announcer: The following is a presentation
of HBO Sports.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
- Tonight, on "Real Sports,"
the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced
a number of new words into our medical lexicon.
One of them is long haulers,
a term applied to those people stricken with the virus
who survive it, but are unable to recover.
It's a group that includes a number of young athletes
who now fear they'll never compete again.
- I'm angry because they have no clue what is happening.
I just want hope. No one can give me hope.
♪ ♪
- Last spring, the city of Minneapolis
was the epicenter of national outrage
following the police killing of George Floyd.
Caught in the maelstrom was the head coach
of one of the city's best high school football teams,
a police officer who was on the front lines
the night the city burned.
- As a Black cop,
what was it like to be in the middle of that?
- Man's it's the worst thing I've ever had to endure.
Black and blue.
I'm Black, but I wear blue.
"What side are you on now?"
♪ ♪
- In the world of track and field,
the Nike Swoosh has been revered for decades,
but recently, several members of Nike's elite track program
have triggered an investigation
after claiming they were mentally and physically abused
in ways that have left their careers
and their lives in ruins.
- What does the Nike Swoosh mean for you now?
- I think nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The truth is,
they're a brand that wants to sell shoes
and they're gonna sell it with lies,
they're gonna sell it with cheating,
they're gonna sell it any way that they can.
♪ ♪
announcer: And now, your host, Bryant Gumbel.
♪ ♪
- Good evening and welcome
to the start of our 27th season of "Real Sports."
Although this one is beginning as the last one ended--
remotely--
we're hoping, like you, that as the year goes on,
we'll find our way back to normal
and put the nightmares of the pandemic far behind us.
Unfortunately, as you know, it is still very much with us.
The coronavirus has claimed over 400,000 American lives
and continues to impact sports
in ways that few could've imagined.
Although exact totals are hard to come by,
thousands of professional and collegiate athletes
have already contracted the virus and been sidelined.
The overwhelming majority of them
have thankfully returned to action,
but not all of them.
Despite surviving the disease,
some who are now called long haulers
have actually found their lives profoundly
and perhaps permanently affected by COVID.
Our Mary Carillo has that story.
♪ ♪
- Keep it up.
- This was Natalie Hakala a year ago:
an elite collegiate runner
training for the upcoming season,
the picture of physical health.
- Good to go?
- This is Natalie Hakala today,
six months after being diagnosed with COVID,
a disease that took hold of her back in July
and never let go.
- I always thought if I got it
that I'd be sick for two weeks.
Everyone says it's like the flu,
so, like, you feel horrible for two weeks and then you're fine.
- Hakala caught the virus on what she thought
was a safe camping trip with a few friends.
She lost her sense of smell
and rode out two weeks of piercing headaches and fevers
at her home in Oregon.
And then it was over--
or so she thought.
- I was like, "Oh, I must be fine.
"Like, my fever's broken,
"I can kind of smell things again.
Perfect. I can go for a run."
And I was so excited that I got to go for a run.
And I made it, like, maybe 200 meters.
I'm just, like, gasping for air
and...
I was like, "I cannot breathe."
- Things went downhill from there.
Hakala began experiencing searing chest pains
and was rushed to the hospital.
But while doctors monitored her for three days,
they couldn't figure out what was wrong or how to fix it.
Hakala has not been able to run since.
In fact, the star athlete now rarely even walks,
instead using a wheelchair or a motorized cart.
But mostly, she just sits here in her parents' house...
- This is just kind of my little area.
- And copes with her lingering symptoms
which she chronicles here in her journal.
It's the same journal she once used
to chart her progress on the track.
- I saved all my hip numbers.
This is my one from Nebraska
and I wrote about all the races I did,
but it quickly turned into a symptom tracker.
8/11: I can't walk without shortness of breath.
On September 3rd, I wrote, "Hard day, headache,
"showered and sat on the ground for a very long time
"because I had a hard time breathing
and I felt really dizzy and lightheaded."
- Is there any part of you that you allow to think,
you know, "Why the hell did this happen to me?"
- Yes, especially on the days when I'm in a lot of pain
because I just--
on those days, I'm just laying on the couch
and just almost kind of like a feeling of, like,
I'm wallowing in self-pity, which is just sad.
And hopefully, I serve as a warning.
I mean, they focus so heavily on the deaths,
but this can harm more than just two weeks or death.
It seems like those are the two options.
Either two weeks or it's death
and I'm an in-betweener.
- Natalie Hakala is one of a growing number
of COVID patients becoming known as long haulers,
those who didn't die from the virus
but also never fully recovered,
their bodies now crippled by a range of symptoms
including debilitating fatigue, difficulty breathing,
brain fog, and vertigo.
Many of the long haulers are athletes--
or were athletes,
now robbed of their life's passion.
- It's just--it's so difficult.
It's so difficult to see the level of frustration
that individuals have with their symptoms,
with their body, holding them back.
- Dr. Emily Brigham runs a clinic for long haulers
at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Can you give any of your patients a timetable
as to when they will feel better?
- [sighs] That's the toughest question
and it's even harder to answer for patients.
I cannot tell an individual patient
when they will recover.
- That's not what they want to hear.
- No, it's not.
It's not what I would want to hear.
- Have you had to tell your patients
that they may never feel as good as they used to feel?
- Yeah.
I say, you know, there's a chance
that this may not go away.
- In fact, doctors can say very little with certainty
about long hauler syndrome.
Nearly a year into the pandemic,
experts remain baffled as to why
some COVID patients never get better,
how to best treat them, and why, mysteriously,
the majority of them appear to be women.
- We're still trying to figure it out
and it's one of the most frustrating things
for patients, but also for physicians.
We're here because we want to help
and when we don't know what's going on,
it's very hard to help.
- I'm angry because they have no clue what is happening.
