By: Sarah Wang
Galen Rupp is America’s most remarkable long-distance runner of the 21st century. He’s won the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Olympic Trial races, bronze in the 2016 Olympics, and the Chicago Marathon in 2017.
However, after his former coach Alberto Salazar was caught doping and body-shaming multiple female athletes he coached, many wonder if Rupp’s association with Salazar will taint Rupp’s reputation as an athlete.
After years of speculation, authorities proved that Salazar doped many athletes he coached before races. He kept the fact that he was trafficking testosterone hidden by meddling with the doping control process. Mary Cain and Amy Yoder Begley, both students of Salazar, exposed how Salazar had body-shamed both of them when running for the Oregon Project.
The U.S. Center for SafeSport banned Salazar from the sport for life after they found Salazar digitally doped a runner during a massage.
Nike shut down Salazar’s running team for developing athletes, the Nike Oregon Project, and Rupp now trains with Mike Smith, a Northern Arizona University coach.
Although the media has yet to suggest that Rupp’s reputation has been tainted by the actions of his former coach, running as a sport has such a long history of doping incidents that the public has been speculating about Rupp’s relationship with Salazar.
“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,” Weldon Johnson, co-founder of Letsrun.com, said last week. “Based on performance, he’s the greatest American male long-distance runner of his generation, since Steve Prefontaine probably.”
Rupp himself has never tested positive for steroids nor failed a drug test, yet every renowned runner has inevitably had a relationship with a coach, friend, or teammate who used ability-enhancing drugs at some point in their career.
“Rupp is hands-down the greatest American distance runner of all time,” said Amby Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon champion. “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.”