TW: SA, ED, abuse
The world of professional athletics is often glamorized, but behind the scenes, women athletes face a myriad of challenges and inequalities. In today’s episode of the Financial Feminist, Tori sits down with Olympian Kara Goucher to shine a light on the darker side of women’s professional athletics. Kara, a trailblazer in her own right, shares her raw and unfiltered experiences navigating the complexities of the sports industry as a female athlete.
From unequal pay and sponsorship opportunities to the stigma surrounding motherhood in sports, Kara delves into the systemic issues that continue to plague women athletes. She reveals the pressures she faced to downplay her role as a mother in order to be taken seriously in her athletic career and reflects on the disparities in media representation between male and female athletes. Additionally, Kara opens up about her decision to leave a major sponsor like Nike to join a smaller woman-owned company, highlighting the financial risks and rewards of prioritizing values over profit.
Gender disparity
Kara discusses the systemic issues of gender disparity in professional athletics, highlighting disparities in pay, sponsorship opportunities, and media representation between male and female athletes. She shares her own experiences of unequal treatment and emphasizes the need for systemic change within the industry.
“It’s really easy to make stars out of the male athletes because they have quote unquote more personality… But with the women, it’s really not hard to still make them stars. You just need to get to know who they are.”
Motherhood & sports
Reflecting on the stigma surrounding motherhood in sports, Kara shares the challenges she faced as a professional athlete and mother. She candidly discusses the pressure to downplay her role as a parent in order to be taken seriously in her athletic career.
“I remember this woman made me a necklace with my son’s fingerprint on it. And my coach and my sports psychologist were like, that is so fluffy. Why would you wear that? You are tough. You do not need that.”
Endorsements and contracts
Tori and Kara discuss her decision to leave a major sponsor like Nike to join a smaller woman-owned company — highlighting the financial risks and rewards of prioritizing values over profit. She emphasizes the importance of leading with integrity and staying true to one’s beliefs, even in the face of financial uncertainty.
“It’s so worth it, not only just for my soul, it was worth it, but financially it’s totally paid off…I had the ability to walk away from the big check, but just, I really would love like younger athletes and younger women just in general to think about like, who do you really want to be? When you can lead with your values, sure, there’s tough times, but it’s so worth it.”
Disparities in media representation
Addressing the unequal portrayal of male and female athletes in media coverage, Kara highlights biases and stereotypes that limit the visibility and recognition of women in sports. She points out how female athletes are often portrayed differently in media coverage compared to their male counterparts. Kara emphasizes that while male athletes are celebrated for their confidence and personality, female athletes face scrutiny and are expected to adhere to certain norms of appearance and behavior.
“With the men, we celebrate it. We’re like, we love a good rivalry. We love all this stuff. But with the women, we don’t, you know, we still want them to be pretty. And we still want them to be humble.”
Using your voice
Kara encourages athletes and women alike to speak out against injustice and advocate for change within the sports industry. She emphasizes the power of collective action and the need for solidarity in challenging systemic inequalities and discrimination.
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Meet Kara
Kara Goucher is an American long-distance runner and a two-time Olympian. After more than a decade as a Nike athlete, Kara is now sponsored by Oiselle and Altra and is a cofounder of the Clean Sport Collective, an anti-doping initiative. She lives in Boulder with her husband Adam, also an elite runner, and their son Colt.
Transcript:
Tori Dunlap:
A quick content warning before we get into today’s episode. Kara’s story discusses sexual assault, eating disorders, and abuse. If that is something that you might find triggering, go ahead and skip this episode, and we’ll see you back here next week. Thanks.
Kara Goucher:
If I go down, I’m replaceable. There’s a million other athletes that want to be Olympians. At the time, there was no SafeSport. There was no one from my sports governing body that I could go to. Also, my governing bodies, their biggest source of income comes from Nike, my sponsor at the time. Even if I said to them, “This is happening, I don’t know where to go,” they don’t want to ruffle feathers with Nike. That’s where the majority of funding comes from, from USATF. I really felt like I cannot even spend any time thinking about this, because there’s no situation here in which I get to continue on as me and living out my dreams. My life is over. It’s just over.
