Barring some unforeseen misfortune, such as injury, we are going to read and hear a lot about Mo Farah in the run-up to the London Olympics, in which case we should also expect to read and hear a lot of about Alberto Salazar.
Farah, the Somalian refugee who is now running in British colours, is in the form of his life and his gold medal prospects in the Olympic 5,000m and 10,000m grow more realistic with every race - the most recent being this month's New York half-marathon. It was his first trip over the distance and he won - an unexpected triumph for which at least some of the credit must fall to Salazar, whom he has been training in Oregon since the start of the year even though their partnership was not formally announced until last month.
Over the next year Farah will be immersed in the methods and ways of the Oregon Project, a Nike-financed, Salazar-led group of elite runners based at the sports equipment company's campus near Portland.
The coach has stated time and again his aim is to the dismantle the middle and long distance hegemony of the East African elite and replace it with one of his own. It is, potentially, a Quixotic mission but it has certainly earned Salazar attention in his homeland. Track and field is not a big sport in the United States, especially in non-Olympic years, but it fair to say he is not toiling away in anonymity. Needless to say he is not shy of publicity, loves to talk (here's a lengthy interview he did with the running website competitor.com) and has a compelling life story. A running protégé as a teenager, he trained at the famous Greater Boston Track Club, he won the Boston marathon once and the New York marathon three times, was briefly a national figure and then burned out at the highest level before he was 30, the victim, he says, of an awkward running style which, in keeping with the coaching orthodoxy of the era, he didn't change in case it led to career-ending injuries. (These days he doesn't think twice about asking his athletes to change their running style if he believes it to be "inefficient".)
A full-time coach since 2001, he has never stopped running, though there was a brief intermission in 2007 when he suffered a heart attack. He apparently stopped breathing for 14 minutes but appears to have suffered no lasting effects. The indestructible Alberto Salazar.
Last year the New Yorker magazine ran a lengthy profile of him on the eve of the New York marathon focusing on his own running career and his training methods, which are viewed in some quarters as the master plan of a genius and in others as ineffective and "whacky'. The Wall Street Journal, another publication not noted over the years for its interest in track and field, opted for a mixture of both in a profile published on the eve of Farah's most recent victory under the headline "Mad Scientist' Salazar Charts a New Course to NY Half-Marathon".
This was a reference to the various technologies Salazar has experimented with, and developed, over the years, from the underwater treadmill (now standard issue at many sports teams and franchises across the US) to the cryosauna, which is supposed to be quicker and more effective than the traditional ice bath in soothing the injured athlete but which, it is fair to say, is still in the early stages of development. Some of the schemes and machines have worked, others have not. Regardless, Salazar is unrepentant and unremitting in pursuit of the dream for himself and his athletes.
"The number one sort of spur or reason for embracing all of the science is probably because of my desire for our runners to be competitive at an international level," Salazar explained to the WSJ. "I believe that we are running against the most talented and gifted distance athletes that the world has ever seen in the great East African runners, the Kenyans and Ethiopians… you do everything you possibly can legally, ethically, morally that gives you the chance to be better."
At least Mo Farah will know that no stone will be left unturned by his American coach in the search for Olympic gold. The question is, however, how much of a distraction might that search turn out to be?
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