 |
 | |
| Abbreviation | NOP |
|---|---|
| Formation | 2001 [1] |
| Dissolved | October 10, 2019 |
| Type | Elite athlete training group |
| Location | |
Region served | United States |
The Nike Oregon Project was a group created by the American corporation Nike, established in Beaverton, Oregon in 2001. [1] The team folded on October 10, 2019 after an investigation resulted in a four-year ban of longtime coach Alberto Salazar. [2]
The runners lived in the Portland, Oregon area and trained at Nike's headquarters campus located just outside the Portland suburb of Beaverton, Oregon. [1] Some of the runners in the group lived in a specially designed house where filters were used to remove oxygen from the air to simulate living at high elevation. Numerous studies [3] have shown that living at altitude causes an athlete to develop more red blood cells, increasing athletic performance.
In addition to the simulated altitude training, program was used to monitor electrodes attached to the athletes, determining what condition they were in and how far or fast they could train. They used underwater and low-gravity treadmills, which allow athletes to run on a reduced percentage of their own body weight, resulting in less intense impact on the body than outdoor running. They also had a collaboration with Colorado Altitude Training (CAT), a company specializing in hypoxic athletic training, for their training equipment. [4]
Nike's Oregon Project was created by Nike Vice President Thomas E. Clarke after he reportedly became dissatisfied with the performance of American athletes in long-distance events since the early 1980s. During that time, Alberto Salazar (later to become the Oregon Project head coach) had won three consecutive New York City Marathons in 1980, 1981, and 1982.
When the project first began, Salazar chose some of the top runners of the time that he believed had great potential. Eventually, however, he concluded that since these athletes were older, their training habits had become ingrained and difficult to overcome; this led Salazar to take on younger athletes instead. His new focus led Salazar to coach Matthew Centrowitz, Galen Rupp, and Adam and Kara Goucher. Salazar believes these athletes went on to more success because he was able to work with them from a younger age. [5]
The health of coach and project director Alberto Salazar has been in question since he suffered a heart attack at Nike's Beaverton campus on June 30, 2007. From that time, Salazar has been implanted with a defibrillator, and he planned to take a more limited role with Nike Oregon Project. In June 2008, Salazar chose his tentative successor as head of the Oregon Project, hiring cross country coach Jerry Schumacher away from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. [7] In turn, Schumacher brought his top distance protégé, Matt Tegenkamp, with him to join the program along with Chris Solinsky and UW–Madison freshman turned pro Evan Jager. [8]
 | This article is missing information about BBC/Pro Publica 2015.(October 2019) |
In 2002, the Oregon Project came under scrutiny from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which formed a think tank to discuss the ethics of the high-altitude house. The Agency's Senior Managing Director, Larry Bowers said,
"The argument for altitude rooms is that they make up for those athletes that can't live high. What they don't take into account is that people living high don't get the benefits of training low."
Alberto Salazar was confident the Anti-Doping Agency would ultimately approve the altitude house, saying that it's no different from other legal scientific advances like heart rate monitors and sports drinks. [4]
In 2006, the subject was revisited more thoroughly by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) which claimed that it could be equivalent to blood doping and therefore they should be banned; however, on September 16, 2006, Dick Pound of the WADA announced that "... the overwhelming consensus of our health, medicine and research committees – was that, at this time, it is not appropriate to do so." [9] No explanation was given as to how WADA could possibly have enforced such a ban.
The Oregon Project has also been criticized by college track coaches for recruiting Galen Rupp directly out of high school to go live at the high-altitude house and forgo attending University of Oregon for his first year. [1]
On May 19, 2017, The New York Times wrote an article about a leaked and unverified U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report that claimed Salazar worked with athletes to increase their L-carnitine levels. The main accusation involved was that the intravenous method used could potentially have violated USADA anti-doping rules if the amount infused was too high. [10]
On October 1, 2019, the USADA banned Alberto Salazar for 4 years due to allegations he "trafficked testosterone, infused a prohibited amount of L-carnitine and tried to tamper with doping controls." [11] Salazar continues to deny the allegation and plans to appeal the ban.
