November 17, 2019

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Sports November 17, 2019

Pro Runner Mary Cain Discusses Abuse Allegations Against Nike

NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with elite runner Mary Cain about the abuse she says she experienced during her time running with Nike’s Oregon Project.



MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

As a high school student, Mary Cain was known as the fastest girl in a generation. At 17, she became the youngest American ever to make a world championship track and field team. Then she joined Nike’s elite Oregon Project, and her body and her running career fell apart.

Cain says that happened because she was surrounded by an all-male coaching team who were unqualified and ill-equipped to coach a teenage girl, and their training methods not only broke down her body. They nearly broke her mental health. Now at 23, she’s begun speaking out. She posted a graphic and powerful video describing her experiences as part of the New York Times’ “Equal Play” opinion video series, and she is with us now.

Mary Cain, thanks so much for joining us.

MARY CAIN: No, thank you for having me.

MARTIN: So, first of all, how did you start running? How did you figure out that you were good at this?

CAIN: I think kind of like a lot of kids do growing up in that I was the fastest kid in elementary school. And then in middle school, I was encouraged to try out for the varsity program because in the school I went to, it was K through 12. So if you were in middle school, you could actually compete with the high schoolers. And by seventh grade, I made the New York state championship meet. And so it just kind of took off from there.

MARTIN: So did you – people just go, like, wow, that girl is fast?

(LAUGHTER)

CAIN: I mean, the truth is, you know, in elementary school, I ran some times that were, you know, unofficial just kind of, like, gym class mile-level stuff. And I remember I clocked as a fifth grader maybe a 6:10 mile. And the coaches at the time, who, you know, just taught the gym class, were, like, whoa. That’s really fast. And after, like, a quick Google search later at home, we were, like, oh, that would actually rank you surprisingly high in the country.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

CAIN: And it was just a very weird, maybe low-key way to get into the sport because it was so – just for fun.

MARTIN: So how did you come to the attention of the Nike project, the Oregon Project, which was headed at the time by a very famous runner named Alberto Salazar? How did that happen?

CAIN: So in my sophomore year of high school, I ran in Barcelona for the World Junior Championships, and I set the national record for the girls’ 1,500 meters in doing so. And so Alberto actually had watched my race and was just really impressed and ended up calling up my family’s house and saying that he was interested in helping me kind of reach the next level and coaching me from afar originally.

MARTIN: So when did it start to go bad for you? I mean, because at this point, you – what I hear you saying is that, you know, running was fun. It was something you did because it was fun, and you were good at it. So when did you start to feel that something’s not right here?

CAIN: Really, the biggest turning point was when I moved out to Portland. You know, hindsight’s 20-20, so I can look back and say, oh, you know, there were warning signs even during those years where we had a long-distance coaching relationship. But I was buffered by my family and my friends and this other life that I had just in my hometown, and so running stayed fun. But as soon as I went out to Portland and was with the team full-time, things started to break down.

MARTIN: One of the things that you talked about in your piece for The Times was that – you made several points. One is that they would weigh you in front of other people. And, you know, tell me why that strikes you as so wrong.

CAIN: I think one of the biggest things for me during that experience was that some of the athletes he was weighing me in front of were my direct competitors. Not only were they teammates, but they were women that I was actually competing against in order to qualify for World Championship teams and Olympic teams. And just having, like, a direct competitor look at me as failing, I think, was, from an athlete perspective, so mortifying.

But then from a personal issue, I was an 18-year-old girl. We live in a society in which female weight is both fetishized and also under so much scrutiny. And so trying to shame somebody into losing weight is just such, I mean, an emotionally, psychologically and mentally traumatizing way to coach somebody.

MARTIN: You had other health effects, as I recall from your piece. You didn’t get your period for three years. Explain again why not getting your period for three years is a problem.

CAIN: Absolutely. So if you lose your period for an extended period of time, then you’re at risk to developing health issues, including bone problems. So when your estrogen levels drop – estrogen helps bone development. And when you’re in these very vulnerable years such as your teenage years, early 20s, you are still growing. You are still developing. And so if you put your bone health at risk, you can develop weak bones.

And there’s many women who are in this sport who have developed osteoporosis and osteopenia and, as a result, end up breaking their bones a lot. And I was on track to have a lot of really long-term health problems because my bone density did start to drop.

MARTIN: You said at some point that you became suicidal and that you actually started cutting yourself. Did you talk to the coaches about that? And when you did – or if you did – what did they say?

CAIN: So the man who was representing himself as a sports psychologist – he actually witnessed me cutting myself a couple times, and he never directed me to a medical professional for help. Instead, he just said pretty much the jargon of toughen up. You know, you shouldn’t do that.

