Major honours
An experimental pro group Nike built on its own campus in 2001, at a time American distance running had been completely overtaken by East Africa. Alberto Salazar, winner of three straight New York City Marathons, took charge and deployed then-unheard-of resources: altitude tents, an underwater treadmill and individualized physiological monitoring. The results were real. Mo Farah completed back-to-back 5000m/10000m doubles at London 2012 and Rio 2016 for four Olympic golds; Matthew Centrowitz won the 1500m at Rio 2016, the first American man to do so since 1908; and Galen Rupp took 10000m silver in 2012 and marathon bronze in 2016. But when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency banned Salazar for four years in September 2019 over prescribing-rule violations, Nike disbanded the project within a month, and Salazar was later banned for life. Eighteen years of results remain, to this day, an object of suspicion.
Record comparison
Bars are scaled to the strongest team in this list.
Club legends
Rivalry
It competed for control of American distance running with the Nike-funded Bowerman Track Club, also based in Portland, and on the international stage it set itself against the entire Kenyan and Ethiopian camp system.