By: Benjamin He
Galen Rupp, media-shy, once the signature runner of a team led by the now-disgraced-coach, Alberto Salazar, is the greatest runner of the 21st century.
In Rupp’s home state of Oregon, he is honored as a hero. Oregon was also the site of the World’s Athletics Championships, and as a teenager, Rupp was already the fastest boy anyone had ever seen.
Now 36, Rupp is preparing for the World Championship men’s marathon, and if he wins, his legacy shall forever be secured on his home soil.
Rupp is more of a fierce competitor, willing to elbow fields out of his Sonic-speed path of overpowered momentum. He has been dominating so hard that his national competitions became races for second or third.
His career has had its fair share of injuries, but he has persisted in entering the greatest challenges. But yet, somehow, one of his greatest challenges would be to be the embodiment of the guilt-by-association state.
“Every athlete is entitled to the presumption of innocence, unless and until proven guilty through the legal process, that they have committed a violation,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. “It’s not fair to convict any athlete otherwise, but the reality is, in today’s world, it’s the same lesson I tell my kid, your choices do have consequences, and not everyone accepts that principle, and the choices of whom you hang out with, you will be viewed by the company you keep.”
Once a top runner of the country and co-founder of Letsrun.com, Weldon Johnson commented on how associations “breed distrust.”
“I think we should evaluate his career like everyone else but with more skepticism since one athlete is tied more closely to Alberto than anyone else and that is Galen Rupp,” Johnson said last week. “Based on performance, he’s the greatest American male long distance runner of his generation, since Steve Prefontaine probably.”
Rupp (whose lawyer didn’t make him available for comment), has never failed a drug test, both the scheduled ones at races and the completely random non-competition ones that all international athletes must submit.
Alberto Salazar, an ex-world recorder, three-time New York champion, and 1982 Boston champion, found Rupp by watching him play high school soccer in Portland, Oregon. He had believed that a blend of speed and endurance would be great for elite distance running.
Salazar founded the Nike Oregon Project in 2001, which was a distance running team that focused specifically on developing athletes. Rupp trained in this program, as well as Britain’s Mo Farah.
The program worked wonders on Farah and Rupp. On a 2012 Saturday, in London, where the 2012 Olympics were taking place, both of them zipped past the Kenyans and Ethiopians to finish the 10,000-meter race 1-2. Seven days later, Farah took the gold for the 5,000 meter and Rudd took seventh. Rupp eventually won the U.S. Olympic Trial marathon in 2016 and 2020. He also took the bronze in the 2016 games and claimed victory at the Chicago Marathon in 2017.
However, after years of investigations, Salazar was issued a 4-year-ban by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (doping is the use of banned drugs in sports to enhance one’s strength) in 2019. He was charged with multiple doping-related felonies, including things like trafficking testosterone. Nike decided to close the Oregon Project following his ban.
In the same year, two female athletes he once coached, Mary Cain and Amy Yoder Begley, claimed that Salazar had publicly ridiculed and body-shamed them when they were in the Oregon Project. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, which is charged with investigating and ruling on such cases, decided to ban him from the sport for life.
Rupp now is coached by Mike Smith, who is the coach at Northern Arizona University.
Despite Salazar’s history, however, no one has even suggested the idea that that incident should put even the slightest dent in Rupp’s achievements. “Rupp is hands-down the greatest American distance runner of all time,” said Amby Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon champion, and the former editor of Runner’s World. “He’s awkward — not media friendly — and, yes, has that association with Alberto. But he has been at the top for an unbelievably long time, almost two decades, has never failed a test of any kind that I know of, and almost always performs at his best in the big-time competitions.”