Tori Dunlap:
Hello, financial feminists. Welcome to the show. Very excited to see you. As always, thank you for being here. My name’s Tori. I am a money expert, I’m a New York Times bestselling author, and I fight the patriarchy by making you rich. If you’re an oldie but a goodie, you already knew that. Welcome back.
Today’s episode is probably one of the most powerful episodes we’ve ever done. I used to joke that I cry at every single episode, and then I guess I hardened up a bit, because I usually now get it through episodes without crying. Both of us, actually, both our guests today and me couldn’t get through this talk without … Her story is just incredibly phenomenal. She’s one of the most powerful women I think I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to, and also society just fucked her over really hard, and she made the most of it. I just need you to listen to today’s episode, because it’s so incredibly powerful. God, I love women. Today’s episode is a really, really good one.
Kara Goucher is an American long distance runner and a two-time Olympian. After more than a decade as a Nike athlete, kara is now sponsored by Oiselle and Ultra, and is a co-founder of the Clean Sport Collective, an anti-doping initiative. She lives in Boulder with her husband Adam, who is also an elite runner, and their son Colt. We’ve spoken previously with Olympians and athletes about the reality of being a woman in sports, but Kara’s book, which is called The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping and Deception on Nike’s Elite Running Team, details the dark side of athletics. Without being too salacious, this is a story very similar to the more broadly known story about Larry Nassar and the U.S Gymnastics team, but this is a story of women at the top of their game who are in a cycle of abuse, both by the systems that exist, but also by the companies that they’re partnered with in order for them to make money and to support their journeys to the Olympics and to marathons.
We’re so grateful to Kara for sharing her story as she talks about the pressure put on female athletes, especially mothers, when it comes to performance and the ways that Nike mistreated her and exploited her for gain. Some of these are just absolutely shocking. Again, you’re going to want to listen to this episode. Very powerful, but heavy, so please keep in mind the content warnings at the top. Let’s just get into it. First, a word from our sponsors. I’m in Seattle.
Kara Goucher:
I used to live in Portland. I lived in Portland for 10 years. We’re like, I don’t know, sister cities with Seattle or something.
Tori Dunlap:
Totally. I went to college in Portland.
Kara Goucher:
Oh, cool.
Tori Dunlap:
I was there for a while. Yeah, very similar to Seattle, though anybody who is from Portland would really be upset that I just said that, but it’s true. It’s true, everybody. I’m so excited to have you. You started running at a very young age. Talk to me about when the Olympic dreams started for you.
Kara Goucher:
I think I always thought, “Wouldn’t the Olympics be amazing,” but maybe thought of gymnastics or something. I started running when I was six, and I didn’t really think about running in the Olympics at that point. It really wasn’t until I saw the stars, I saw Carl Lewis, and I saw people, and I cared about them. But it was really in 1992 when I was about to be a freshman in high school, and I saw Lynn Jennings win the bronze medal at the Olympic Games, and that just had a huge profound impact on me. I saw her sprint her way into third in this battle, and I was like, “Oh my God, I really want to do that. I want that to be me.”
Tori Dunlap:
Was it that representation moment where it’s like, “Okay, I see somebody who kind of looks like me. I can see myself doing this now”? Yeah,
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, totally. I’m just a taller white girl from Minnesota, and I saw this white muscular girl, and it was the first time that the 10,000 had been in the Olympic games for women. It was exciting to see women running that far. Women were running the marathon, of course,. Joni had won the Olympic gold medal in the marathon in ’84, but they still didn’t have the 10,000. It was just amazing to see her running that far on the track, and in this battle for a third place, and to be able to sprint away. She was just an athlete that I had looked up to and saw myself in her, and it really just left me with this feeling of, “Oh man, I want that to be me so bad. I want to go to the Olympics.”
Tori Dunlap:
In our research, we found, you shared that sports were the way to get people’s attention. When did you start to get that attention and how did it shape the way you continued to perform as an athlete?
Kara Goucher:
I think I started running competitively in seventh grade, and I started running for the high school. In eighth grade there started to be, and remember I’m from a small town in northern Minnesota, but there started to be weekly newspaper articles about me, about the races I was doing. I came from a blended family and I got good grades and never got in trouble, so in some ways I was a little bit invisible, and this was a way for me to …
People paid attention. “Oh, Kara’s running. What happened?” People would ask me about my running.=, Teachers, classmates, things like that. I had a lovely mother and sisters, and childhood in general, but it just was a way for me to be there. My sisters joke, I had to become an Olympian to make everyone remember I was there, because I just blend in a little bit. Sports was really a way for me to stand out and to have my own identity, and to have people know who I was rather than just a quiet, mousy, good student.
