body shaming at Oregon?

[scottmitchell74]

Maybe I'm off base but I've always believed that the ideal weight for a runner is the weight at which if they gain weight he/she will be slower and if they lose weight he/she will be slower, and that weight is athlete specific and can't be derived from a height/weight chart or by targeting a specific % body fat.

I agree with this and that's what makes this hard to solve. To find that sweet-spot each athlete will have to push things beyond their "safe zone" (from which they can then back off) and won't know until they do.

Jerry Rice experimented with this very thing. He found that too much size/muscle made him a slower less crisp route-runner, but when he took his famously grueling running sessions too far he wouldn't have in-game in-season burst and power.

[Conor Dary]

Right...I deleted it.

[18.99s]

What if Nick Symmonds ran for Oregon?

According to TeamUSA.org he was 5'10 and 165 lbs, and visually he was more muscular than just about everybody else he ran against in international meets. They probably would have told him he's too big and heavy to be an elite middle distance runner, and forced him to lose 15 lbs.

[polevaultpower]

USATF reaction to the article:

<<USATF strongly believes in a culture of safe sport, promoting respect, and preventing abuse, bullying, and harassment to create a healthy environment for athletes to safely train and compete. USATF encourages members who feel they have been abused, hazed, or harassed either physically or emotionally to immediately report any such concerns through a number of ways, as detailed on its website: https://www.usatf.org/safe-sport/rep...port-complaint.

USATF does not provide support to college athletes. Rather, USATF funding for elite athletes is based on an objective number of criteria which include place finishes at national and international competitions, national and international rankings, and other criteria developed by members of USATF’s High Performance Committee.>>

Please report abuse so that USATF and the Center for SafeSport can sit on the case for years and ghost the victims.

[polevaultpower]

I feel like half of the people commenting either did not read the article or failed to notice some of the major red flags:

One athlete says when she was given her first DEXA scan at Oregon, she already had not had a menstrual period in a year and a half. She says the nutritionist knew that.

The scan showed her body fat percentage at 16%. She was told by the nutritionist she should consider lowering it to about 13%. And while the suggestion came from the nutritionist, she is certain the message originated with the coaching staff.

16% is well within the range of a "good" bodyfat percentage for an elite female athlete, but more importantly, no female athlete should ever be encouraged to lose weight if they are not menstruating (unless the reason for not menstruating is known and a doctor approves, which was clearly not the case here). The advice to drop from 16% to 13% for an athlete with amenorrhea is so wildly irresponsible that the person giving that advice should have been fired on the spot.

Now is a good time to mention that anyone can call themselves a "nutritionist", the term is meaningless. A dietician is actually certified.

After her first DEXA scan, the nutritionist told her she couldn’t travel to away track meets unless her body fat level was below 12%.

Again, WTF???? First, basing participation on bodyfat percentage and not performance is super problematic (unless you are dealing with an athlete recovering from an eating disorder, in which case the medical staff need to be making the call, not the coach), second, 12% is unhealthy for many (most?) women and a wildly inappropriate standard (not that there should be a standard at all).


Whether or not weight and/or body fat percentages should ever be discussed at the college level is certainly debatable, but that's not the real issue here, the real issue here is that the standards they are holding the athletes to are not healthy for most of those athletes.

[Wiederganger]

Whether or not weight and/or body fat percentages should ever be discussed at the college level is certainly debatable, but that's not the real issue here, the real issue here is that the standards they are holding the athletes to are not healthy for most of those athletes.

I agree that it should never be discussed at college level, full stop. Those athletes are still developing, emotionally and physically.

For elite, professional/senior athletes, I think there will always be a target that some feel is ideal for performance, but that is otherwise unhealthy. And then that is down to the individual whether they take that risk. Combat sportspeople, rugby & football players, jockeys etc. all compete in sports with an increased risk of injury, or health issues caused by sudden weight loss/'making the weight', and it is their choice to do so. Athletes who feel they have to meet a certain weight are in the same boat. But the bottom line is, they should never be pressured into it by anyone. But as an adult, if they want to take that risk, let them.

[sprintdoc]

As polevaultpower notes USATF posting CYA media release for athletes to report to Safe Sport. Its my understanding that has been done in this case. Perhaps what will really get things moving is the lawyer for Mary Cain representing the athletes at UO. As PVPower notes too many are overlooking some major red flags in the article. The body shaming aspect of how the Dexa scans were used go far beyond an aid and into the zone of nothing but extortion in the way that Johnson was using them.

I would point out it is very telling that we have seen not a peep from a former or current even Duck athlete defending Johnson in over 3 days other than the non-scholarship sprinter Goe quoted in the article! Not a single tweet. Me thinks that says more than even Goe's article which speaks extremely loud obviously.

[Conor Dary]

Fwiw there has been absolutely no coverage of this story in the RG. Of course it is a crap paper these days.

[Conor Dary]

Former Oregon Runners Corroborate Accusations of Body Composition Focus in Track Program


Katie Rainsberger confirmed she had multiple DEXA scans a year. A nutritionist celebrated her falling body fat percentage.

Katie Rainsberger, a top distance runner at the University of Oregon from the fall of 2016 until she transferred to the University of Washington in the summer of 2018, confirmed the allegations in an October 25 Oregonian report that said head coach Robert Johnson’s focus on body composition fostered disordered eating among team members.

Despite efforts by the women’s distance coach at the time, Maurica Powell, to protect her from the Oregon track program’s focus on weight and body fat, Rainsberger said she thought constantly about what she could and could not eat, stopped getting her period regularly, and missed almost five months of running during her sophomore year.
She had a stress fracture in her right talus (a bone in the foot), and a tear in her right Achilles tendon.

https://www.runnersworld.com/runners...-body-shaming/

[Conor Dary]

Meanwhile...

Oregon Ducks athletic programs no longer can monitor athletes’ weight, body fat percentage

https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/202...ercentage.html

[Atticus]

Meanwhile...
Oregon Ducks athletic programs no longer can monitor athletes’ weight, body fat percentage
https://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/202...ercentage.html

Typical over-reaction. BMI is important to athletes!

[Conor Dary]

Did you read the article?

According to the revised written protocols, athletes can choose to be tested. But results of the test “should not be reported beyond the student-athlete, dietitian and relevant medical personnel. Reporting of individual results to coaches is not permitted.”

[Atticus]

Did you read the article?

[incorrect headline]

* athletes can choose to be tested.
* results of the test “should not be reported beyond the student-athlete, dietitian and relevant medical personnel.
* Reporting of individual results to coaches is not permitted.”

As it should have been from the get-go . . . of course.

[Conor Dary]

And as usual you completely missed the important point.

[br]

British runner Phily Bowden on why she quit leading athletics programme (Oregon) in latest controversy that could have serious implications for Nike

'I confided that I had an eating disorder – they told me to lose three pounds'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/athletic...-three-pounds/

“The initial conversation of ‘here are your results’ was coupled with ‘let’s try to get a couple of per cent off that fat percentage and maybe cut a couple of pounds at the same time’,” Bowden, now 26, tells Telegraph Sport. “That’s not what I was expecting to hear.”