Win at All Costs: Inside Nike Running and Its Culture of Deception

In this probing debut, journalist Hart discusses the rise and fall of the Nike Oregon Project, a professional training program for Nike-sponsored track stars that shut down in 2019 after its coach, Alberto Salazar, was banned from sports for four years by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Hart shares how Salazar regularly arranged for runners to get prescriptions for hormones and steroids, as well as performance-boosting thyroid medications, the side-effects of which included irregular heart rhythms and bone thinning. In addition, Salazar’s grueling training regimen featured 130-mile-per-week running schedules and low-oxygen living quarters that boosted red blood cell counts but left athletes feeling faint and exhausted. Chilling tales from rail-thin female runners whom he emotionally brutalized into losing weight abound; Olympic runner Amy Begley (5’4” and ranging from 106 to 116 lbs.) shares, “If I had a bad workout on a Tuesday, he would tell me how flabby I looked and send me to get weighed. Then, three days later, I would have a great workout and would tell me how lean I looked.” Hart’s particularly talented when it comes to creating disquieting portraits of the runners, whose desperation to win is palpable on the page. This revelatory exposé wows. (Sept.)