Galen Rupp is the greatest American distance runner of the 21st century.
Galen Rupp is a mystery: media shy, and once the signature runner of a team whose leader became the marathon champion disgraced coach Alberto Salazarhas broken the sport in so many ways.
Galen Rupp is a hero, especially in his home state of Oregon, where the World Championships in Athletics kick off this week, where he was just about the fastest teenager anyone had ever seen, which is saying something in America’s unofficial running capital.
Galen Rupp is a cautionary tale, an objective lesson in the price of loyalty in a sport where athletes must prove their innocence every day. And even if they do, an association with someone found guilty of cheating can raise eyebrows forever.
Galen Rupp, the former teenage phenom now 36, is set to start on Sunday in the Men’s Marathon World Championships, a chance to cement his legacy on the most homely ground.
He is all those things and more.
He is a fierce and fearless competitor, ready and willing to take the field out of the way on tracks and roads if necessary. He is a major distance champion, so dominant in the marathon in the United States since 2016 that national competitions became races for second and third place.
He knows how to find the podium whether the race is fast or slow or a test of speed or tactical.
He is enduring, with a career reaching the latter half of his second decade that has been filled with many injuries, but none that have stopped him from taking on the challenge in the biggest races and often on the last lap.
And yet, fair or wrong, he is the epitome of the elite living in the debt-by-association state in which it has existed for decades.
“Every athlete has the right to the presumption of innocence unless and until proven guilty through legal process that he has committed an offense,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive of the US Anti-Doping Agency. “It’s not fair to judge an athlete differently, but the reality is that in today’s world it’s the same lesson I tell my child, your choices have consequences, and not everyone accepts that principle, and the choices of who you interact with, you are being watched by the company you hold.”
Weldon Johnson, once one of the nation’s top long-distance runners and co-founder of Letsrun.com, the influential website that serves as a sort of superego for American running, said associations will breed mistrust.
“I think we should evaluate his career like everyone else, but with more skepticism, as one athlete is more closely associated with Alberto than anyone and that is Galen Rupp,” Johnson said last week. “Based on performance, he is the best American long-distance runner of his generation, probably since Steve Prefontaine.”
Rupp, whose agent, Ricky Simms, refused to make him available for this article, has never failed a drug test. There have been many, both the regularly scheduled races and random out-of-competition tests that all international athletes are required to participate in at random.
Salazar, a former world record holder in the men’s marathon, three-time champion in New York and champion of Boston in 1982, discovered Rupp while watching him play high school football in Portland, Oregon, believing his blend of speed and stamina would translate perfectly into elite distance running.
In 2001 Salazar founded de Nike Oregon Projecta distance running team focused solely on developing athletes – especially Rupp after his career at the University of Oregon and, for a brief period, Mo Farah of Britain – who could beat the dominant East Africans in the biggest encounters.
It worked. On a magical Saturday night in London during the 2012 Olympics Farah and Rupp sprinted past the mighty Kenyans and Ethiopians to finish 1-2 in the 10,000 meter race. A week later, Farah also won the gold medal in the 5,000, while Rupp finished seventh. Rupp won the U.S. Olympic Trials marathons in 2016 and 2020, burying the field in both races. He won the bronze medal in the marathon at the 2016 Games. He also won the Chicago Marathon, one of the world’s fastest, in 2017.
In 2019, after years of investigations and lawsuits, Salazar was given a four-year ban of the US Anti-Doping Agency for multiple doping-related violations, including trafficking in testosterone and tampering with the doping control process.
That same year, Salazar came under scrutiny after two female athletes he coached, Mary Cain and Amy Yoder Begleyhe said publicly ridiculed and shamed them when they ran for the Oregon Project. Last year, an arbitrator from the US Center for SafeSport ruled that it was “more likely than not” that Salazar digitally intruded on one of his runners during a massage. The center, which is charged with investigating and assessing such matters, banned him from sport for life.
Nike had decided in 2019 to close the Oregon Project. Rupp now trains with Northern Arizona University coach Mike Smith.
No one has suggested that Salazar’s treatment of his female athletes would in any way detract from what Rupp has achieved. But running has such a long and sordid history of doping violations that its participants, fans, officials and historians must navigate this fraught terrain. Almost every great champion, even those who have never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs, has a connection with a coach, friend, teammate or physical therapist who is in violation of the world’s anti-doping rules.
“Rupp is without a doubt the greatest American distance runner of all time,” said Amby Burfoot, the 1968 Boston Marathon champion and former editor of Runner’s World. “He’s clumsy – not media friendly – and yes, he has that association with Alberto. But he’s been at the top for an unbelievably long time, nearly two decades, has never failed any test I know of, and almost always performs at his best in the big leagues.”
Can he do it again?
Rupp skipped the payday he might have gotten for running one of the big spring marathons to focus on the once-in-a-career chance to win a world championship marathon in his home state.
The dents in his armor are now chronic. He told Runner’s World last month that he battled back pain for a year, and in the spring doctors diagnosed a hernia and a pinched nerve. He had Covid-19 last month.
Like almost every other elite rider, Rupp knows a unique truth that is an inevitable part of his chosen pursuit: elite racing is never as easy as he hoped. And when the gun goes off in another big race Sunday morning, it’ll take off again.