I just want hope. No one can give me hope.
- Until recently,
Nicole Knudson had never known life without hockey.
Growing up, she played the sport year-round,
working on her wrist shot in the summers
and skating around her backyard rink in the winters.
- I had dreams of playing in the NHL
when I was really young. [chuckles]
- How old were you when you first picked up a hockey stick?
- Five or six.
My brother had played and my dad coached and I'm, like,
watching in the stands, I'm like, "I have to do that."
- Knudson became an all-state player in high school
and led her team to the Illinois state championship.
- [indistinct shouting]
It was, by far, the best experience ever
holding that trophy above my head.
I would give anything to go back and do that again.
- Instead, Knudson now spends her days not at the rink,
but in doctor's offices
being treated for crippling joint and neck pain,
vomiting, and fainting spells
a full six months after her diagnosis of COVID.
- There's days where I just feel like
I cannot do anything anymore.
- When she tried to work out one day in the preseason
with her college hockey team,
she found she couldn't even endure the warmups.
- My heart rate would spike to 160
just barely doing anything
and I was like, "What?
"Like, what? What's happening?
Like, why is this so difficult for me?"
And I talked to the team doctor.
She was saying how it's not worth it
to push my body to this kind of limit.
- And the work ethos of an athlete
is that you tough it out.
- Yeah. - You push through.
- And that's what I wanted to do.
I was like, "Let me push through, like,
let me--it's okay if my heart rate gets up there."
And they're like, "No, it's not okay, Nicole."
And, um, that was hard to hear.
- Making matters worse,
blood work and scans on Knudson's body
have failed to uncover any underlying health issues,
leaving doctors vexed as to how to help her.
- And I'm like, "Okay, like, they're gonna find something."
And no, nothing.
I'm at the point where I want something to show up,
and I don't care, I just want to know
that this is what is doing this to my body
and if I can help it, how can I?
What can I do to make myself even feel a little bit better?
- Little bit normal? - Yeah.
- Just how many COVID patients will turn into long haulers
is still unknown,
but the syndrome could have troubling implications
not just for amateur athletes and weekend warriors,
but for those hoping to make sports their career.
- Clemson University says 28 student athletes
and staff members have tested positive for the coronavirus.
- Over the past six months,
hundreds of big-time college athletes,
many of them aspiring professionals,
have tested positive for COVID
after schools summoned their players together
at the height of the pandemic.
At some schools,
nearly the entire football team was diagnosed with COVID.
- I think not all of our players,
but most of our players have caught it.
- At others, the virus swept through the basketball team.
- 90% of our team's had it.
[chuckling] So, um...
- For those young athletes,
it may become no laughing matter.
They can already look to a cautionary tale...
- Oh, what a pretty move!
- A young pro athlete whose career could be over
before it ever really began.
Asia Durr with the spin move! Oh, oh, my!
- Last year, Asia Durr made her debut in the WNBA
with dreams of a long future in the sport.
- Asia Durr!
- But today, her goals are more modest.
- There's days where I feel great,
like I could go out and go to the store or I could clean up.
And then there's days where I'm like,
"I just have to stay in the bed."
And it's just like you just feel like you get hit by a bus.
- You just said, "Some days, I feel great.
I can go to the store and clean."
That's your idea of a great day now?
- My life has completely changed since June 8th.
- Since the day she was diagnosed with COVID
nearly eight months ago, Durr has been fighting
a losing battle with the disease.
- I was back and forth seeing doctors, hospitals,
stuff like that.
I couldn't breathe, I was spitting up blood.
- Y-you were spitting up blood? - Yeah.
You know, it's just lung pain that was just so severe
it felt like somebody took a long knife
and was just stabbing you in your lungs each second.
I woke up 2:00 in the morning vomiting,
going back and forth to the bathroom.
I couldn't keep anything down.
- How much weight have you lost?
- I've lost 32 pounds.
- Durr was too sick to play
for the Liberty at all this past season.
And though she had a contract to play in France after that,
the 23-year-old had to miss that season too.
But perhaps worst of all,
Durr has no idea when or if she'll ever heal.
When was the last time you picked up a ball
and tried to test your body after COVID?
- I haven't. I haven't been able to.
It's really challenging for me,
but I've talked to doctors and...
they've told me, you know, I'm not clear yet.
I'm not clear to be able to do anything physically
which could cause flare-ups, what they call it.
And that's what's really hard for me
because in life,
whenever something was, like, hard, I would go and play.
I can't even do that now.
I can't even shoot a free throw.
- Does it make you wonder
if you're ever gonna be able to play basketball?
- Yeah.
That question has definitely crossed my mind
plenty of times.
And then that's when I, you know, give it to God.
- There's a period of grief that you have to go through
for what's happened to your body
and that grief takes time,
it takes mourning, it takes acceptance,
and hopefully, it's not acceptance that has to stay.
We want to make you well again, but in some cases,
we just--we don't know what's going to happen.
- The last few days, I've had a lot more palpitations.
My heart started pounding really, really fast
and I was just--
- For Natalie Hakala, the collegiate runner,
the latest worry is the health of her heart.
A recently MRI raised some concerns,
so she's been sent to cardiac rehab
once a week alongside far older patients,
many of whom are trying to recover
from open-heart surgery,
Hakala works to recover from COVID.
- I get stopped a lot by other patients of, "Oh--"
I get the, "Oh, you're so young."
They go, "Did you have surgery too?"
And I go, "No, I did not."
- Do you tell them, "No, I had COVID"?
- I do. Mm-hmm.
They look at me like I'm a little weird sometimes,
but it's okay.
At least they know.
- Hakala's rehab therapist won't allow her to run.
She's only allowed to walk,
slowly.
How much has Natalie advanced
since she's been hooked up to your machines?
