Flat Hills Road

By now everyone’s heard that Shalane Flanagan is no longer coached by John Cook, the caustic impresario Nike coaxed out of retirement to bring her back from catastrophic injury in 2006. And probably, everybody has read the article from Sunday’s Washington Times in which Cook suggests that Flanagan and her husband, Steve Edwards, had been planning this coup for a while.

I don’t know anything more about the split than anyone else, and I don’t doubt that Steve Nearman, who wrote the article, got his facts and quotes right. (I’ve criticized Nearman before for his Alan Webb critiques and for his look at James Madison’s athletic downsizing.)

We’re not told how Cook was lined up to coach Flanagan in the first place. I’m guessing someone other than Flanagan was paying the bills at first. Cook’s jab about “loyalty is hard to find” ignores the possibility that Flanagan might just be more loyal to Erin Donohue, her teammate since 2000, than Cook, her coach since 2006. And while Cook may or may not be right about Donohue’s potential (she’s right to say if that’s how he thinks, he shouldn’t be her coach,) nobody has asked this coach “who has made friends and foes with his directness” whether he considered the effect dumping Donohue would have on his relationship with Flanagan.

I’m guessing yes. Other reporters have told me that in Beijing, Cook had nothing but good things to say about Edwards, but now he’s claiming “I was warned … to keep an eye on him.” So either the warning came after Beijing, or Cook is capable of being polite for the sake of politics. And maybe he just got tired of the situation, for whatever reason, and decided to light the fuse by cutting down Donohue.

Cook has been around the block a few times. I doubt there are any angels in this situation, but painting Cook as a sympathetic character is an interesting approach.

Update 2/10: I’ve removed some text from the original post, and clarified some pronouns where the edits made them unclear.

Also, to add about coaches’ pay: It’s more common for coaches of professionals, especially distance runners, to not be paid than for them to be paid by the athletes. Many coaches are still employed by college teams, others are funded through other paying athletes, and others are paid for by the athlete’s sponsors. (Coaches I know have been approached by sponsors specifically to protect the sponsor’s investment in a developing athlete.) I won’t argue whether this is right or not, and obviously it works better for some coaches than others, but I think it’s a red herring here. The danger of this split isn’t in who paid or didn’t pay who; it’s who is now going to be willing to join the Flanagan/Edwards team with Cook’s non-endorsement on the record, and for that matter, who’s going to be interested in working with Cook, although I’m guessing (again) that he’s not very worried about that.