Warrington Lecture welcomes Kara Goucher, two-time Olympian, New York Times bestselling author and whistleblower

On Feb. 19, the Broad College welcomed Kara Goucher, two-time Olympian, New York Times bestselling author and whistleblower as the featured guest at the 2025 Sylvan T. Warrington Visiting Lectureship in Ethics and Leadership. The event hosted over 200 students, staff, faculty and community members and was moderated by Beth Hammond, managing director of the Center for Ethical and Socially Responsible Leadership. During the discussion, Goucher shared her story and how she turned her experiences into action by fighting for clean and safe sport.

Goucher had been running professionally for Nike’s prestigious Oregon Project, chasing a dream that had started when she was a child, watching the Olympics from her grandfather’s porch. The Oregon Project was a new, prestigious professional running program at the time and included a small group of athletes coached by Alberto Salazar. Goucher recounted how she had felt like her dream had come true: Nike was a dream partner, and all her favorite athletes growing up were Nike athletes. However, her years in the program revealed a darker side of the sport, including rampant doping, a culture of misogyny and discrimination, and even sexual assault by her coach.

Goucher told the Broad College audience about coming back to running after the birth of her son, when Salazar told her that she needed to start taking a thyroid medication to lose post-pregnancy weight and improve her running performance. After that, she said, there were things she could no longer ignore or explain away, including seeing others in the program doping to improve their running performance.  Goucher says that she never took any performance-enhancing drugs, but that seeing how rampant the practice was, she decided she couldn’t stay in the program.

Goucher went to the United States Anti-Doping Agency to share her experience with Nike and the Oregon Project, which ultimately meant going public with her testimony. The reaction was immediate. She remembers losing out on lucrative sponsorships and being banned from races in the United States and London because of her testimony.  She said, “The hardest part was knowing that everything I worked hard for would be in question. It was hearing my family read the comments because it would upset them so much.”

In 2023, Goucher published The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team, detailing her experience of the program and sharing her story publicly. The book made the New York Times bestseller list and brought these topics to the forefront of the conversation about professional running. But, most importantly, it allowed Goucher to share her own story, rather than watching others tell the story from the outside. She said, “I was so tired of the narrative I was hearing about myself, about my story. I kept thinking how good it would feel to get it out in my words, on my terms.”

The book’s reception, Goucher said, has been overwhelmingly positive. “I think it’s important to hear other people say, ‘This happened to me, I got through it, and I’m OK now,’’ she said. “I had a lot of fear that I would never be able to work in the space again. But the truth has power.”

Today, Goucher is a commentator at NBC and cohost of the Nobody Asked Us podcast with fellow Olympian Des Linden. She continues to highlight issues in the running and professional sports world, including, recently, a successful push for maternity benefits for female athletes, alongside pro runners Alysia Montaño and Allyson Felix. Goucher says that she wants to continue to work in the running world and hopes to see more women in leadership roles within the sport.

And she isn’t leaving. “That’s one thing I’m really proud of: I didn’t let them steal my love of the sport,” Goucher said.

Visit the Broad Flickr album to see more photos from the event.