- I think we started at, like, not even two miles per hour.
So today, we're up to 2.8,
which I'd say an average person her age,
walking through a park with friends,
their casual walking pace is 2.8,
but we've worked her up to 2.8.
- For a young woman used to moving in a hurry,
it hardly feels like success.
But for Hakala, becoming a COVID long hauler
has required a full recalibration
of both body and mind.
- I have realized
that I can't really put a time goal on it
'cause I just get very disappointed
when I don't reach it.
- How much, Natalie, have your goals shifted?
You used to want to change the school record.
What are your goals now?
- To go for just a jog would be really nice.
I would love to be able to go for a run.
♪ ♪
- And Mary Carillo's coming to us
from the other coast of Florida this morning.
Hey, Mary. How you doing?
- I'm fine, Bryant,
but I have never been more afraid of COVID
after doing this story for you.
- I guess so.
I mean, look.
Clearly, doctors have no answers,
but what do they think is going on?
- Well, it's one of those viruses
that's not unlike the SARS virus
that plagued, back in 2003, China and Canada.
Same sort of genetic code.
But there were only 8,000, you know, cases of SARS.
This is millions of people and the problem is
even after the vaccine gets around to the planet,
all these long haulers
will still have to suffer the effects of it.
- Mary, I'm confused.
Hundreds, maybe even thousands of college and pro guys
playing football and basketball have had COVID,
but we've not heard of a single one
who's been similarly impaired.
Why not?
- Well, it's hard to know.
I mean, in the story, Dr. Brigham from Johns Hopkins
says that many more women have come forward
to say that they're long haulers
and that could be hormonal or it could be the fact that
men aren't talking about it the way that women are.
- Mary, I don't want this question
to sound like an accusation,
but when the doctor told you
that those stricken athletes need a "period of grief,"
was she suggesting their woes could be psychosomatic?
- No.
What she's basically saying,
what a lot of long haulers are being told
is we may never get you all the way back.
Not with the lung scarring, not with the inflamed heart,
not the blood clots.
That's really, I think,
what she's saying more than anything.
And again, that's why I find COVID to be so scary.
- Yeah. Another scary aspect of it.
All right, Mary, thanks so very much.
You stay safe, okay?
- All right.
- We move on.
While the pandemic continues to plague America,
so too do the ongoing problems
of social justice and police brutality.
The racial reckoning spawned by the police murder
of George Floyd last spring was, as you know,
rooted in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
a diverse city that has long been home
to man named Charles Adams.
As both a cop and a coach,
Adams is the central figure in our second story tonight,
a story about how difficult it can be these days
to be Black and blue in America.
Jon Frankel has our report.
- Polars with the ball.
- It's more than just a great team.
It's a dynasty...
- To the endzone-- it is caught!
Touchdown. [cheers and applause]
- Which once went six years
without losing a single regular season game.
- And all the way in for a Polars touchdown!
- But the football program
at North High School in Minneapolis
is also a lot more than that.
In one of the toughest parts of the city,
beset by drugs and violence,
it's the rare source of local pride
and in some cases,
the only thing keeping kids on the straight and narrow.
If there's no football in this community,
what happens to the kids that are playing for you?
- Gang wars,
shootings, car thefts,
probably drug dealing.
And a lot of these kids would probably fall victim to that
because they wouldn't have anything to do.
- Charles Adams is the man who's given them another way.
He's the head coach at North High,
the man who made this team and this community into winners,
earning the love of players
and their families along the way.
- Hey, I'm so proud of y'all, man.
- But Adams has another job, too, and last May,
it cast the local hero in a very different role:
enemy of the people.
all: No justice, no peace!
- It happened after the death of George Floyd
under the knee of a city police officer.
Lines formed in the street
as angry protesters looted and burned
and riot police braced for the worst,
among them Officer Charles Adams.
When you looked into the faces of those people
who were throwing things and yelling things,
what did you see?
- Disappointment,
people fed up.
People are tired of Black people being treated
the way they are by police officers.
- You understood the anger? - I understood the anger.
I do. I do.
I do.
- Adams says that in his 20 years on the police force,
he'd never been so conflicted or so afraid.
What are you thinking?
- They're gonna kill us.
We're gonna get killed, man.
People were throwing stuff at us, hiding from me,
or I'm hearing shots.
I don't know where it's coming from.
- Did they say things to you?
- "Pigs,"
"eff the police,"
"racists,"
"How could you work for them?"
and, "You should be ashamed of yourself."
- As a Black cop,
what was it like to be in the middle of that?
- Man, it's the worst thing I've ever had to endure.
I was caught in the middle.
- This was the perfect illustration
of the intersections in your life.
- [chuckles] Absolutely.
Black and blue.
I'm Black, but I wear blue.
And it's, "Well, now-- what side are you on now?"
- Adams had been both Black and blue his entire life.
As a boy, he idolized a police officer,
his father, Commander Charles Adams,
and says that he and his friends
saw the cops as allies.
- When we seen a squad car,
we're waving 'em down 'cause we wanted to get football cards.
Sometimes,
they'd give us the packs with the bubble gum in 'em.
- They were your friends? - Yeah, they were our friends.
And every time I seen an officer,
the first thing I say, "Hey, you know my dad?
You know my dad?"
- And when Adams grew up,
he followed his dad onto the force.
He says he wanted to become the kind of cop
he'd admired as a boy,
the kind the young men in town could see as a role model,
not a threat...
- You gotta be disciplined, you gotta stay physical...
- Which is why he decided to return to his alma mater,
North High, and moonlight as the school's football coach.
Never mind that the team
had long been one of the worst in the state
with losing records every year
and little interest from the boys at school.
- My first year as a head coach,
I had 15 dudes on the team.
I literally had to go get the names of the kids
and start knocking on their doors
and tell 'em to come to practice the next day.
