There was another NOP athlete that I’d always wanted to speak to. Ari Lambie had been a promising college runner who joined NOP in 2008. Tipped as a future Olympian, she lasted only 18 months at NOP, disappeared from running and had never spoken publicly about it. Until now.
She told Panorama that as soon as she arrived at NOP, alarms started ringing.
“I was regularly expressing concern that we were putting my body at risk. He would repeatedly tell me, ‘You need to commit, you need to believe in this programme or I’m not going to coach you.'”
Elite athletes have their health closely scrutinised and women often use birth control pills to regulate periods – but Lambie says Salazar and Dr Jeffrey Brown, who treated Salazar’s athletes, went too far.
She says Salazar and Dr Brown changed her contraceptive pill to try to increase her blood volume and boost performance, with little regard for her health.
“I was using one that would give me one period a month and they wanted me to try one that was one period every three months,” she said.
Lambie said Salazar was overtraining her and, despite her warnings, she suffered from injury and fatigue. She said Salazar sent her to Dr Brown – to his office in Houston, Texas – where he put her on thyroid medication even though there was no medical need.
Thyroid medication isn’t on the banned list although many anti-doping agencies, including the UK’s, would like it to be, because some athletes and coaches have abused it believing it can help burn fat quicker and boost performance.
Sports endocrinologist Dr Nicky Keay told Panorama it was “conjecture” that thyroid drugs were a performance enhancer.
She said: “The consequences of giving extra thyroid hormone – to someone whose thyroid gland is working perfectly normally – [is] going to put it out if its optimal functioning range and put the person at risk of other health issues.”
Lambie’s thyroid levels were in the normal range, but she says she was “prescribed the full dose of thyroid [medication]”.
“Within a few weeks I could feel jittery, I could feel my heart beating louder and faster, I was just uneasy – as tired or more tired than before. Mentally I was distraught. It just felt horrible.
“We were just throwing things at me and for a long time. Maybe I still do wonder if it was all those interventions that prevented me, my body, from actually recovering.”
Adam Goucher also says he was prescribed thyroid drugs by Dr Brown, although this was before he joined the Oregon Project. He says he was on medication he didn’t need for a decade and now worries about the impact on his health.
His career at NOP never really took off. “I never felt like myself again. It just never happened,” he said. “My career ended a lot earlier than it should have, and I wish I could have that back.”
Lambie also never fully recovered, but before Nike terminated her contract she says Salazar asked her to trial a supplement, to see if she would fail a drugs test.
“I was given a supplement to take, then gave Alberto urine that he could test to find out if it would, presumably, test positive on some result. But I don’t know what the substance was.
“It confirms in my mind that Alberto was not acting in the spirit of the rules. He was always trying to get as close to breaking them as he could, for his advantage to his athletes, without getting caught.”
In a statement, Salazar said: “The panel made clear that I simply had made ‘unintentional mistakes that violated the rules, apparently motivated by my desire to provide the very best results and training for athletes under my care’.
“At no time did I give any supplement to any Oregon Project athlete for the purpose of determining whether that supplement would result in a positive test for a banned substance.”