entirely understand the full scope of that

relationship, but it seems
to be very, very deep.

Nike has backed Alberto for a
number of really strong reasons.

Number one, I think
they believe that Alberto

has been unfairly
attacked through USADA.

I think they believe
that because of the

brand and Alberto,
that's important for Nike.

Alberto would never do anything
that was going to besmirch Phil Knight,

besmirch Nike.

Nike understands that,
they believe in him, and

they're going to back him
as far as they need to go.

Nike's thing is about
clearing somebody.

I want somebody to come
in and look for the truth.

I mean, it's crazy.

The millions of dollars
they've spent on this.

I've heard, you know, $5 to $10 million
in legal fees and this sort of stuff.

But in some ways, I think running
is sort of, it's the core of Nike.

It's Phil Knight.

It's like their ethos.

It's the birthplace.

I think it's fair to say that
Nike has made a big bet.

And at each point, it seemed like, well,
we're not going to leave that pot behind.

We have so much history.

We're going to keep
betting on Alberto.

They've cast their lot.

They've made their
big bet on Alberto.

So it looks like they're going
to ride it right to the finish.

I don't even know what the end
of the Salazar story is going to be.

He may win an appeal.

He may be back
in a couple of years.

Seeing what the U.S.

Anti-Doping Agency has done with Salazar,
it suggests maybe there is an appetite to

try and do this harder
thing, which is to say it's

not enough just to
obey the letter of the law.

We want you to behave fairly in a
way that is, consistent with, you know,

the way we would want
our kids to play sport.

There are two very,
very distinct worlds here.

There is the elite world,
or at least the top of

the elite world, and then
there's everybody else.

A lot of this discomfiture around Salazar
comes from the fact that people are

applying rules from the
non-elite world to the elite world.

The elite world is, of
necessity, massively different.

It's really screwed up.

Maybe running 150 miles a week is so
bizarrely unhealthy that it exacerbates a

lot of underlying health
conditions that might not surface.

Yeah, everyone says,
well, they're prescribing

these drugs for people
who don't need them.

Yeah, you and I don't
need them, but we're not

running 150 miles a
week at some insane pace.

Like, these guys are
putting their body through

something that, like, no
one puts their body through.

God knows what they need.

We haven't accepted
the fact that it is not 1954,

we're not Roger Bannister
running on our lunch hour.

These are people who
are training all day long.

And it's screwed up.

And, you know, unless you want to
kind of completely dismantle elite sports,

you've got to live
with the fact that it's

going to be super
complicated at the high end.

And they're going to do stuff
that makes you feel uncomfortable.

That's the implied
contract with Nike.

They have staked out their brand
around the highest possible achievement.

Which NBA stars do they back?

Well, like LeBron James.

Like, there's a reason.

Did Tiger Woods
win at all costs?

Well, yes, he did.

Did Michael Jordan
win at all costs?

Well, yes, he did.

No one's forcing
anyone to sign with Nike.

There are other options if you want
to have a different kind of experience.

The question I would always ask about
Nike would be, you know, in the insanely

unlikely and lucky circumstance that I was
a world-class runner, and I was coming out

of college at 21, and
had been invited to join

the Nike Oregon Project,
would I have joined?

That's the question
I would always ask.

Yeah.

I would like to at least try it.

But I would like to
think that I would have

been clear-eyed about
what I was getting into.