Nike Oregon Project

Nike Oregon Project

Nike Oregon Project singlet and logo
Abbreviation	NOP
Formation	2001[1]
Type	Elite athlete training group
Location	Beaverton, Oregon
Website	Official Website

Nike's Oregon Project is a group created by the athletic shoe company Nike in 2001 to promote American long-distance running.^[1] The runners live in the Portland, Oregon, area and train at Nike's headquarters campus located just outside the Portland suburb of Beaverton, Oregon.^[1] Some of the runners in the group live in a specially designed house where filters are used to remove oxygen from the air to simulate living at high elevation. Numerous studies^[2] have shown that living at altitude causes the athlete to develop more red blood cells, increasing athletic performance. In addition to this, special software is used to monitor electrodes attached to the athletes, determining what condition they are in and how far or fast they can train. They use underwater and low-gravity treadmills. They also have a collaboration with Colorado Altitude Training (CAT) for their hypoxic training equipment.^[3]

Creation

Nike's Oregon Project was created by Nike Vice President Thomas E. Clarke after reportedly being disgusted at the lackluster performance of American athletes in long-distance events since the early 1980s when Oregon Project coach Alberto Salazar won the New York City Marathon three consecutive times from 1980-1982.

When the project first began, Salazar chose some of the top runners of the time that he believed had great potential. Eventually, however, he realized that since these athletes were older, their bad habits had already been engrained and this led Salazar to instead take on younger athletes. This led to his taking on of Matthew Centrowitz, Galen Rupp and Adam and Kara Goucher. These athletes went on to be more successful because Salazar was able to work with them from a younger age.^[4]

Athletes

List of current athletes, according to their website:^[5]

• Galen Rupp
• Matthew Centrowitz, Jr.
• Jordan Hasay
• Treniere Moser
• Shannon Rowbury
• Suguru Osako
• Craig Engels
• Clayton Murphy
• Eric Jenkins
• Sifan Hassan
• Yomif Kejelcha
• Donavan Brazier

Leadership

The health of coach and project director Alberto Salazar has been in question since he suffered a heart attack at Nike's Beaverton campus on June 30, 2007. From that time, Salazar has been implanted with a defibrillator, and he has planned to take a more limited role with Nike Oregon Project. In June 2008, Salazar chose his tentative successor as head of the Oregon Project, hiring cross country coach Jerry Schumacher away from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.^[9] In turn, Schumacher has brought his top distance protégé, Matt Tegenkamp, with him to join the program along with Chris Solinsky and UW–Madison Freshman turned pro Evan Jager.^[10]

Criticisms

In 2002, the Oregon Project came under scrutiny from the United States Anti-Doping Agency, which formed a think tank to discuss the ethics of the high altitude house. The Agency's Senior Managing Director, Larry Bowers said, "The argument for altitude rooms is that they make up for those athletes that can't live high. What they don't take into account is that people living high don't get the benefits of training low." Alberto Salazar was confident the Anti-Doping Agency would ultimately approve the altitude house, saying that it's no different from other legal scientific advances like heart rate monitors and sports drinks.^[3]

In 2006, the subject was revisited more thoroughly by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) which claimed that it could be equivalent to blood doping and therefore they should be banned; however, on September 16, 2006, Dick Pound of the WADA announced that "...the overwhelming consensus of our health, medicine and research committees – was that, at this time, it is not appropriate to do so."^[11] No explanation was given as to how WADA would have enforced a ban.

The Oregon Project has also been criticized by college track coaches for recruiting Galen Rupp directly out of high school to go live at the Oregon house and forgo attending University of Oregon for his first year.^[1]

On May 19, 2017, The New York Times wrote an article about a leaked and unverified US Anti-Doping Agency(USADA) report that claimed Salazar worked with athletes to increase their L-carnitine levels. The main accusation involved was that the intravenous method used could potentially have violated USADA anti-doping rules if the amount infused was too high.^[12] However, after at least 3 years of investigation,^[13] USADA did not uncover enough evidence to make a case that any violations actually occurred, while all previous accusations were addressed in public releases.^{[14] [15]}

References