Publishers Weekly
12/14/2020
In this probing debut, journalist Hart discusses the rise and fall of the Nike Oregon Project, a professional training program for Nike-sponsored track stars that shut down in 2019 after its coach, Alberto Salazar, was banned from sports for four years by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Hart shares how Salazar regularly arranged for runners to get prescriptions for hormones and steroids, as well as performance-boosting thyroid medications, the side-effects of which included irregular heart rhythms and bone thinning. In addition, Salazar’s grueling training regimen featured 130-mile-per-week running schedules and low-oxygen living quarters that boosted red blood cell counts but left athletes feeling faint and exhausted. Chilling tales from rail-thin female runners whom he emotionally brutalized into losing weight abound; Olympic runner Amy Begley (5’4” and ranging from 106 to 116 lbs.) shares, “If I had a bad workout on a Tuesday, he would tell me how flabby I looked and send me to get weighed. Then, three days later, I would have a great workout and would tell me how lean I looked.” Hart’s particularly talented when it comes to creating disquieting portraits of the runners, whose desperation to win is palpable on the page. This revelatory exposé wows. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"Buckle up for a wild ride through athletics, doping, and the hard-driving company paying $500 million to brand the U.S. track and field team until at least 2040…a deeply reported and revealing look at the dire commercialization of American sports." — Kirkus Reviews
"Hart’s particularly talented when it comes to creating disquieting portraits of the runners, whose desperation to win is palpable on the page. This revelatory exposé wows." — Publishers Weekly
"Win At All Costs will make you question why on earth losing integrity is ever worth winning a race. There are important considerations here: can a cheater tell the truth, and does every athlete have his or her own line to draw when it comes to what is acceptable to boost performance? Win At All Costs will answer these questions and send you on a never-ending quest for truth and justice." — Deena Kastor, Olympic Medalist and American Record Holder and New York Times bestselling author of Let Your Mind Run
“Matt Hart’s meticulous reporting documents the toxic culture cultivated by the running world’s most powerful coach and one of the sport’s most influential brands. Win At All Costs illuminates the devastating consequences the Nike Oregon Project’s poisonous atmosphere and illicit practices had for athletes, and the tremendous personal cost borne by whistleblowers like Kara and Adam Goucher and Steve Magness, who chose to follow their moral compass.” — Christie Aschwanden, award-winning science journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Good to Go
"Beautifully-crafted and richly-reported, Matt Hart's Win at All Costs reads like a James Bond thriller, plumbing the sad depths of professional running's underworld. Like Lance Armstrong and the 2017 Houston Astros, it turns out that champion runner/trainer Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project were also too good to be true." — Dan Shaughnessy, New York Times bestselling author of Francona and The Curse of the Bambino
"After years of rumors and speculation, Matt Hart sets out to peel back the layers of secrecy that protected the most powerful coach in running. What he finds will leave you indignant—and wondering whether anything in the high-stakes world of Olympic sport has truly changed." — Alex Hutchinson, New York Times bestselling author of Endure
"Matt Hart digs into the story of the Nike Oregon Project and the infrastructure that supported it with a degree of depth, insight, and accuracy you won't find anywhere else. It's as captivating as it is unsettling and, at times, almost unbelievable. I couldn't put it down." — Mario Fraioli, writer and host of the morning shakeout newsletter and podcast
“Win At All Costs is essential reading for anyone who wants a better understanding of the systemic rot within the richest, most powerful company in running. It’s an important reminder that Alberto Salazar is not so much a rogue actor, as a cog in a much larger machine. At its heart, this book is nothing less than an indictment of American sports capitalism.” — Martin Fritz Huber, "In Stride" columnist for Outside magazine
Dan Shaughnessy
"Beautifully-crafted and richly-reported, Matt Hart's Win at All Costs reads like a James Bond thriller, plumbing the sad depths of professional running's underworld. Like Lance Armstrong and the 2017 Houston Astros, it turns out that champion runner/trainer Alberto Salazar and the Nike Oregon Project were also too good to be true."
Mario Fraioli
"Matt Hart digs into the story of the Nike Oregon Project and the infrastructure that supported it with a degree of depth, insight, and accuracy you won't find anywhere else. It's as captivating as it is unsettling and, at times, almost unbelievable. I couldn't put it down."
Alex Hutchinson
"After years of rumors and speculation, Matt Hart sets out to peel back the layers of secrecy that protected the most powerful coach in running. What he finds will leave you indignant—and wondering whether anything in the high-stakes world of Olympic sport has truly changed."
Deena Kastor
"Win At All Costs will make you question why on earth losing integrity is ever worth winning a race. There are important considerations here: can a cheater tell the truth, and does every athlete have his or her own line to draw when it comes to what is acceptable to boost performance? Win At All Costs will answer these questions and send you on a never-ending quest for truth and justice."
Martin Fritz Huber
“Win At All Costs is essential reading for anyone who wants a better understanding of the systemic rot within the richest, most powerful company in running. It’s an important reminder that Alberto Salazar is not so much a rogue actor, as a cog in a much larger machine. At its heart, this book is nothing less than an indictment of American sports capitalism.”
Christie Aschwanden
Matt Hart’s meticulous reporting documents the toxic culture cultivated by the running world’s most powerful coach and one of the sport’s most influential brands. Win At All Costs illuminates the devastating consequences the Nike Oregon Project’s poisonous atmosphere and illicit practices had for athletes, and the tremendous personal cost borne by whistleblowers like Kara and Adam Goucher and Steve Magness, who chose to follow their moral compass.
Kirkus Reviews
2020-07-28
Buckle up for a wild ride through athletics, doping, and the hard-driving company paying $500 million to brand the U.S. track and field team until at least 2040.
Nike, writes freelance journalist Hart, is “possibly the most recognizable brand on the planet, and its co-founder Phil Knight is one of the richest men to have ever lived, with a net worth estimated by Forbes of $35 billion.” The company is a marketing juggernaut particularly adept at getting famous athletes to wear their apparel and gear so the rest of us will buy it. The magic continues to work despite major scandals involving Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong. There’s a lot going on in this lengthy book—sometimes too much—but for the most part, the author succeeds in telling an exciting story of business and athletic malfeasance. He diligently follows the rise and fall of Alberto Salazar, the coach of the company’s secret running program, the Nike Oregon Project. Despite widespread evidence of doping and abundant whistleblowing, Salazar received only a four-year ban in 2019. Hart is the perfect person to tell the tale; in 2017, someone leaked him the Salazar doping report, and the New York Times asked him to write it up. He recounts the long process of tracking Salazar’s activities, as he continued to stuff his athletes with all manner of drugs while bending the rules to their breaking points—e.g., having them diagnosed with hypothyroidism by his pet endocrinologist so they could take “off-label…prescription drugs as performance enhancers.” At one point in his career, distance runner Mo Farah was taking 100,000 IUs of vitamin D per week (recommended weekly intake is 4,200), plus calcitonin, a bone strengthener; ferrous sulfate, an iron supplement; and L-carnitine infusions. Even if the penalty for Salazar was meager, the stakes remain high, and Hart successfully uncovers an unsettling, aggressive corporate culture.
A touch overlong, but a deeply reported and revealing look at the dire commercialization of American sports.