And I ended up – after one particularly bad experience where I honestly just completely blew up and tried to make myself throw up and was cutting myself and just really traumatized after one particular race in which my coach had told me that I was five pounds too heavy and that’s why I ran bad, I told both Alberto and Darren Treasure, who was our sport psych, that, like, I didn’t know what to do. Like, I knew I was on a self-destructive path. I was really scared.

And I’m sorry. I’m starting to get a little emotional. But I think, you know, looking back at that time, I feel so bad for that girl. And I’m so happy that I’m not her anymore. But I know there’s so many people out there right now who are going through similar stuff, and that so breaks my heart.

And it’s so scary to think that I could sit in that room, and those two men could just say they wanted to go to sleep and didn’t want to talk about it more. And I was asking them for help in the lowest of all moments for me, and they didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t want to help me. I mean, honestly, they just insinuated I was being too emotional and needed to get over it.

MARTIN: How did it finally stop? How did you finally get out of that situation?

CAIN: So after that sit-down with my coach and the sports psych, I called my parents, and I admitted that I had been trying to make myself throw up and that I needed their help. And so I ended up going home. And, you know, honestly, my parents looked on in horror and tried to get me all the help that I could get during this time. But it’s been a process – one that I’m happy to say I’m on – I feel I’m almost fully out of. But, I mean, God, it’s taken years.

MARTIN: You know, it’s interesting because after you spoke out, a number of people responded on Twitter and through other means. But basically, you know, Twitter’s what’s available to us. And…

CAIN: Yeah.

MARTIN: A number of people came forward to validate your experiences. They either said that they had been treated similarly or they said that they had seen the behavior. They had witnessed it. And a number of them expressed regret that they didn’t do more to intervene.

But also – well, Nike also has, as I’m sure you know, released a statement. While saying your allegations are deeply troubling, they claim that you never raised them before or that your parents did not raise them before and that they also say that you were seeking to rejoin the project and Salazar’s team as recently as April of this year, and you didn’t raise these concerns. Can you speak to that?

CAIN: Yeah, absolutely. In regards to the Nike statement, I was honestly so horrified and disappointed that this giant billion-dollar corporation was going to come out and try to discredit or blame me or shame me in some sort of way. Why is their first reaction to defend this coach?

MARTIN: Alberto Salazar, who, as you’ve noted, has, in fact, been banned for four years because of anti-doping violations. But Salazar wrote to The Oregonian when your allegations became public. And he says that, I never encouraged her or, worse yet, shamed her to maintain an unhealthy weight. And he says that you struggled to find and maintain your ideal performance and training weight. Do you want to respond to that?

CAIN: Yeah. Honestly, when I read that, I just laughed. And I honestly just laughed in probably the most, you know, almost freaky way I could because I was, like, he still probably looks at me as a big girl and blames me for not hitting the weight that he, for some reason, thought was my ideal body weight.

MARTIN: You know, after all this, I mean, this was something you loved. You loved running. You ran…

CAIN: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Because it was fun, you know? Do you think you’ll ever run again?

CAIN: Yeah. I haven’t stopped (laughter). I’m still running. I’m still training. I hope to be racing in the next couple of months. The truth is the reason that I have been off the circuit for as long as I have is because I’ve been dealing with the health implications of everything that happened. So I’ve suffered quite a few injuries due to lowered bone density. It’s only been in the last year where I’ve been finally able to maintain a string of health, and my bones are stronger. And I’m feeling good, and I’m just honestly having fun with it again.

And I know I will run for the rest of my life because the actual act and art and feeling of running I love, and I hope to compete on a high level. I hope to be out there showing people that you can come back from really tough, awful times. And so hopefully, you’ll see me out there in 2020 on the track.

MARTIN: That was middle-distance runner Mary Cain talking to us from New York.

Mary Cain, thank you so much for talking with us. I hope we’ll talk again.

CAIN: Yeah. Thank you so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHARLIE HUNTER AND SCOTT AMENDOLA’S “GHOST MALL”)

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Business November 17, 2019

19-Hour London To Sydney ‘Test Flight’ Shows How To Make Long Hauls Tolerable

Australian airline Qantas is exploring new nonstop flights that would be the world’s longest — but 19-plus hours on a plane can be taxing for those on board.

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Passengers on board Qantas flight 7879 took off from London early Thursday morning and arrived in Sydney a bit after noon on Friday — 19 hours and 19 minutes in the air.

So how do you keep people on board from going crazy — or getting deep-vein thrombosis — while they’re cooped up that long?

The Australian airline’s approach on the 11,000 mile flight was to design the meals and lighting carefully, get passengers out of their seats, and focus on the remarkable: two sunrises in one day.

In addition to Sydney, Qantas is exploring a number of new nonstop flight routes that would be longer than any currently operating, including from New York and London to Melbourne and Brisbane. And so, the 52 people on board – largely employees of the airline, along with some journalists – were guinea pigs.

