Nike Oregon Project: The dangerous urge for the perfect athlete body

She was considered the fastest girl in the US - a few years later she was gone from the train. What happened in between and how she suffered under the regime of Alberto Salazar, who has since been banned for doping, was recently publicized by Mary Cain in The New York Times, and she is now talking about suicidal thoughts in SPIEGEL.

• Mary Cain about her agony in the Nike Oregon Project

She was "mentally and physically abused," says the former miracle worker, who joined the Nike Oregon Project (NOP) for head coach Salazar at the age of 16.

Cain reports the pressure to lose more and more weight, from a missed period to three years, resulting bone fractures. What is behind it, what evolution has to do with it and when the urge for the perfect body is dangerous, explains the sports physician Petra Platen.

SPIEGEL : Through the sponsor, the Nike Oregon Project had millions of dollars available for state-of-the-art equipment and innovative training methods. Yet those responsible seem to have been obsessed with weight. What is behind the thought: Thinner is better?

Platen : This is simply because in many sports your own body weight must be worn, that is, a certain mass must be moved from A to B. In competitive sports, this plays a decisive role when it comes to fractions of seconds. For this I need an ideal ratio of mass and power.

SPIEGEL : What is the ideal relationship? Is there the perfect athlete body?

Platen : In principle yes. Only that is not universally valid in the sense of: Thinner is always better. This is a sport-specific topic. When running, the propulsion is significantly out of the legs. The upper body or the arms are basically unnecessary, dead mass, which I carry around with me. And the more mass I have in these places, the more power I use in my legs and I lose for propulsion. In other words, any fatty tissue is completely superfluous, and muscles should be located where they are needed.

SPIEGEL : Mary Cain was 16 years old when she joined the NOP. The transition from girl to woman is complicated anyway. What problems does this development bring to competitive sports?

Platen : The basic principle of the process that occurs during puberty is: The woman should get ovulated and the body to be prepared for the pregnancy. The female sex hormones, however, like every steroid hormone, affect every single body cell and thus every body system and bring about numerous changes. For example, progesterone leads to increased water retention, estrogen to a gender-specific body fat distribution - both are dead mass in sports sense. The more the weight optimization is exhausted, the more the hormone level changes.

SPIEGEL : What exactly happens?

Platen : The body adapts to the chronically low energy intake. This is pretty clever from the evolution point of view. There were always phases in the course of human development in which there was much food and in which there was little. So, with little food availability, the body shuts down all systems to ensure survival. And what's turned off first is the endocrine hormone axis that targets reproduction. So, if Ms. reduces food intake, it is a signal to the body that the environment is not fit for pregnancy, so the necessary procedures are stopped.

SPIEGEL : So is it a warning signal if the period does not occur?

Platen : Yes. Because it shows yes: I have a deficit. The question is, how do I handle it, how can I optimize the relationship between calorie intake and consumption so that I still get my period but still have as little body mass as possible? This is really a very difficult game. It does not mean that I can not do sports anymore if the period is absent. But it is a tightrope walk. In high-performance sports, in sports where body weight is a key performance factor, the system can quickly tip over.

SPIEGEL : The NOP should also have worked with questionable thyroid treatments to reduce weight. What is behind it?

Plates : Thyroid hormones affect the mitochondria. Their task is to extract energy from the combustion of nutrients, which can then be used for many processes in the body. Thyroid hormones increase heat production and increase energy burning. In other words, if I have elevated thyroid levels, every single body cell is practically screwed up - the opposite of what happens when you eat too little. People who are overactive notice this because they are always warm, they can eat a lot and still lose weight.

SPIEGEL : And of course you can also control that from the outside.

Platen : However, this is a serious interference with the physiological regulatory system. Once that's gotten out of hand, it can take a long time to get back into shape.

Kevin Morris / Corbis Sports / Getty ImagesBranger about her torment on the Nike Oregon Project "I had suicidal thoughts and started to scratch myself"

SPIEGEL : Mary Cain told SPIEGEL that she had become more prone to fatigue fractures as a result of the NOP optimization craze, that her shins broke, her sacrum and her hip twice. Is that related?

Platen : The female sex hormone estrogen also stimulates the bone system. In case of deficiency, there is an increased descaling of the bones, it develops an osteoporosis. In competitive sports this can be expressed in a higher vulnerability to injury in the sense of stress fractures.

SPIEGEL : Can the bone density be rebuilt?

Platen : Only very hard. Humans reach the maximum bone density at the age of 25, 30 years. Subsequently, the bone mass is gradually reduced and by sport, only relatively little can be gained again. Then the train is almost gone.

SPIEGEL : Which conditions are ideal for building up bone mass?

Platen : The most important are the hormones, so the estrogens. Calcium and vitamin D are also crucial factors. It also needs a stimulus. Bone building only works if it is irritated mechanically, for example through sports.

SPIEGEL : So athletes do a lot right too. What can be done to avoid getting caught in the vicious circle?

Platen : I would not consider weight loss to be negative in principle. In high-performance sports, this is simply an important component. The competitive athletes must pay attention to their weight, and extremely. But this just has to happen in such a way that it is just barely healthy. It's like the training dosage: I have to train amounts and intensities, what's important is that I choose the right amount. And that's exactly how it is with nutrition.