Alberto Salazar

Alberto Salazar is a retired American athlete and coach of Cuban origin, specializing in long-distance running.

In the late 1970s, Alberto Salazar became a major figure in marathon running, and his prominence even extended into the early 1980s, thanks to being one of the most charismatic athletes and one who gave the greatest boost to road running. All the fame he obtained began with being the athlete who achieved the most records in his country, including victories three consecutive times in the New York Marathon.

Born in Cuba in 1958, he left the island with his parents and initially settled in Manchester, Connecticut, before being relocated to Wayland, Massachusetts, where he began his career as a collegiate athlete. He was recruited by the University of Oregon, where he quickly began to stand out in open track races. As a sophomore in 1978, he participated alongside Bill Rodgers in an endurance event organized in Massachusetts, managing on that occasion to defeat him.

By 1980, he made his debut at the New York Marathon, and as a true revelation, he achieved victory in the race. In 1981, he won in New York again with a time of 2:08:13, which was recorded as the best historical time for the New York course. A year later, he repeated the success of the two previous years, surpassing Mexican runner Rodolfo Gómez on this occasion.

In 1982, he starred alongside Dick Beardsley in one of the most dramatic finishes in the Boston Marathon, where neither of the two competing men gave the other any respite, until the moment when Alberto Salazar managed to overtake and win the race. During 1981 and 1982, it was Alberto Salazar who ranked first among athletes participating in marathon racing.

During his six-year career, he managed to set six national records and only one world record. Due to a large number of injuries, Alberto Salazar withdrew from competition for a long period; however, he returned to participate in 1994, doing so in the streets, but with a difference—this time he participated in ultramarathon distances, where he achieved a great triumph at the Comrades Marathon, a 53-mile race held in South Africa.

On June 30, 2007, on the Nike campus in Beaverton, Oregon, his heart stopped due to a massive blockage of his right coronary artery.

Just before a light jogging session and in the presence of some of his most beloved students, Galen Rupp and Josh Rohatinsky, Salazar, now a coach of promising distance runners, clutched his neck, dropped to one knee on the grass of Tualatin Valley, and according to Rohatinsky, "started turning blue."

In less than four minutes, cardiac massages from Louis Barahona and Doug Douglass, doctors with the Tualatin National Guard and the doctor from an American Football camp that was taking place at Nike headquarters, stabilized Salazar. There began the work of the defibrillators that restored Salazar's heart in a total of 26 minutes, after eight electric shocks... and after a total of 14 minutes in cardiac arrest.

Technically, the cardiac massages that supplied the halted activity of the heart were the key to Salazar's resurrection: they prevented his brain from being deprived of oxygen for an irreparable period, which is normally estimated between four and six minutes.

In the Nike organization, Salazar's prestige and charisma are inconceivable: today Alberto represents a myth, a living bridge between the present and past of the legendary Oregon Runners Club: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Bill Bowerman, Mary Decker...

Salazar, whose dissident father left Cuba one hour before he could be arrested by Fidel Castro's political police, sculpted himself as a distance runner under the orders of Bill Dellinger, Coach Bowerman's successor. "I wanted to win everything. The marathon was a duel where someone had to give in sooner or later. It wasn't going to be me." Dellinger inspired him after grueling training sessions: "You're a great guy, Alberto."

Today, Alberto Salazar has undergone two operations to clear hereditary blockages in both coronary arteries. He wears a pacemaker. And he coaches his Oregon Project students: Rupp, Rohatinsky, Amy Yoder-Begley, the Osaka medalist Kara Goucher, and her husband, Adam, all deeply religious, of one faith or another. He cannot exceed 130 heartbeats per minute. But he already runs. He lives.

Currently, Alberto Salazar resides in Oregon, and apart from being an important executive of a prestigious sports company, he is a distance running coach. At the 2013 Moscow World Athletics Championship, he was the coach of British runner Mo Farah, who achieved the double in 5,000 and 10,000 meters.

During his six-year career, he managed to set six national records. He is currently retired from competition, but remains very connected to sport. He lives in Oregon with his wife Molly and his three children. He coaches a high school athletics team in Portland and works as a Nike advisor in talent recruitment and development in athletics.

After retiring as a runner, he dedicated himself to coaching other athletes as director of the Nike Oregon Project. Thus, he has coached great athletics stars such as Mo Farah, Clayton Murphy, Donavan Brazier, Yomif Kejelcha, Sifan Hassan, and Konstanze Klosterhalfen.

In October 2019, during the Doha World Championship, his sanction was announced for several infractions related to doping of athletes. In January 2022, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced his lifetime ban after being accused of sexual abuse of an athlete.