In 2019, an arbitration panel imposed a four-year ban against Salazar for violating various antidoping regulations. Throughout Usada’s investigation that led to the ban, Nike paid for the lawyers used by Salazar and many of his runners that were interviewed, and the company also said it would fund his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“A four-year suspension for someone who acted in good faith is wrong,” Mark Parker, then the chief executive of Nike, wrote at the time. Salazar’s appeal is expected to be ruled upon soon.
Soon after, however, came the allegations of abuse and mistreatment.
SafeSport did not detail why Salazar was barred, except to say that it was for sexual and emotional misconduct. In January 2020 the organization temporarily barred Salazar from participating in track and field after a number of female runners who formerly trained under him, including Mary Cain, Amy Yoder Begley and Kara Goucher, described what they said were years of psychological and verbal abuse by Salazar.
They described Salazar regularly shaming them for their weight in front of teammates, and Cain said that she was “the victim of an abusive system, an abusive man.” Soon afterward Nike employees marched in protest at a rededication of the Alberto Salazar Building, which had been undergoing renovations.
Salazar has not responded directly to the SafeSport suspension but has said he did not encourage or shame Cain to maintain an unhealthy weight, though he admitted he may have “made comments that were callous or insensitive.”
Over the last two years Nike has slowly edged away from Salazar, a break the building renaming seemingly makes permanent.
The Oregon Project was shuttered, and Parker retired as chief executive of the company. (Nike said the retirement was unrelated to Salazar’s suspension.) Many of Nike’s top track and field executives have left the company.