- You went door-to-door to try to recruit kids
to come out for football?
- Yeah, that's probably why some kids didn't come,
because they seen the police at the door.
[chuckles]
Now it's like who's gonna be man enough
to step up on defense and make a stop?
- Eventually, enough boys came out to play
and when they did, they got a surprise.
Adams had begun enlisting other cops on the force
to help him coach.
How many police officers do you have on your staff?
- Three other police officers.
My father, who's a commander,
and then Rick Plunkett, who's our co-offensive coordinator,
and Tim Lawrence, and he's our offensive line coach.
- Do the cops make for good coaches?
- I think we've got some pretty good ones that are cops,
so I would say yeah.
- If the presence of police officers is a good thing,
tell me how.
- Establishing healthy and positive relationships
is important for these kids
and having a adult that they can trust.
- If you want your kids to trust adults
but then that adult is a police officer,
is it a mixed bag?
- It is. It is.
But you gotta understand, just as we talk about,
like, you know, racism,
you can't paint everything with a broad brush.
- Officers Tim Lawrence and Rick Plunkett
work with the offense
while Commander Charles Adams works with the defense.
- It gives us the opportunity to work with these young folks.
When they see us on the street, they know,
"Oh, there go Coach."
It ain't officer-this, it's Coach, you know?
- They need something to be positive about
and this field, this school,
us as coaches, us as people,
it brings a bright spot to the kids and to the community.
- Tim, I don't have to point out
the obvious differences here. [chuckling]
You're the white guy coming to this school
and a team that is predominantly Black.
Was that gonna make it more difficult
for you to be a coach?
- Yeah, definitely.
I remember walking on the first day of practice
and all these kids turn around like,
"Who the heck is this dude?" you know,
and I had to prove myself.
- Y'all gotta start being physical, man.
- Coach Adams says he also felt
he had to prove himself to the kids,
which is why he didn't just sign on to run the team,
he also requested a transfer
to go from patrolling the streets
to being stationed inside the school
so he could keep an eye on his players all the time.
- Being a cop that works in the school?
Every teacher, just come down to my office
and say, "Such-and-such is doing this-and-that.
Can you take care of 'em?"
Like, "Absolutely, I got 'em.
I'll be talking to them today at practice."
- Means they're on a short leash.
- Yes.
I'm not just here
to make sure these kids can score touchdowns,
I wanna make sure these kids are well-rounded, young men.
Then they end up coming back to me
and giving back to this community the same way.
- Adams and the other coaches began schooling the kids--
not just about X's and O's, but about life.
- We had a kid who-- his grades are not good
and I pulled him aside and I said, "Hey, man.
I grew up in public housing. Mom was on welfare."
I said, "I went to school, I was able to go to college,
I was able to do all that, so don't use that as a excuse."
I said, "You're not gonna be successful
if you don't graduate from high school."
And then when I was done, I told him I loved him.
- And before long,
the lessons began to take root.
More and more players stayed in school
and more and more losses turned into wins
until the Minneapolis North Polars
went from the worst team in town
to the best team in the state.
- State championship trophy.
They're the first group of Minneapolis North
football players ever to hoist one of those.
- More players graduated than ever before
and many went on to play in college.
And along the way,
the program overcame a situation
that threatened to divide it
and the Minneapolis community as a whole.
In 2018, offensive line coach
Tim Lawrence responded to a complaint
that a woman had gotten into a dispute
with a bus driver.
- After Lawrence and the woman got off the bus,
he decided to place her under arrest for disorderly conduct.
But when a bystander intervened,
the situation escalated
and the ugly aftermath was caught on video.
- He's hurting her! - Get on the ground.
- He's fucking hurting her! - Stop, stop!
- Get on the ground. - He's twisting her arm!
- The video went viral
and some objected to Lawrence's actions,
even calling for his job.
Lawrence was officially cleared of any wrongdoing
and the charges against the woman were later dropped,
but the incident stoked racial tensions around the city.
- To be in a viral video?
It's the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
I'm the opposite of what people think
of what police officers are.
- I'm sure there are people that saw that video
and they'll say, "He didn't have to do that.
He didn't have to pull her arm up behind her back."
- I got 360 voicemails and, like, 500-and-some emails
that asked exactly that.
- I take it by the reaction here
and the fact that Coach is even still sitting here
you were all good with how that video played out.
- Oh, yeah.
- You know there will be people who will say,
"The police officers are all lining up
"with one another again.
They're all-- got each other's back."
- He showed me the video and I'm like, "You're good."
I mean, did nothing wrong.
- In time, the controversy cooled,
but the larger issue
of how the city polices its Black community
continued to simmer below the surface
as it has for generations.
It was, in fact, the reason Commander Charles Adams
went into policing to begin with.
- Him being mistreated growing up
and seeing how other people were mistreated,
that's what drove him to be a police officer.
- Your dad felt that when he was growing up,
the way that police officers treated him
because he was Black... - Yeah.
- Was unacceptable. - Absolutely.
- And he wanted to change that? - Yes.
- But whatever progress
the city police may have made since
in building trust with the Black community,
it was largely undone in one shocking moment last May
when Officer Derek Chauvin was caught on camera
doing the unimaginable.
- I can't breathe!
- You got him under control.
Like, what the fuck else can you do?
Like, he's on the ground.
That could've been my uncle, man.
That could've been my son.
That could've been me.
- Did you know Derek? - Absolutely, yeah.
I knew him. I've known him for 20 years.
- What kind of feelings did you have towards him as a cop?
- It didn't surprise me one bit.
It didn't surprise me one bit.
As many good and great officers there are
in the police department,
there's always a few that figure
they can do things the way they want to do them.
- Burn that [inaudible] down!