Tori Dunlap:
I am, first of all, not a runner at all, and the fact that you do what you do is absolutely astounding to me. I have a friend, and she’s been on the show before, who plays rugby for the national team. I have talked to other folks who are Olympians, and I feel like there’s just this pressure to perform all of the time as an athlete, but especially of course, if you’re competitively doing your sport and if you’re an Olympian, do you think that pressure to continue to perform keeps athletes in unhealthy situations or even unhealthy mindsets?
Kara Goucher:
I do think that it can be very unhealthy. We just had our Olympic trial selection marathon for the Olympic Games this summer in Paris this past Saturday. The top three women across the line moved on to the Olympic Games. While there were three women that were elated, there were a lot more that were just absolutely devastated. There’s a saying in our world, which is, you’re only as good as your last race.
There’s just this pressure to constantly perform, to constantly enter yourself in things, to constantly knock it out at the park. I’m a little bit older and removed from it now, and I can just see how that’s an impossible standard to live up to. You cannot always be on top. You’re not going to make every team you try out for. I think that it puts a lot of mental and emotional strain on these athletes, and I definitely suffered from it myself, but as I’ve gotten older, I really, really see it in the athletes now.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, I don’t think I realized how much of your pay is factored into how you perform. Can you explain the pay structure you were under and the demand of like, “Yeah, okay, I have to perform not only because I want to do well, but also I have to make a living. I have to get paid”?
Kara Goucher:
My contract that I write about in the book, it had requirements. Yeah, I was getting a great salary, but I had to race 10 times a year. I had to do 10 appearances. But then I also, if there was an Olympic games, I had to make the team. If I didn’t make the team, goodbye to a third of my salary for the life of my contract, or I had to be ranked top three in the United States or top 10 in the world. Again, life is real and messy, and people have injuries, things happen, and you live a little bit in a pressure cooker. On the one hand, you’re living out your dreams. You’re trying to go to the Olympics and you’re trying to be all that you can be. On the other hand, if you don’t perform, you suffer huge financial consequences.
It’s just always on your mind, and it makes it difficult sometimes to make the right choice. I ran on a stress fracture in my femur once, because I didn’t want to have a permanent reduction to my contract. Sometimes you make decisions that you wouldn’t normally make if it wasn’t so intense, and if those things didn’t matter, but those things are all written into the contracts.
Tori Dunlap:
I think there is this feeling that I think a lot of women have too, of, “Okay, if I have this goal or I want something, there’s just this expectation that I need to suck it up. Anything that’s abusive, or bad, or just feels uncomfortable and potentially unsafe, but I have to do it in order to get the thing that I want.” Was that an experience for you?
Kara Goucher:
Oh, 100%. I think that goes across a lot of work environments for women-
Tori Dunlap:
Totally.
Kara Goucher:
… But certainly in sport. It’s a male-dominated industry. Most of the coaches are male. Most of the men making decisions about contracts are male, if not all. I never really felt like I could be emotional, or I could share any doubts, or I could share anything like that, because then I felt like it would be thrown back in my face that I didn’t want it bad enough, that I wasn’t tough enough. I think I really hid a lot of who I was, and I put up with a lot of stuff that I knew was wrong. I knew it was wrong, but then I thought, “Well, what’s the alternative? Who am I going to talk to? I just want to make it. I want to go to the Olympics. I want my dreams to come true. This is just a part of it. I just have to deal with this.” I think that I dealt with that so much. I think women deal with that all the time.
Tori Dunlap:
I come from a very different background, but my background is theater and the arts. Of course, there’s all of this conversation, and if we’re starting to talk about it much more openly, but parts go to the people who are willing to, something like sleeping with the producer, or do eight shows a week to the point where your body’s burned out as well. I feel like this is a common thing to your point of, “I want this so bad. I want my dream so bad.” These institutions are upheld on silence, and we saw this with the women’s gymnastics team very infamously a couple years ago. It’s just this cycle of abuse, the cycle of, even in a more minor way, just feeling uncomfortable or feeling just like, “I don’t want to push myself this hard, but I want my dream really bad.”