Last month, Qantas landed the first nonstop commercial airline flight from New York to Sydney. That flight took 19 hours, 16 minutes. The carrier says that flight saved passengers three hours over the normal routing, which includes a stop.

Replay yesterday’s record-breaking non-stop flight from @HeathrowAirport to @SydneyAirport by @Qantas as part of their #ProjectSunrise test flights. And learn more about what happens aboard the test flights. https://t.co/pCazPpvn6P #QF7879 pic.twitter.com/LJKD7TDygD

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) November 15, 2019

Jet-lag researchers at the University of Sydney put into practice a number of strategies on the flight related to light, food, and exercise.

To help the body to adjust to the time difference, light in the cabin was correlated to Sydney time as soon as the flight took off. So though the plane took off at 6 a.m. in London, dinner was served and the lights were soon turned down.

Meals were designed to produce specific effects. Dinner was a carb-heavy steak sandwich, easy on the spice, intended to lull passengers to sleep. Drinks were offered, too — on the previous nonstop test flight between New York and Sydney, 38% of passengers said they drank alcohol to hasten sleep (though alcohol can be especially dehydrating on such extended flights).

A carb-heavy dinner is designed to be soporific.

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And passengers were guided to exercise: walking in a circuit around the plane and doing stretches. That part was made easier than on a typical flight, since the plane was mostly empty.

To test the flight’s impact and measure efforts to make it less taxing, test passengers wore activity monitors, kept logs of how they felt, and played a “whack-a-mole” game on an iPad to test their reaction time and attentiveness.

Pilots and cabin crew wore activity monitors and kept sleep diaries. Pilots wore EEG monitors to track their brain activity and alertness, and gave urine samples so their melatonin levels could be used to indicate their body clock status.

The London to Sydney route was flown commercially once before, along a different route in 1989, with just 23 passengers. The longest flight currently operating is Singapore Airlines’ nonstop from Singapore to Newark, which takes 18.5 hours.

The researchers’ tactics seemed to help aboard the new Boeing 787-9 aircraft.

“I feel really well,” test passenger Andy Chevis told Reuters during the descent. “Probably a lot better than I normally would at this point in the flight.”

Unfortunately, it seems that even the most cutting-edge science can’t change that most human of desires: the wish to land.

By hour 17, reported CNN’s Richard Quest, there was “a palpable sense that people are keen to see the end of the flight. They want off as soon as possible.”

Qantas began offering a nonstop London-Perth flight last year; the company says the route has won its highest levels of customer satisfaction and has made its service to London profitable for the first time in 10 years. The cost for one such upcoming roundtrip flight is $1,087. It’s not clear what the pricing will be for the routes the airline is testing now.

The airline says it expects decide whether to go forward with the super-long-haul routes by the end of 2019, with a goal of launching the nonstop routes by 2022.

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Health November 17, 2019

A Young Immigrant Has Mental Illness, And That’s Raising His Risk of Being Deported

José’s son, who has schizophrenia, recently got into a fight that resulted in a broken window — an out-of-control moment from his struggle with mental illness. And it could increase his chances of deportation to a country where mental health care is even more elusive.

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When José moved his family to the United States from Mexico nearly two decades ago, he had hopes of giving his children a better life.

But now he worries about the future of his 21-year-old-son, who has lived in central Illinois since he was a toddler. José’s son has a criminal record, which could make him a target for deportation officials. We’re not using the son’s name because of those risks, and are using the father’s middle name, José, because both men are in the U.S. without permission.

José’s son was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder last year and has faced barriers to getting affordable treatment, in part because he doesn’t have legal status. His untreated condition has led to scrapes with the law.

Mental health advocates say many people with untreated mental illness run the risk of cycling in and out of the criminal justice system, and the situation is particularly fraught for those without legal status.

“If he gets deported he’d practically be lost in Mexico, because he doesn’t know Mexico,” says José, speaking through an interpreter. “I brought him here very young and, with his illness, where is he going to go? He’s likely to end up on the street.”

Legal troubles

José’s son has spent several weeks in jail and numerous days in court over the past year.

On the most recent occasion, the young man sat nervously in the front row of a courtroom in the Champaign County courthouse. Wearing a white button-down shirt and dress pants, his hair parted neatly, he stared at the floor while he waited for the judge to enter.

That day, he pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of property damage. The incident took place at his parents’ house earlier that year. He had gotten into a fight with his brother-in-law and broke a window. His father says it was yet another out-of-control moment from his son’s recent struggles with mental illness.

Before beginning proceedings, the judge read a warning aloud — something that is now standard practice to make sure noncitizens are aware that they could face deportation (or be denied citizenship or re-entry to the U.S.) if they plead guilty in court.

The young man received 12 months’ probation.

After the hearing, he agreed to an interview.

Just a couple of years ago, he says, his life was good: He was living on his own, working, and taking classes at community college. But all that changed when he started hearing voices and began struggling to keep his grip on reality. He withdrew from his friends and family, including his dad.

