Slim to Win
Slim to Win
Athletes describe a "toxic culture" inside the University of Colorado Boulder running program
Earlier this week Running World published the results of an internal University of Colorado Boulder investigation into its highly successful cross-country and track program. The investigation found what multiple athletes described as a “toxic culture,” especially for female athletes. Almost half of the female athletes interviewed reported negative experiences with their coaches, a similar number reported lack of trust in their coaches, and many reported mental health issues associated with their time in the program.
One athlete described the culture as,
“[B]rutality, physically damaging, emotionally damaging, hellishly difficult, meat-grinder, machine-like, and mechanical. [They] compared it to Army training...happy to come out the other side.”
The University of Colorado Boulder has a storied history in distance running, winning many championships. In his response to the report, coach Mark Wetmore leads with these accomplishments:
“We are very proud of the athletic successes the CU cross country and track & field program has achieved during our tenure: 39 conference team titles, 8 NCAA team titles, 27 individual NCAA champions and a dozen members of the United States Olympic Team.'“
Many athletes report positive experiences in the program, especially male athletes. Some attribute the program with their athletic successes.
Here I share some details of the report and the University’s response to it, which is essentially to continue business as usual. This response is completely unacceptable.
Before I continue — I’ve been a faculty member at Colorado for 22 years, I oversaw a Sports Governance Center in the university’s athletics department where I sat down the hall from the running coaches. While there, I heard first-hand from many associated with the program about its culture and I shared details of what I heard with the athletic director. The details in the report, some of which I share below, are troubling, but for those close to the program they cannot be a surprise.
The report focused on the program’s use of body-composition testing, training regimes, and program culture. The body-composition testing involves measuring skin folds at seven different locations on the athlete’s body to determine their body fat — this is called the “sum of sevens.”
There is debate in the scientific literature on the significance of body fat metrics for assessing the performance of elite athletes. For instance, one recent study reported, “extremely low relative body weight or low body fat were no criteria for the level of performance, therefore, pressure towards too low values may be disadvantageous.” There is little doubt however that body composition testing can readily result in mental health issues and eating disorders among athletes, especially women. One review called this the result of an ideology of “slim to win,” which places a pathological emphasis on body composition.
The Colorado running program seems to have fully adopted the ideology of “slim to win,” as revealed not only in athlete interviews but also in team emails released in the report. You can see this clearly illustrated in the emails reproduced below from coaches to athletes, which state that “body composition is second only to serious training.” Based on this belief the program regularly measured athlete body composition, a practice that many athletes believed to be compulsory.
Many athletes reported that these practices were harmful. From the interviews, despite the report’s attempt at anonymity, it appears (fairly obviously) that Witnesses 44 and 45 are coaches Mark Wetmore and Heather Burroughs, and Witness 46 is associate athletic director for performance nutrition, Laura Anderson. The other numbered witnesses in the excerpts below are athletes.
“Witness 24 developed a severe eating disorder as a direct result of Witness 46’s sum of seven tests. Witness 24 had an eating disorder in high school, brought on by stress, but at CU, their disordered eating worsened. Witness 24 ate the same breakfast and lunch as a first-year student and tried to take their coach’s advice by “living like a monk.” Meaning that it was all about running and diet, that is it. Witness 24 said it was a very unhealthy atmosphere on the team, and team members were constantly weighing themselves on the scale “
Another athlete said that, “they have been diagnosed with PTSD, and they believe it is in part from their experience with the coaches at CU. They went through a lot of turmoil running at CU because of the stress encountered with the team. They described CU track and field as a toxic environment with no sense of community.”
Another said: “Witness 44’s and Witness 45’s runners are like darts. The ones that stick to the target become All-Americans and Olympians, and the ones that fall to the ground become broken, both physically and emotionally . . . [they] continued to say, “I can’t believe I made it through that (program) alive. . . Much of my pain and misery is because of that one person (Witness 45)”, and at times, the coaches took things too far, which this witness considered abuse. This witness continues to think about their weight whenever they look in the mirror. “
And still another, “still has ongoing issues with body image that they struggle with, even after leaving the team. They said CU’s second and third-tier runners do not get individualized training or any attention. Those athletes will either physically break, mentally break, or both. They heard a description of the CU team as...the coaches throw eggs at a wall, and the ones who do not break are the winners.”