Kara Goucher:
I think it starts small. You make a little compromise. You let someone make a comment about you, or a comment about someone else that in any other environment you’d be like, “Don’t say that,” or, “That’s not cool.” It starts small. Then, the more that you go through it, the more you almost become conditioned to just accept it. I know that’s how I was. There were things happening that I knew were wildly inappropriate. I knew it, but if I went there in my mind and I thought, “This is inappropriate, this is not right,” then what? Then I’m giving up everything I want. I was trying to convince myself, “I’m not going to let them take this from me, so I’m going to play the game, so that I can get what I want,” and in the end, I ended up compromising some of my own beliefs and things happened to me that didn’t need to happen.
Tori Dunlap:
The overwhelming consensus, especially from female athletes, and this thread through your book is almost like a gaslighting by coaches and the people who are supposed to be looking out for you, who end up taking advantage of you, not just financially, but physically and emotionally. The very people that you’re trusting with your safety, and your money, and your career, and your body, are the people who are betraying that trust.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, I think actually that’s the hardest part, is it is people that you have chosen to almost become family with, to let in to lead you, and you just give everything to them. “I’m going to follow you into the depths of hell because you want me to be who I believe I can be.” That betrayal is so huge, but I also think that that’s why so many women stay silent, because the betrayal is so huge, and you really feel foolish.
I was so embarrassed for years about some of the things that I experienced. I couldn’t tell anyone. It was so embarrassing to me that I had trusted this person in such a deep way, and ignored all the warning bells. I just think that’s a way where it allows the manipulation in the system to continue, because these are people that you trust so much, and they’re coming at the place where you’re the most vulnerable. They’re the ticket to your dreams, and they just hold that and they know that. That’s the stuff that hurts even more than some executive saying I’m fat, or I’m not competitive anymore, or whatever. That stuff stings, but it’s the people that you really trust and you’re most vulnerable with. That’s what is the hardest, by far.
Tori Dunlap:
I know you talk a bit about that in your book, but as much as you’re willing to share, what were some of those incidents that really felt like, “I’m having to choose between my career and playing the game,” to your point, versus what my values are or what my beliefs are?
Kara Goucher:
I had a coach that I just cared about so much, and I trusted him so much. Again, it started small. It was little sexual comments about other people, always light and playful. I kind of compromised my values and would join in because I felt like I had to, because it’s me and six men, so I’m just going to laugh and say that’s funny too. Then it, over time, just slowly progressed to where he would just be telling me things that were just so inappropriate, like sexual fantasies, sexual experiences, and I know this is wrong. I’m sitting there like, “I cannot believe this is happening,” but even though I’m thinking that, my physical reaction is to laugh, appease him, so this can be over with. Then it progressed to where he actually touched me inappropriately while giving me massage.
It’s really sad, because even that, I somehow justified. I was like, “He loves me. He would never do that. It had to have been a mistake.” It happened more than once. That was very confusing for me. I think my breaking point was, he told me he had feelings for me in a relationship way, and it was so in my face. I’m so good, and I think women are good at this, at compartmentalizing. “I’m at work now, I’m work Kara,” or, “I’m here and I’m mom Kara,” because I can’t let all these things affect me, or I won’t be able to get the job done.
I think I had gotten so good at compartmentalizing, but when he was in my face, I couldn’t put it in a box. It was just too there. That was actually my breaking point. Not all of the things that had happened for years before that. It was him saying that he thought we should be in a relationship together. It sounds so obvious, but it took me years to get to that point where I said, “This is crazy. I can’t do this anymore.”
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you for sharing that. It’s awful. I think also as well for, again, if you have the dream and how you have the goal, if you have to confront what’s happening, it means you then have to make a decision.
Kara Goucher:
I totally agree with you. The first time that I had an uncomfortable massage with him, I’m in a foreign country. I’m thinking, “Okay, if this was on purpose, I don’t even feel safe right now.” Then I’m spiraling thinking like, “Well, why would he do that? I’m the bad person, and if I say something, obviously he’s never going to work with me again. Now, Nike is probably never going to want to work with me again, because I’ve accused one of their most famous athletes and coaches of doing something inappropriate,” and the consequences were so big.