One time, he began driving erratically, thinking his car was telling him what to do. A month after that episode, he started having urges to kill himself and sometimes felt like hurting others.

In 2018, he was hospitalized twice, and finally got diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

José says that during this time, his son — who had always been respectful and kind — grew increasingly argumentative and even threatened to hurt his parents. The psychiatric hospitalizations didn’t seem to make a difference.

“He asked us for help, but we didn’t know how to help him,” José says. “He’d say, ‘Dad, I feel like I’m going crazy.’ “

José’s son says he met with a therapist a few times and was taking the medication he was prescribed in the hospital. He was also using marijuana to cope, he says.

The prescribed medication helped, he says, but without insurance, he couldn’t afford to pay the $180 monthly cost. When he stopped the meds, he struggled, and continued getting into trouble with the police.

Undocumented and uninsured

For people who are both undocumented and living with a mental illness, the situation is “particularly excruciating,” says Carrie Chapman, an attorney and advocate with the Legal Council for Health Justice in Chicago, who represents many clients like José’s son.

“If you have a mental illness that makes it difficult for you to control behaviors, you can end up in the criminal justice system,” Chapman says.

People with mental illness make up only a small percentage of violent offenders — they are actually more likely, compared to the general population, to be a victim of a violent crime.

Chapman says the stakes are extremely high when people without legal status enter the criminal justice system: they risk getting deported to a country where they may not speak the language, or where it’s even more difficult to obtain quality mental health care.

“It could be a death sentence for them there,” Chapman says. “It’s an incredible crisis, that such a vulnerable young person with serious mental illness falls through the cracks.”

An estimated 4.1 million adults under the age of 65 who live in the U.S. are ineligible for Medicaid or marketplace coverage under the Affordable Care Act because of their immigration status, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Among them are those who are undocumented and other immigrants who otherwise do not fall into one of the federal categories as lawfully in the U.S. People who are protected from deportation through the federal government’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, also are ineligible for coverage under those programs.

For many people in all those groups, affordable health care is out of reach.

Some states have opened up access to Medicaid to undocumented children, including Illinois, California, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Washington and the District of Columbia, according to the National State Conference of Legislatures. But they lose that coverage at age 19, except in California, which recently expanded eligibility through age 25.

For those who can’t get access to affordable health insurance because of their undocumented status, medical care is largely limited to emergency services and treatments covered by charity care or provided by community health centers.

It’s unclear how many people have been deported because of issues linked to mental illness; good records are not available, says Talia Inlender, an attorney for immigrants’ rights with the Los Angeles-based pro bono law firm Public Counsel. But estimates from the ACLU suggest that tens of thousands of immigrants deported each year have a mental disability.

Inlender, who represents people who have mental health disabilities in deportation hearings, says when the lack of access to community-based treatment eventually leads to a person being detained in an immigration facility, that person risks further deterioration because many facilities are not equipped to provide the needed care.

On top of that, she says, immigrants facing deportation in most states don’t generally have a right to public counsel during the removal proceedings and have to represent themselves. Inlender points out that an immigrant with a mental disability could be particularly vulnerable without the help of a lawyer.

(Following a class-action lawsuit, the states of Washington, California and Arizona did establish a right to counsel for immigrants with mental illness facing deportation. For those in other states, there’s a federal program that tries to provide the same right to counsel, but it’s only for detained immigrants who have been properly screened.)

Medicaid for more people?

Chapman and other advocates for immigrants’ rights say expanding Medicaid to cover everyone who otherwise qualifies — regardless of legal status — and creating a broader pathway to U.S. citizenship would be good first steps toward helping people like José’s son.

“Everything else is kind of a ‘spit and duct tape’ attempt by families and advocates to get somebody what they need,” Chapman says.

Critics of the push to expand Medicaid to cover more undocumented people object to the costs, and argue that the money should be spent, instead, on those living in the country legally. (California’s move to expand Medicaid through age 25 will cost the state around $98 million, according to some estimates.)

As for José’s son, he recently found a pharmacy that offers a cheaper version of the prescription drug he needs to treat his mental health condition — so he’s back on medication and feeling better.

He now works as a landscaper and hopes to get back to college someday to study business. But he fears his criminal record could stand in the way of those goals, and he’s aware that his history makes him a target for immigration sweeps.

José says his greatest fear is that his son will end up back in Mexico — away from family and friends, in a country he knows little about.

“There are thousands of people going through these issues … and they’re in the same situation,” José says. “They’re in the dark, not knowing what to do, where to go, or who to ask for help.”

This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Side Effects Public Media, Illinois Public Media and Kaiser Health News. Christine Herman is a recipient of a Rosalynn Carter fellowship for mental health journalism. Follow her on Twitter: @CTHerman

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