- After the killing of George Floyd,
violent protests erupted in Minneapolis
and Adams was told to report for duty
in his riot gear.
He says he kissed his wife and children goodbye,
then huddled his team on a Zoom call.
- To me, it felt like I was saying goodbye to 'em.
- And how did they react?
- It was emotional.
It was emotional for me to say, "Hey, you know what?
"I might not be here tomorrow, man.
"But I gotta make sure the city's safe
and make sure you guys are safe."
- He told us that
he didn't know what was gonna happen out there tonight.
So I mean, we were all uncertain.
I know he was uncertain,
but we were all just praying for the best, so
he left us telling us he loved us.
- Were you concerned for his safety?
- Yeah, definitely,
because I know how teenagers my age,
African American teenagers, feel about police officers
and that night,
they weren't looking at him as North's football coach,
they were looking at him as a police officer.
- I know that a lot of people do not like police officers
because of the stuff that's going on.
Seeing a good police officer
going in the line of duty in danger for his job,
it kind of hurts because they won't see him as a loving
and caring type of person, a person who loves kids,
a person who loves people.
- That night, Adams was in the middle of the chaos.
- I was right here in the middle of this intersection.
I'm getting rocks thrown at me right here
and I don't even know where they're coming from.
I don't even know if they're from here or there,
so I'm ducking from getting hit with rocks and bottles
from people hiding around this corner.
- Adams and his fellow officers were also helping
protect the firefighters of Engine Ladder 7
as they tried to save the city from burning.
Among the buildings on fire?
Police Precinct 3
where both Charles and his father once worked.
- We're watching it be set right now.
Fire has started at the Third Precinct.
- Adams made it home safely the next day,
but the animosity he faced from some in his community
continued.
Since those events,
you've faced grief and anger from people in your community,
people who questioned your loyalty one way or the other?
- Yeah. - Did you lose friends?
- Yeah. Yeah.
And, um, probably some family members I haven't talked to.
- Anybody give you an opportunity to explain?
- Why?
Why do I have to explain anything to anybody about me?
My wife told me, she said,
"If you gotta explain anything to anybody about who you are,
"then those are the people that don't need to be in your life
in the first place."
- Do you think that perhaps
from their own experiences with police officers,
that their attitudes are informed and shaped
and they took that out on you?
- Yeah, that's fair. I could see.
- But the anger towards the Minneapolis Police Department
over the death of George Floyd affected Charles Adams
in yet another way, too.
Shortly after the George Floyd incident,
the public schools of Minneapolis
decided to end its contract
with the Minneapolis Police Department.
- Correct.
- How did that affect you?
- I was no longer working in the school as a police officer.
- And what kind of a void did that leave?
- No presence of me with these kids--
last year, our school was shot up.
The windows were shot up.
We're in the middle of a gang war still,
so we definitely did not put our community in a position
that where our kids can feel safer.
- Who paid the price? - This community.
We're the sacrificial lamb.
Because quite frankly,
it was just parents and people from the other side of the city
that were opposed to having police officers in the school.
- Critics argue that having police officers in schools
posed a threat to the city's children,
primarily its young Black men.
But Charles Adams' football players,
who affectionately call him OA for Officer Adams,
saw it differently.
- When we heard the news
about OA possibly not being in school anymore,
me and some of the football guys,
we went up to the Minneapolis public school building
to speak about keeping OA because he protects us.
So with him being gone, it's like,
what could happen, possibly?
What if something happens in the school
and they call one of the police officers
like the one who killed George Floyd?
- With no school to patrol any longer,
Adams did the once unthinkable:
he left the police force
and took a job in security
with baseball's Minnesota Twins--
but he didn't leave his kids.
[cleats clacking]
Adams and his fellow officers
were allowed to remain the coaches at North High
and this fall,
guided them through a season unlike any other.
In the same city where protesters once marched,
the cops and kids of North High
walked together to the stadium,
a custom before every home game.
[cheers and applause] [whistle blows]
They also enjoyed their customary winning season,
bringing a sense of community and joy
to a place that still needs both.
- I love y'all, man. Good work.
- Given everything that has happened,
how important was it to get your kids back in uniform
and back playing football?
- That was therapy.
That was therapy for me
and that was just good for all of us to be back together.
- Family on six! One, two, three!
all: Polar!
- Four, five, six. all: Family.
♪ ♪
- And Jon Frankel's with us from New York.
Hey, Jon. - Hey, BG.
How are you? - Okay, pal.
Hey, how did Charles' decision to leave the force go over
with his dad?
- You know, that's an interesting one.
I think his dad realized that
this was a wonderful opportunity for him.
He understood that he was sort of disillusioned
by what was going on in the police department
and his dad has been head of security in sports arenas
now, particularly for the Vikings,
for a number of years in his career,
so he understood that.
- Charles indicated that
he knew Derek Chauvin was a bad cop.
Did he say anything about why he still had his badge?
- He did not, but he was adamant that he was--
that the situation would've been handled differently
not only by him,
but by a good number of police officers in Minneapolis.
- Yeah.
The kids that were his players, obviously,
grew to like Charles,
but did that in any way change
their understandably negative feelings about cops?
- He will tell you that
there are parents of players who openly admit to Charles
that they don't like cops
and yet, their kids still show up for practice.
So it's been part of a dialogue between him and his players
since he started coaching there.
- So as a slice of life piece, this was very revealing.
But is there a lesson here?
- This is a wonderful, um,
template for policing
in communities all across the country.
That if you can take police officers
and put them in the community
and let them be a part of the community
not just as watchdogs and policing,
but in a way that they are actually really interacting
with the people of the community.
And of course, it also helps in this situation
that Charles and his dad grew up in that community,
but they see a real benefit to that.
- Yeah. Certainly couldn't hurt.
All right, Jon, thanks so very much.