Remember too, this is the person I’m the most vulnerable with. He knows my dreams more than anyone else. He knows I trust him with everything. I couldn’t even go there. I just shut it down. I just shut it down. My mind went crazy for 30 minutes, and then I just shut it down. It didn’t happen. It was an accident, and if you even think about it, you’re going to ruin everything that you have ever wanted and everything that you have ever worked hard for, and you’re going to ruin it over this? No, you’re not going to do that. That’s what I did. Then I just moved forward and pretended it never happened.
Tori Dunlap:
It almost becomes like it’s your fault, right? As if like, “Oh yeah, did I do something wrong? Did I say something wrong?” Then of course, because we’re in a fucked up, patriarchal society, the thought that you’re having is, “I can’t say anything even though I’m uncomfortable, because my career is going to be ruined, not this predator, not somebody who is touching me inappropriately, saying inappropriate things to me, who’s abusing me.” The conversation and the thought process is always like, “I have to tolerate this because where else am I going to go to do the thing I’m good at?”
Kara Goucher:
A hundred. I’m like, “Where am I going to go with this information anyway?”
Tori Dunlap:
Right, right. Well, let’s talk about that for a second. Is there, I think there’s an Olympic committee. Maybe there wasn’t at the time. I don’t know what would happen?
Kara Goucher:
There wasn’t at the time. There was nothing at the time. There is SafeSport now, but at the time there was nothing. Essentially, I would go to his boss at Nike, who’s a man. Who’s been friends with this person for 30 years, who this person has a building named after them on the Nike campus, and he’s going to say, what? “Oh, that happened. I believe you.”
Let’s just say he doesn’t believe me, so then I go up higher. I go to CEO, who’s also a man. I’m not stupid. I know that I am disposable, and he is not. If he goes down, it’s a huge loss for this business. There’s a building named after him. He’s iconic. He’s in their advertising. He’s beloved. If I go down, I’m replaceable. There’s a million other athletes that want to be Olympians. I wasn’t stupid. Then there’s nowhere for me to go. At the time, there was no SafeSport. There was no one from my sports governing body that I could go to.
Also, my governing bodies, their biggest source of income is comes from Nike, my sponsor at the time, so even if I said to them, “This is happening, I don’t know where to go,” they don’t want to ruffle feathers with Nike. That’s where the majority of funding comes from, from USATF. I really felt like I cannot even spend any time thinking about this, because there is no situation here in which I get to continue on as me and living out my dreams. My life is over. It’s just over.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, let’s talk about, for somebody who isn’t an Olympian and doesn’t know, what is that connection between athletes and a brand sponsor like Nike? It sounds like they’re pretty inextricably linked.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, they’re your livelihood, right? They pay your bills. There’s other things too. The races, they can control who gets into a race or not. I don’t even have the ability to get into certain track meets or certain marathons, because they’ll just blackball me, so now I’ve just made my pool of options of trying to prove that I’m good enough to qualify for this, or good enough to be put in this field, that pool has been narrowed. Now, I only have a few races that will take me, and then once you get a bad reputation anyway, you’re out.
Also, my governing body is funded by Nike, so they don’t want me to do anything, because that’s a problem for them, because that’s where they get their money. It was basically everyone’s in bed together, essentially. There’s no one taking a step back and saying, “Hey, this is a problem. There’s a conflict of interest here, here, here, and here.” It’s just that’s how the system works, and that’s how the system still works, honestly, although now there is SafeSport, which is drowning in cases and not doing the job it’s supposed to do either, but at least there is a place to go now, but back then there was nothing. Even now, it’s so difficult because like I said, SafeSport is so backlogged.
We thought, “Okay, in light of the Nassar thing, let’s start this SafeSport thing. Let’s have a safe place where athletes can come and report abuse,” and we thought there was what going to be 10 cases a year. There’s thousands of cases a year, and we just don’t have enough investigators and lawyers and people at SafeSport to handle the influx. This problem, what I experienced, is a nothing burger compared to the whole ecosystem of female athletes when you consider all sports.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Gosh, I just need to take a deep breath.
