An post from Mary Cain's Instagram:
Atalanta X Nasdaq
An excerpt from the article:

It’s not every day that you’re on a billboard in Times Square

Atalanta NYC, a nonprofit that employs professional female runners who serve as mentors for young high school athletes in underserved parts of the city, visits the Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square.In honor of the occasion, Mary Cain, Founder, rings the Closing Bell.

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An article from the Atalanta Newsletter
written by Karisa Nelson:
Atalanta at Lehman High School

Jess was the very first runner to show up to our mentorship session last July. We could tell immediately that she was incredibly driven; she was hungry to learn and to apply her newfound knowledge to the track and just as eager to share everything she’d learned with her teammates. The very next session, she brought along her teammates Krystell and Anthony. 
  Four months and many sessions later, Jess shared how stressed she was at that initial session; it was difficult to juggle high school, sports, college applications, and a job. She really wanted to attend Sunday sessions, but she was overworked and overwhelmed. “Well, maybe we could come to you?” I said. “We could go to your high school once a week and run the same programming we do here!” Her eyes widened. “Are you serious?” I nodded. She beamed and exclaimed “Okay! I think our coach would love that!”
Two weeks and...
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An article from Women's Running:
Mary Cain: “Creating a Super Healthy, Positive Dynamic is My Biggest Priority”
Written by Erin Strout.
An excerpt from the article:

The former teen prodigy is taking her toxic experiences in sport to make it better for other women and girls through Atalanta NYC.

“Although it’s been overwhelming and a lot to do, it’s been so rewarding going through this entrepreneurial process and knowing that I’m going to ultimately walk the walk instead of just talk the talk around all the advocacy work I’ve wanted to....
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An article and podcast from Rich Roll:
"Mary Cain – Shaping the Future of Female Running"
Written by Rich Roll.
An excerpt from the article:

A cornerstone of this podcast is the power of sport to catalyze personal and societal change, cultivate confidence, and ultimately transform lives.

But what happens when sport breaks you?

If you’ve listened to my conversations with Lindsay Crouse and Lauren Fleshman, you know this story is all too familiar within athletic institutions—particularly Nike. Today’s guest is busting this paradigm.

Meet Mary Cain.
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An article from Runner's World:
"Mary Cain Forms a Professional Women’s Running Team, With the Athletes as Employees"
Written by Sarah Lorge Butler.
An excerpt from the article:

Mary Cain—who rose to running fame as a teen phenom, turned pro and signed with Nike out of high school, and then called attention to what she called emotional and physical abuse by her coaches—has a new role: CEO and President of Atalanta NYC, a professional women’s running team.

The organization, founded by Cain (and operating largely, for now, from the dining room table in her Upper West Side apartment) will be different than other pro running groups that dominate the landscape of elite running.

Atalanta will be a nonprofit service organization. Pro runners will...
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An article from Runner's World:
"Mary Cain: Rethinking the Competitive Model of Youth Sports"
Written by David Alm.
An excerpt from the article:

For Cain, the need for Atalanta reflects nothing short of a health crisis. Girls drop out of sports at a rate two times that of boys, and Cain wants to reverse that trend. “The more women are able to actually understand their bodies, the better equipped they’re going to be in life,” she says. And the best way for kids to learn about their bodies, she believes, is through sports. But if the focus is always on the competitive model that Cain experienced, “where everything’s about churn and burn,” too many girls will never want to do it again. “It’s not necessarily to develop the next Olympic champion,” she says, “but to develop a girl who, when she’s 30, is able to still run […] and therefore be...
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All About Atalanta NYC

Big News Travels Fast.

We were featured in the news!
An article from The New York Times:
"Naomi Osaka and the Power of ‘Nope’"
Written by Lindsay Crouse.
An excerpt from the article:

Women have long functioned as bit players in sports industries designed by and for men. Now Ms. Osaka, who at 23 is the top-earning female athlete in history, is part of a growing group of female athletes who are betting that they’ll be happier — and maybe perform better, too — by setting their own terms. Increasingly, they have the stature and influence to do so.

In 2019, the runner Mary Cain, now 25, explained how rather than continue to harm her mental health by competing for Nike’s famed track coach Alberto Salazar, she left the sport in 2017 for a few years — and wound up changing it. She is starting a new kind of women’s track team, in which the athletes are employees of a nonprofit instead of working for a corporation.

“It makes sense that younger athletes are beginning to stand up for themselves,” Ms. Cain told me after Ms. Osaka’s withdrawal. “Our expectations have changed.”

Ms. Cain continued, “When athletes are not protected, they should be able to make choices that protect themselves. It’s like saying you don’t want to be with a company that doesn’t treat you well.”
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We were featured in the news!
An article from Outside:
"Running’s Cultural Reckoning Is Long Overdue"
Written by Christine Yu.
An excerpt from the article:

Since Mary Cain spoke out about the Nike Oregon Project in 2019, a growing wave of young runners have come forward with their own allegations of negligent coaching and toxic team cultures across the sport.

Runners are often known for ignoring the first signs of injury and hoping a niggle doesn’t turn into something more serious. Suffering is just part of the ethos of the sport. At collegiate and elite levels, athletes don’t always feel comfortable making waves by questioning coaching practices and team behaviors—like inadequate rest and recovery for injuries, or disordered eating habits—especially when there are sponsorships or scholarships on the line. But...
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We were featured in the news!
An article from The New York Times:
"I Was the Fastest Girl in America, Until I Joined Nike"
Written by Lindsay Crouse.
An excerpt from the article:

Mary Cain’s male coaches were convinced she had to get “thinner, and thinner, and thinner.” Then her body started breaking down...

...A big part of this problem is that women and girls are being forced to meet athletic standards that are based on how men and boys develop. If you try to make a girl fit a boy’s development timeline, her body is at risk of breaking down. That is what happened to Cain.

After months of dieting and frustration, Cain found herself choosing between training with the best team in the world, or potentially developing osteoporosis or even infertility. She lost her period for three years...
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We were featured in the news!
A Podcast from More Than Running:
"Episode 5 | Mary Cain, NYC Manager and Runner for Tracksmith"
With podcast host Dana Giordano.
Episode Description:

I don’t really feel that I need to disprove the idea of burnout. But to me, it’s all a mental thing. The only reason you really walk away is because 1) You just come to hate it and you never really want to do it again or 2) You never come to terms with the fact that you might have to do it differently to get back there. As young women, you wake up, you drink a glass of water, you put your shoes on and you’re out the door. The older you get...
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