Stay safe, will you? - You too.
- Our last story tonight focuses on Nike,
arguably the biggest and most powerful brand
in all of sports.
These days,
the Swoosh is an iconic logo around the world,
reflecting Nike's influence and interest
in a wide range of different sports.
But when Nike was founded,
its focus was on the sport of running
and that remains a corporate priority,
a fact that is especially troubling
in light of recent complaints the company's obsession
with running success was leaving some of its athletes
mentally and physically broken.
Our David Scott has the details.
[cheers and applause] - Cain with 100 to go!
The title is hers, surely!
- By the time she was a teenager,
Mary Cain was already the talk of the running world,
a prodigy who could one day be a legend.
- She is absolutely the future of American distance running
and she's only 16!
- Immensely gifted but still raw,
Cain needed just one thing to unlock her potential
and make her America's next great running star:
the right coach.
Then she got the call
that would change the course of her career and her life.
- I heard the phone ring
and then I just hear my mom,
like, clearly sprinting downstairs.
She comes running into my room and she's like,
"That was Alberto Salazar. He wants to coach you."
- Alberto Salazar was running royalty.
- Salazar! - He's gonna do it!
- A new world record! - He's got it!
- As a competitor,
he'd won the New York City Marathon three times.
As a coach, he'd minted one champion after another.
Now, Salazar would take Mary Cain under his wing.
He vowed to make her great and also keep her safe.
- She's got a lot of talent and my job is to make sure that
that talent is fulfilled, that she doesn't get injured.
- This is like your favorite NFL coach
calling you up as a high schooler
and saying, "You want to join the team?"
- Did it feel like with your early success
and him on your side,
you could not just dream about the Olympics,
but plan for them?
- Exactly, yeah.
I remember being so-- just so happy and so excited.
- Even more so because
it wasn't just Salazar bringing her aboard.
Cain would be running for Nike,
the company that for years had not only cultivated champions
on the field of play, but had built its brand
on a progressive mentality,
encouraging athletes of all stripes
to reach for the stars.
- Don't ask if your dreams are crazy,
ask if they're crazy enough.
[dramatic music]
- To the young runner,
it all seemed too good to be true.
Now, she says it was.
- There were definitely warning signs
that I think as a young kid, I just blew off
as not being an issue.
But I was put through a program that condoned abuse.
- It was supposed to be
the sport's premier breeding ground for champions,
but now, former members of Nike's elite running team
known as the Oregon Project
say the company's pursuit of glory
came at a staggering cost to their health.
They say they endured physical torment,
mental abuse,
and a regimen full of experimental
and potentially dangerous medication
all in the name of speed
and in service of the celebrated Nike Swoosh.
- This young lady's wonderfully gifted!
- Mary Cain says the abuse began
shortly after her arrival at the Nike campus.
That's when she says Alberto Salazar,
the coach she'd idolized,
began to berate her about her weight...
- Mary.
- Even weighing her in front of her teammates.
- I am being told in front of the other athletes
on the track,
"You have clearly gained five pounds since this morning.
You look terrible, you are running terrible."
And...
I was so ashamed of myself.
- How did you feel when he would say,
"You didn't run well, get on the scale"?
- So embarrassed.
I mean, like, for me, it was just--
I was working so hard.
I was, like, severely undereating.
By the end of the year, I tried to purge.
I would stick my finger or a spoon down my throat
um, and I wouldn't throw up
and then I would hate myself 'cause I couldn't do it.
I'm in a full-blown eating disorder at this point.
- Full-blown eating disorder? - Yeah.
Because you're looking at yourself in the mirror
and you see an incredibly heavy person.
- Cain was just 18 years old at the time,
but says she kept her worsening condition a secret,
even from her parents
because she says Salazar made it clear
that he wanted Oregon Project business to remain in-house.
- I was told
that, "You're an adult now.
"You can't go crying to your parents
every time you don't like something we're saying."
Pretty much, "It's our way or the highway."
- Alberto Salazar declined our request for an interview,
but says he never weight-shamed Mary Cain
or directed her to maintain an unhealthy weight.
But Cain is not the only Nike runner
who says they felt overwhelming pressure
to meet Salazar's demands.
- And Kara Goucher to the front!
Kara Goucher has taken the lead!
- For years, Kara Goucher was among Salazar's star pupils,
a two-time U.S. Olympian
and silver medalist at the World Championships.
Then, she and her husband, Adam, decided to have a child.
Outwardly, Nike supported the move,
coordinating photo shoots that paired Goucher's growing belly
with the famous Nike Swoosh
and placing stories about her pregnancy in magazines,
prominently touting Nike's steadfast support
of the modern, athletic mother.
But behind the scenes, Goucher says,
it was a different story.
- The image they were selling of, "women can do anything,"
and "we support women" was nothing like the reality.
- The reality, Goucher says,
is that as soon as she stopped racing
in preparation for childbirth,
Nike dropped her from the team's payroll.
She says that according to her coach, Alberto Salazar,
she'd get paid again once she returned to racing
and returned to the medal stand.
- Alberto's telling me, "If you just win Boston..."
- "Just win Boston." - "It'll go away.
"They'll pay you.
It'll be fine." - [chuckles]
- Just go win the Boston Marathon in six months
and all is forgiven for having a baby?
- Yes.
- Did you feel like, um,
you just had no choice
but to get yourself back out there
whatever it took, whatever it cost you?
- Yeah. I mean--[scoffs]
my body was in pain every day.
I was in pain, but what am I gonna do?
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares that my hip is killing me,
nobody cares
that I'm still bleeding three months after I gave birth.
Nobody cares.
They just need me to return to who I was.
- Goucher says she trained for the Boston Marathon
like her livelihood depended on it,
even when her three-month-old son, Colt,
fell critically ill.