Kara Goucher:
Uplifting, uplifting.
Tori Dunlap:
No, but this is what we do on the show, we talk about the hard shit. I’m just so sorry that happened to you. I’m so sorry that it continues to exist. I’m unfortunately not fucking surprised. One of the things that I know that when I’ve learned a little bit more about how Olympians are getting paid, again, talking with previous guests, I think people think, “Okay, I make the Olympic team.” I don’t know. You’re immediately a millionaire, or you’re immediately made it, and from my understanding, most of your money is coming from a Nike or coming from sponsorship deals. I think you get paid when you medal. Tell me how that works. Because if Nike and the Olympics are inextricably linked, but also I have to get paid, where is that money coming from?
Kara Goucher:
It’s not. There’s probably a bonus in your contract for making the Olympic team, and there’s probably a bonus in your contract if you medal.
Tori Dunlap:
You’re talking a contract with Nike. You’re a Nike athlete, that’s a new contract.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, but if you don’t have a shoe sponsor or apparel sponsor or whatever it is in the sport that you do, you’re not getting anything for making the Olympic team. You’re getting a pat on the back and a congratulations, and you can now go get the rings tattooed on your body. Again, I love the Olympics, and the history of the Olympics, and the honor of being an Olympian. I get all of that. But you’re supposed to now go perform on the world’s biggest stage, while other people are making tens of millions of dollars off you, if not hundreds of millions of dollars off you, and you’re not coming home with anything. The only reason you can come home with something is if you do something amazing there, and a secondary sponsor wants to hype you now.
It’s not like you go to the Olympics, and all of a sudden you get $100,000, you go to the Olympics and your checkbook’s exactly the same. There’s a lot of people getting rich, but it’s not the athletes. Now, there are a few athletes that we see who do amazing things, and the public falls in love with them, and then they come off. Mikaela Shiffrin, I think of has all these secondary sponsors because people love her, and they want to see her. Those are great, and those are awesome, but those are few and far between.
Tori Dunlap:
You just think about the number of athletes who go and compete in any sport. Yes, there’s a Michael Phelps, but there’s also, I don’t know, someone who does curling.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
I can’t name a curling athlete. I can’t name anybody on the curling team.
Kara Goucher:
Right, right. I actually know some of the curlers because they’re from my hometown-
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, amazing.
Kara Goucher:
… On the last two Olympic teams. They didn’t come home with … Two Olympics ago, they won the gold medal and they came home and went back to their regular jobs. They don’t have footwear sponsors or apparel sponsors. I think that the media has done a really good job of making it look glamorous, and it is. There are dreams coming true, but the reality is a lot of elite athletes are living at the poverty line, and they’re barely making ends meet, and they’re sacrificing so much, and they’re not working on their skill set, so once the Olympics is over or they don’t make the Olympics and it’s over, they haven’t been working on themselves, they haven’t been working, and now they’re stunted as far as experience, and they have no money. It’s really a darker side, and not to mention, all of the mental health stuff that goes into that. When your single pursuit is all that you think about for years and years and years, whether you accomplish it or not, it is so empty at the end.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s your identity.
Kara Goucher:
It’s your entire identity, and then you’re like, “Well, now what? I haven’t even let anything else enter my mind for the last 10 years because I’ve been so focused on the singular pursuit, and now I’m just Kara and I don’t run anymore. Who the hell am? Where is my value?”
Tori Dunlap:
Right. I’m sure you’ve seen the Abby Wambach interview that she gave after she won the award with Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant on stage. I think it was the Espy Award for, what is it, Athlete of the Year? She won the same award, and she literally gives this interview, she’s like, “I won the same award that Peyton Manning did. I won the same award that Kobe Bryant did. I was honored the same way, but I am walking into a very different retirement.” This was at the end of her career playing professional soccer. She was like, “I don’t have the brand deals. I don’t have the multi-million dollar contracts, and I competed at the same level as these two male athletes, but I literally don’t know how I’m going to pay my rent.” I just think about that, after what you just said of just such different experiences.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, we’re talking about one of the greatest soccer players of all time.
Tori Dunlap:
Of all time. Of all time.
Kara Goucher:
Of all time, period. In the United States, we can argue, the best.
