Nike completes NOP investigation (but won’t release its findings)

In a Women’s Running story, journalist Erin Strout says Nike has completed the internal investigation it committed to in the wake of Mary Cain’s explosive New York Times video. And while it won’t be making its findings public, it did identify and share some specific initiatives relating to its professional female athletes.

“Nike said the results of the internal investigation will not be made public, but ‘we are using the findings to identify areas where we can do better in supporting female athletes.’” https://t.co/O9NNAqBe0k

— Fast Women (@fast_women) January 28, 2020

Cain’s video exposed unethical coaching practices at the Nike Oregon Project, which was shut down 10 days after USADA served head coach Alberto Salazar with a four-year ban for doping violations on September 30, 2019–practices that included body- and weight-shaming, public weigh-ins and criticism that severely damaged Cain’s physical and mental health and led to her quietly leaving the NOP in 2015. Cain disappeared from the competition circuit, but is now working her way back into the scene under a new coach, while advocating publicly for women athletes.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7PO4QGJgAP/

RELATED: Mary Cain started the conversation we needed to have

The initiatives Strout listed include:

• studying how elite training affects female athletes
• hiring more female coaches
• creating a new senior-level position to oversee international women’s sports marketing
• creating a group of pro female athletes to inform and advise the company on concerns specific to its female athletes
• a new partnership with CrisisTextLine, a confidential, free text message service for people in crisis (in Canada, the service is run by Kids Help Phone)

Strout reports that Cain was invited to participate in the investigation but declined, telling her she perceived a lack of transparency. Regarding the initiatives announced, Cain said she “supports anything that promotes women’s health and opportunities in sports,” but was critical of the decision not to share the results of the investigation publicly, calling it “weak and cowardly.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7PO4QGJgAP/

With the NYT video, Cain joined a number of prominent female runners who had begun to criticize the brand for its treatment of female athletes, including Kara Goucher, Allyson Felix and Alysia Montaño.

RELATED: What former NOP runner Mary Cain has planned for 2020

After an absence of more than three years, Cain recently started racing again. She had a disappointing 3,000m race at the Dr. Sander Invitational in New York on the weekend, but acknowledged in a post-race interview that regaining competitiveness will take time and incremental improvement.