- Our son got sick-- very sick--
and needed emergency surgery. - Oh, my God.
- And I had my first race back planned that weekend.
And there was never any discussion of,
"Let's find another race," or,
"Maybe you should just, you know,
take a few days with your child."
You know, I left Colt in the hospital
to go to practice.
- Alberto didn't step up and say, "Wait a minute.
You need to attend to what's more important"?
- Nope. He said, "Surgery's over.
We have evening practice.
I'll see you there."
- Just six months after giving birth,
Goucher managed to get on the starting line
of the Boston Marathon
where she ran a personal best time and placed fifth.
- Six months after having a baby,
this is incredible stuff.
- But that didn't cut it for Salazar and the Swoosh.
- After the Boston Marathon,
the first thing he said to my mother and my sister
when they saw him:
"She's just too big.
She's just still too big."
- You know, I watched her kill herself and break her body
to rush to get back
and I'm just appalled at the coarseness of,
"You're just too big."
- Salazar denies ever tying Goucher's marathon performance
to her pay or pressuring her back onto the track.
Goucher believes the rush back from pregnancy
ultimately destroyed her health.
Shortly after the Boston Marathon,
she suffered a fractured femur,
the first of a series of injuries
that ended her career.
And before long,
one of her teenage teammates would suffer a similar fate.
- I did extra cross-training, I did extra core training,
I did everything that I could do to try to lose weight
but my body was fighting me.
- In the case of Mary Cain,
Salazar's rigorous training program proved too much
for a girl in the throes of an eating disorder.
Cain began to suffer from amenorrhea,
a condition that prevented her from menstruating
for 3 1/2 years
and left her bones dangerously brittle.
Before long,
the teenager suffered multiple stress fractures.
- Mary Cain is well back of the field.
Third to last.
- As her body crumbled, so did her performance on the track
and eventually, her mental health.
Finally, Cain had one more disappointing finish
than she could handle.
- Moser now passes Cain. - So Cain is struggling.
- Afterwards,
I was kind of, like, under these, like, bleachers.
And I was taking--
and I'm sorry if this is graphic,
but I was taking the pins from my, um, bib
and I was using them to go like this.
- Scratching, scraping? - Going pretty deep.
- Breaking the skin? - Yeah.
- That's when Cain says
she was spotted by Darren Treasure,
the Nike team psychologist.
- He caught me doing that and was--
he said, like, "Knock that off. Get up.
We're going to where the rest of the team is."
- He sees you cutting yourself
and says, "Knock it off?"
- Mm-hmm.
- There's no discussion of treating
what might appear to be a compulsive behavior
or a disorder?
- No.
- Cain says she was shocked by the response because
Treasure was the Oregon Project's
mental health expert,
one of the sport's most reputable psychologists--
or so she thought.
- He told,
and Alberto perpetuated to everybody,
that he was a psychologist,
but he wasn't.
- Even while the Nike Oregon Project website
touted Treasure as a sports psychologist,
he was not a licensed psychologist at all,
but a glorified assistant coach
who Cain treated as a confidante
but who she now believes spilled her secrets to Salazar
and left her helpless in her time of need.
- I am trapped
because these are the people who are supposed to help me
and they are not helping me.
- They represented to the world he was a psychologist,
they presented him to you as a psychologist.
What do you now think his real role was?
- To serve Alberto.
Probably to serve Nike.
- Darren Treasure has denied ever seeing Cain cut herself,
but refused our request for an interview.
Increasingly desperate,
Cain says she began to contemplate suicide.
In a final cry for help,
Cain says she directly pleaded with Salazar and Treasure
after a race in a Nike team hotel room.
- That's when I just was like,
"I am not okay.
"I have been cutting myself,
I have been trying to purge."
I was getting to a point where I was scaring myself.
And I just needed help.
And at that point, I was told
that they wanted to go to sleep
and that it was late
and they had early morning flights
and that I should just go to bed
and sleep it off.
And...
like, I just feel so bad
for that...girl.
- Salazar and Treasure deny Cain's account,
but days later,
Mary Cain was on a flight back home to New York
where she'd spend years trying
to piece back together her life.
Meanwhile, back in Oregon,
the Nike running team never broke stride.
- They wanted to win
and anything after that,
they didn't care about.
It was somebody else's problem.
Dorian Ulrey joined the Nike Oregon project in 2012.
There, he says, he was abused in a different way.
Ulrey says he was ordered by Alberto Salazar
to regularly consume a cocktail
of performance-enhancing drugs
regardless of his own fears for his health.
- Do without asking,
take this without pushing back,
put this into your body,
uh, without batting an eyelash.
That was the process.
- In fact, Ulrey says that Coach Salazar
also played the role of unofficial team doctor,
dispensing a regimen of his own creation.
- There was a powder that we mixed into drinks
in a white tub, unmarked,
that came from Alberto's garage.
So he'd roll up on whatever day of the week that was
and pop open the trunk of his car and, "Hey, powder day.
Come get your powder." [chuckles]
- Unidentified? - Yeah, unidentified.
- At the time, did it strike you as strange
or unusual, if not inappropriate?
- Yes, absolutely.
- Ulrey's fears grew when he learned a bit
about another drug he was being told to take by Salazar,
a drug called calcitonin.
- My "holy shit" moment was
finding out that it was a drug that was linked to cancer,
a higher rate of cancer.
And I reached out to a couple of friends
and one had even said, "Hey, man,
they pulled this stuff from the shelf in Europe."
- Salazar says that
all drugs were dispensed under the supervision of doctors,
but when word of his pharmaceutical regimen
began to leak out to anti-doping officials,
Salazar's entire program began to unravel.
- There's a clear line.
And when you cross that line,
and it puts athletes in the type of abusive,
unsafe, unhealthy environment that this did,
that's when it has to stop.