On November 7, 2019, The New York Times released a video Op-Ed in which former Oregon Project athlete Mary Cain alleged that she suffered emotional and physical abuse at the hands of Alberto Salazar during her time at the project. Cain claimed that she was pressured to take illegal diuretics and shamed about her weight to the point of self-harm and suicidal thoughts. In a statement, Salazar denied most of the allegations. Nike also made an official statement challenging the allegations, citing Cain's desire to rejoin the team in April 2019. [12]
On October 10, 2019, Nike announced that they would be closing down the Nike Oregon project. The CEO of Nike, Mark Parker, reported that the situation surrounding the actions of Alberto Salazar were distracting for the athletes and compromising their ability to focus on their training and competition needs. The current runners involved in the project would be assisted by Nike to find alternative training arrangements. [13]
Alberto Salazar is an American former track coach and long-distance runner. Born in Cuba, Salazar immigrated to the United States as a child with his family, living in Connecticut and then in Wayland, Massachusetts, where Salazar competed in track and field in high school. Salazar won the New York City Marathon three times in the early 1980s, and won the 1982 Boston Marathon in a race known as the "Duel in the Sun". He set American track records for 5,000 m and 10,000 m in 1982. Salazar was later the head coach of the Nike Oregon Project. He won the IAAF Coaching Achievement Award in 2013.
The United States Anti-Doping Agency is a non-profit, non-governmental 501(c)(3) organization and the national anti-doping organization (NADO) for the United States. To protect clean competition and the integrity of sport and prevent doping in the United States with a performance-enhancing substance, the USADA provides education, leads scientific initiatives, conducts testing, and oversees the results management process. Headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USADA is a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code, which harmonizes anti-doping practices around the world, and is widely considered the basis for the strongest and strictest anti-doping programs to prevent doping in sport.
William Jay Bowerman was an American track and field coach and co-founder of Nike, Inc. Over his career, he trained 31 Olympic athletes, 51 All-Americans, 12 American record-holders, 22 NCAA champions and 16 sub-4 minute milers.
Dathan James Ritzenhein is a retired American long-distance runner, and current head coach of the On Athletics Club (OAC). He held the American record in the 5,000 metres (12:56.27) from 2009 to 2010, until it was broken by Bernard Lagat. He is a three-time national cross country champion with wins at the USA Cross Country Championships in 2005, 2008 and 2010. Formerly a Nike athlete for the majority of his professional career, Dathan joined the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project team in 2017. In early May 2020, he announced his retirement from competition. He signed with the Swiss shoe brand On shortly thereafter in June 2020 and currently acts as the coach for the OAC in Boulder, Colorado.
Chris Solinsky is a retired American distance runner and an American college cross country coach. Solinsky is the current assistant coach of the Oregon Ducks cross country team at the University of Oregon. Among his more notable achievements, he won eight state championships in high school and five NCAA Division I championships at the University of Wisconsin. He was the American 10,000 meters record holder with a time of 26:59.60 as well as the first non-African to break the 27-minute barrier in the 10,000 m.
Sir Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah is a Somali-born British retired long-distance runner. Considered one of the greatest runners of all time, his ten global championship gold medals make him the most successful male track distance runner ever, and he is the most successful British track athlete in modern Olympic Games history.
Galen Rupp is an American long-distance runner. He competed in the Summer Olympics in 2008 in Beijing, 2012 in London, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro and 2021 in Tokyo. He won the silver medal in the men's 10,000 meters in London and the bronze medal in the men's marathon in Rio de Janeiro. Rupp competed for the University of Oregon and trained under Alberto Salazar as a member of the Nike Oregon Project. He won the 2017 Chicago Marathon, becoming the first American to do so since Khalid Khannouchi in 2002. Rupp won the marathon at the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials in Atlanta with a time of 2:09:20, and qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, where he finished eighth.
Matthew "Teg" Tegenkamp is a retired professional runner from Lee's Summit, Missouri who specialized in various long-distance events. Tegenkamp represented the United States at two Summer Olympics, in 2008 and 2012. He trained with other members of the KIMbia Athletics group and was sponsored by Nike during his professional career. Tegenkamp set an American record in the outdoor two mile[PRs] and also achieved other performances that were near record breaking during his career.