Other athletes reported positive experiences in the program, especially after Wetmore contacted former members of the program soliciting supportive comments, which were provided to the inquiry team (these are reproduced in the report’s Addendum B).
The Inquiry Team’s conclusions are deeply concerning:
“The Inquiry Team was particularly concerned that many student-athletes expressed strong emotional responses when relaying their negative experiences with the CU Boulder T&F/CC [track and field/cross country] team. Many student-athletes, including very successful student-athletes, said they would not want a loved one, such as a child or sibling, to be affiliated with the program.”
“The Inquiry Team also finds that the T&F/CC team’s perspective regarding mental health disproportionately negatively impacted student-athletes who competed on the women’s team, with nearly half of these witnesses describing ongoing mental health struggles after they left CU. “ [emphasis added]
“Substantial information was developed to conclude that for a significant number of student-athletes, primarily members of the women’s team, who participated in this process, the CU Boulder T&F/CC program had an unhealthy environment/culture.”
Of note, in his repose to the report, coach Wetmore challenged the veracity of the statements made by athletes in the program: “Some of these unsubstantiated characterizations of events we vehemently deny.” This is a serious allegation that calls into question the truthfulness of multiple athletes, or Wetmore.
There is also evidence in the report that Wetmore (Witness 44) made a false claim to investigators when he said that he did not receive the results of the body composition analysis from Andersen (Witness 46). Investigators published an email directly contradicting this, shown below.
The University’s response to the report inexplicably focuses on continuing the body composition analysis and on implementing changes governing athletes. No athlete did anything wrong here, yet athletes now require greater education and meetings.
With respect to the coaches and associate athletic director, the response states that the university is “implementing specific personnel action to those coaches and staff members identified in the allegations.” All remain in their positions.
Does the quest to win championships require sacrificing the mental health of some athletes, women especially? Is it possible to coach an elite program without creating a “toxic culture”? Does winning mean that accountability for outcomes need not matter? Are championships all that matter?
I’m not pulling any punches — The university has deeply failed its students in its running program for many years. Our job at the university is to protect our students and certainly not to cause them harm. Whether or not formal misconduct occurred here the “toxic” culture and the negative impact it has had on many athletes in the running program is a sufficient basis for the university to clean house. Instead, the university’s response is insufficient and embarrassing.
No championship should be built on harm.
My comments here are as a competitive runner who ran the 1500m, 10k and cross country as a university student in Ontario, Canada.
Women are not mini men. Unfortunately, what I have observed for many years is the idea that women's physical anatomy is very similar to that of men, and therefore, that our training, diet and body fat composition as competitive athletes should be similar to that of men. Many coaches for women at the high school and university level are men who treat their female athletes as mini men.
In reality, teen girls often struggle with puberty and take a while to adjust to their menstrual periods and changing muscle / fat composition as they develop in the teenage years. Runners sometimes struggle with nausea during intense training and races. It is my observation that girls and young women struggle with this more than males. Most coaches are not accommodating of this reality and otherwise competitive female athletes drop out of running and track programs because of this.
In university programs, unrealistic expectations about BMI are placed on female athletes that force them to lower their BMI to unrealistic levels.
The physical anatomy of teen girls and women is optimized to have enough fat to nourish a developing fetus, and once the baby is born, to feed that baby until it can start eating regular food. In most parts of the world, babies are still breast fed until they are at least two years old.
I have a body mass index of about 20. It hasn't changed much since I was a competitive runner in the 1980s. I'm still a very fast walker and walk about five miles a day. When I was breastfeeding, I would get so ravenously hungry that I once ate an entire 1 pound salami in one sitting. Breastfeeding requires a certain amount of body fat and a nutrient rich diet. True that many women no longer breast feed, but that is what the female physical anatomy has evolved for: pregnancy and breast feeding.
When female athletes are asked to lower the amount of fat on their body to a level similar to men, coaches are asking athletes to fight against biology and evolution. Seems not worth it to me. On competitive sports for women, when we force them to adopt the physical anatomy of men, we've lost the plot about what athletics are really about.
From Tom Wigley. Is there any scientific evidence that body composition (BC) is related to performance (Perf) when sampling across a group of individuals ... or, more to the point, is there credible evidence that for any specific individual, d(BC)/dt is, with statistical significance, related to d(Perf)/dt? If not, then the focus on BC would be hard to justify.