- Travis Tygart is the long-time chief
at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, or USADA,
the nation's police when it comes
to the doping of athletes.
He says that when his investigators began
peeling back the curtain of Salazar's program,
they were shocked at what they found.
You've called the athletes in this whole scheme
"laboratory animals."
- I think the athletes were treated like guinea pigs
to try to get them to win
so that the Nike brand could continue to profit
by the very people that they were, you know,
subjecting to this kind of abuse
and ultimately, to the rule violations.
- And it appears that Nike wasn't just profiting
off of Salazar's drug-related activities,
but also may have been involved in carrying them out.
The investigation unearthed emails
that show Nike's then-CEO Mark Parker
communicating with Salazar and a team doctor
about testing with illegal testosterone gel
in the Nike lab.
There's an email to Mark Parker about the experiment saying,
"We're going to determine the minimal amount of gel
that would cause a problem."
And Parker, for his part, writes back,
"It will be interesting to determine the minimal amount
of topical male hormone--" testosterone,
"required to create a positive test."
What did that exchange tell you?
- I think they're trying to find out how much you could use
without causing a positive test.
And you don't have to be the CEO of a sports company
to know testosterone
is the fundamental doping drug of choice
for athletes who want to cheat.
- Nike representatives declined our request
for an interview, but in a statement told us
the company had merely been conducting an experiment
to learn if their athletes could be sabotaged,
perhaps by an outsider
intent on rubbing topical testosterone on their skin.
They justify this by saying
that this was just their way of playing defense
against others who would break the rules.
- It's just a sham.
They got caught with their hand in the cookie jar
and after the fact,
they've attempted to make up this story to justify--
I think it's unbelievable that a corporation
would knowingly allow this to happen on its campus.
- With the evidence provided by whistleblowers,
USADA found that Alberto Salazar had violated
multiple doping rules
and banned him from coaching for four years.
In response, Nike announced it would conduct
its own investigation into what happened
inside its vaunted track program.
But several aggrieved Nike runners told us
they were never contacted to provide information.
- They did an internal investigation,
but they never talked to us?
- Never talked to you?
- Oh, no. - Never talked to us.
- Nope. - Not once.
So they're gonna say that they didn't find any indication
of abuse.
Well, why don't you talk to the abused?
- Indeed, both Nike and Alberto Salazar say
that the coach never abused his athletes
or forced them to take drugs
and that he never intentionally violated
any rules.
Salazar is now appealing his suspension
with the financial backing of Nike.
What does the Nike Swoosh mean for you now?
- I think nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
The truth is,
they're a brand that wants to sell shoes,
and they're gonna sell it with lies,
they're gonna sell it with cheating,
they're gonna sell it any way that they can.
♪ ♪
- All right, and David Scott joins us from New York.
David, how you doing?
- I'm doing good, sir, thank you.
- David, real quick, who's the bad guy here?
Salazar? Nike? Neither? Both?
- Well, I think they're--
you know, they're tough questions for both parties.
Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to ask them on camera.
- Do we really know how independently Salazar
was allowed by Nike to operate?
- By all accounts, he had enormous autonomy
in the program.
But there's also a documentary record
of contacts between himself and other top brass at Nike
that suggests knowledge on the company's part
of at least some of his activities.
- Bring us up to speed; are Salazar
and the mental health expert, Darren Treasure,
still getting paid?
- Well, so Salazar is suspended.
We don't know if he's being paid,
but Nike is backing his appeal.
They have not parted company with him.
Darren Treasure is still working there
in some capacity as a contractor.
Nike says it has done its own investigation
and taken the findings forward to make things better,
particularly for their female athletes
and they say that they have ended this practice
of suspending the pay of the female athletes
when they get pregnant.
- All right, David, good work.
Thanks so very much. Take care of yourself.
- Thank you, sir, you too.
- Finally, tonight, a few words about life, death,
and sports immortality.
Since every life is precious, it may seem insensitive
to single out a few famous people
at a time when the coronavirus has already killed
over 2 million worldwide.
But the stunning number of sports hall of famers
who have left us in the past year simply can't be ignored.
When Hank Aaron died just days ago,
he became the latest of almost three dozen
hall of fame athletes or coaches
to die over the past year.
The list is full of legends:
Kobe Bryant, Gale Sayers, Whitey Ford,
Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Paul Hornung,
Don Schula, Maradona, Lou Brock.
They left outsized public imprints on their sports
and forced private recollections
from millions of lifelong fans of their talents, like me.
That age and disease have claimed so many
who seemed so indestructible for so long
is frankly frightening to those of us
who were and are their contemporaries.
Just as their exploits once made us feel alive,
so too are their deaths unwelcome reminders
of just how vulnerable we gray-beards have become
and how fleeting our days really are.
Kind people may say we're young,
and we may even feel it's true from time to time.
Self-delusion is intoxicating,
but time always wins the race.
As for the numbers our heroes compiled,
they'll continue to have a life of their own.
Aaron's home run totals, Gibson's earned run average,
Schula's wins, Brock's steals--
they're in black and white.
And while they may yet be surpassed,
they'll never be erased.
They'll live on long after the famous folks
who scripted those marks are forgotten.
It would be nice to think forgotten will never apply
to the brightest of our sports stars,
but as no less a sage than Conan O'Brien recently noted,
"eventually all our graves go unattended."
And that's our show for this evening.
For all the folks at "Real Sports,"
I'm Bryant Gumbel.
Thank you so very much for being with us.
Please stay safe, and good night.
♪ ♪
Later this week, catch the debut
of the all-new "Real Sports Podcast,"
featuring audio excerpts of current "Real Sports" segments
and classic ones too,
along with brand-new interviews and outtakes.
It'll be available wherever podcasts can be found.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