Mary Pilon is an American journalist and filmmaker who primarily covers sports and business. A regular contributor to the New Yorker and Bloomberg Businessweek, her books are The Monopolists (2015), The Kevin Show (2018), Losers: Dispatches From the Other Side of the Scoreboard, and The Longest Race, co-authored with Olympian Kara Goucher. She has also worked as a staff reporter covering sports for The New York Times and business at The Wall Street Journal and has also written and produced for Vice, Esquire, NBC News, among other outlets.
Amy Yoder Begley is an American middle and long-distance runner and a US Olympian in the 10,000 meter event at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Yoder Begley lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is coach of the Atlanta Track Club, assisted by her husband Andrew Begley.
The Oregon Track Club (OTC) is an American running organization based in Eugene, Oregon.
Darren Treasure is a high performance sport consultant. Treasure's past and present clients include sport governing bodies and professional athletes in a variety of sports and in the entertainment field. He has worked as a sport psychology consultant with Olympic, World and NCAA national champions and all-American athletes at a number of different Universities. Treasure currently resides in Portland, Oregon, and serves as the High Performance Director for the Nike Oregon Project. In 2010, Treasure was featured in a Runner's World magazine article for his work with Kara Goucher and Alberto Salazar who received a lifetime ban from Safesport. He's also been featured in a number of running periodicals for his work with, among others, the American record holder in the mile Alan Webb, and American long-distance runner Galen Rupp, both of whom were members of the discontinued Oregon Project.
The Oregon Ducks track and field program is the intercollegiate track and field team for the University of Oregon located in the U.S. state of Oregon. The team competes at the NCAA Division I level and is a member of the Pac-12 Conference. The team participates in indoor and outdoor track and field as well as cross country. Known as the Ducks, Oregon's first track and field team was fielded in 1895. The team holds its home meets at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Jerry Schumacher is the current head coach and since the program's inception in 1895, there have only been eight permanent head coaches. The Ducks claim 32 NCAA National Championships among the three disciplines.
Andrew Bumbalough is a runner who specialized in various middle and long distances in track. He represented the United States at the 2011 IAAF World Cross Country Championships and at the 2014 IAAF Continental Cup. After graduating from Georgetown University, Bumbalough went to train in Oregon with Coach Schumacher and fellow athletes Tim Nelson, Matt Tegenkamp, Evan Jager and Chris Solinsky. In 2011, Bumbalough finished fourth in the 5000m at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships behind Bernard Lagat, Galen Rupp and teammate Chris Solinsky.
Matthew Centrowitz Jr. is an American middle-distance runner, who specializes in the 1500 metres. He won a gold medal in the event at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He also achieved a bronze medal at the 2011 World Championships and a silver medal at the 2013 World Championships. Centrowitz is a five-time national champion in the 1500 m at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships.
Mary Cecilia Cain is an American professional middle distance runner from Bronxville, New York. Cain was the 2014 World Junior Champion in the 3000 meter event. She is the youngest American athlete ever to represent the United States at a track and field World Championships meet after competing in the 2013 World Championships in Athletics in Moscow aged 17 years and 3 months.
Alan Webb is an American former track and field athlete and former triathlete. He held the American national record in the mile, with a time of 3 minutes 46.91 seconds, from July 2007 to September 2023. Webb represented the United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics in the men's 1500-meters race. He competed professionally for Nike until the end of 2013. He retired after the 2014 Millrose Games. He currently serves as head coach for the Ave Maria University cross country and track and field teams.
The Bowerman Track Club (BTC) is an American training group sponsored by Nike, Inc. for professional distance runners as well as a separate recreational club for casual runners. The professional team is supported by head coach Jerry Schumacher and assistant Pascal Dobert. The club maintains a rivalry with the competing Oregon Track Club, also sponsored by Nike, Inc.
Lindsay Crouse is an American journalist and film producer. She helped produce the 2017 documentary 4.1 Miles, which won an award at the 2017 Peabody awards. She is currently a senior editor at The New York Times.
LetsRun.com is a Fort Worth-based news website and internet forum for information and discussion related to track and field, especially long-distance running. The website provides pre-race previews, covers races, and interviews athletes.
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