• Sanction: Mo Morah's former coach, suspended four years for a doping scandal
  • Sifan Hassan, the queen of the World Cup is under suspicion

For several years, Mary Cain was the great hope of the American midfund. In 2013, with only 17 years, he qualified for the 1,500 meters final of the Moscow World Cup and began competing in the Diamond League, where, for example, he dropped two minutes in the 800 meters of the Prefontaine Classic. He had everything: a cheerful charisma, a simple stride and an astonished precocity. I was calling to be a star of athletics, but, suddenly, everything collapsed. He left the institute to start working under Alberto Salazar , the controversial former coach of Mo Farah or Sifan Hassan , Nike's preferred coach now suspended by the United States Anti-Doping Agency, and his career ended.

As in so many other cases, it was assumed that the lesions cut off Cain's progression, but there was more, much more. In a New York Times video, the athlete herself explained it crudely. "It was a dream. I wanted to be the best athlete ever. But instead, I was physically and psychologically abused by a system designed by Salazar and supported by Nike," denounces Cain, who does not save on details of what happened. .

The main problem was weight. Salazar had a certain obsession with his athletes staying very thin - you can see Koster Klosterhalfen, bronze in the 5,000 meters of the Doha World Cup - so he squeezed and squeezed a growing Cain to diet. With its 1.70 meters and its constitution, it could barely exceed 50 kilos. "I weighed in front of my classmates and I was ashamed if I had not lost weight. I was forced to take birth control pills and diuretics to lose weight. The latter are prohibited by anti-doping laws," says Cain, because of these practices he spent three years without menstruation. and suffered from Rett syndrome. His bones weakened so much that he was constantly breaking: up to five ruptures he lived in a short time.

But his fall because of Salazar was more. In the middle of the whole process, he began to think about committing suicide, to make cuts in his body until in May 2015, after a fight from the coach for having gained weight, he confessed what happened to him. "Then I told Alberto and the psychologist that I was self-injuring and they sent me to bed. I realized that the system was sick. I told my parents and they were horrified. They bought me the first flight back home and They told me to get out of that hell. Since then I didn't try to be Olympic anymore, just to survive, "says the midfielder about how her career ended.

In 2016 he presented himself to the Trials to participate in the Rio Games and could only be eleventh. Then nothing. He returned to his home near New York and now tries to recover from his experience, but it will not be easy. In fact, his main fear is that, although Salazar is sanctioned, his team continues to torment other youth. "It worries me that they change the name and put the former assistant coaches of Salazar in a similar program," concludes what was the great hope of the American midfund.

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