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Kara Goucher:
Or one of the top five best, and by the way, in the United States, we’re going to talk, they’re all going to be women. Let’s just be real. World Cup wins, Olympic gold medals, and she doesn’t have a brand sponsorship when she walks away? She’s still relevant. She’s more relevant than these other people. Soccer is huge.
Tori Dunlap:
Massive.
Kara Goucher:
But that’s just the reality that we live in. It’s so frustrating, and I love people like her who will speak openly about it, because I think a lot of people feel like, “Well, just don’t complain because maybe something will come up. Just don’t be that person.” It’s not even like she’s complaining. She’s literally just telling facts.
Tori Dunlap:
Facts.
Kara Goucher:
Just telling the truth. But I think it’s good for us to see that and hear that, because even I would assume Abby Wambach’s going to be taken care of by Nike for the rest of her life. I would just assume that, and we know that’s not the case. She wears different shoes now. That is really hard when you compare her to a Tom Brady, or a Peyton Manning, or whoever who is just going to live out their days without having to work. That doesn’t mean they won’t work. They don’t have to. Someone like her, that’s not the same situation at all.
Tori Dunlap:
She is doing great with Glennon, and they’ve got a podcast, and she speaks and all of that. But also, I’m seeing Peyton Manning every other day on my TV throwing Bud Light. He’s still out here, I’m sure, making way more money.
Kara Goucher:
He’s landing huge sponsorship deals and television ad deals, and you can’t fault him. But that’s such a good example of, Abby and Glennon have done their own thing, made their own brand, talk about their relationship, crushing it. She’s the best motivational speaker. They’ve built this whole other life, and this other source of income. But the men don’t have to do that. They can just show up every Super Bowl on a funny commercial and collect a million dollars for it.
The women don’t get to do that. They don’t get to do that. They have to hustle and pivot, and they can still be super successful, but they have to pivot and come up with, “Who am I now?” The men get to live in that glory forever. I’m not faulting them, but I am saying, “Why is it different? How come Abby just can’t be Abby fucking Wambach who won however many world Cups and two Olympic gold? Why can’t she just show up, and that’s that?”
Tori Dunlap:
If you’re watching on YouTube, I’m pumping my fist. That’s not to mention the fact that when she did play professionally, she and all of the rest of typically women athletes are paid severely less, even if they perform better than the male athletes in the same sport.
Kara Goucher:
I think women’s soccer is one of those sports that, if you really want to see the injustices that we still have between men and women in sport, it’s a perfect case. This is such a topic that we could probably go on for hours and hours, but the feedback is always so negative and so gross. It’s never just like, “Actually our women are the best in the world. I know they faltered at the last World Cup,” and that’s why it’s news because they didn’t win. That’s why it’s news, not because they didn’t qualify or whatever. The men qualified and we’re all losing our minds because the men qualified, which by the way, there can be everybody. Everybody can get love. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, but soccer specifically has been such a study for me, and it’s been twofold.
One, just so utterly depressing that the television ratings, the success, it’s black and white, the men versus the women, and yet the pay is so discriminatory and so depressing. But then also, it’s been really motivating, because they refuse to accept it, and not even for themselves, but for the next generation. They’re not even so selfish, like, “I need this money right now.” It’s more like, “We’re going to work this out year after year after year, so the future generations don’t have to do this.” Women’s and men’s soccer is fascinating. It makes you want to rip your hair out.
Tori Dunlap:
Truly. Yeah. I do want to round out our conversation about sponsors with, we learned that we just felt is so bizarre and frustrating and ridiculous. Nike suspended your pay when you were seven months pregnant. Was that something that was surprising?
Kara Goucher:
Yeah. No phone call.
Tori Dunlap:
No phone call?
Kara Goucher:
No phone call. It was shocking. I will tell you, it was shocking, because there was no set standard for what happened when you got pregnant back then. It was a very taboo topic. No one talked about it. I had heard that some women lost their contracts. I heard that some women got paid. I knew I wanted to be a mother. I knew I didn’t want to wait until my career was over. I just wanted to know what’s going to happen? Are you going to suspend me? Are you going to reduce me? My coach went and talked to the head of sports marketing, and he said, in no uncertain terms, “As long as she stays relevant, she does not need to worry. Don’t even go there.”
You know what I did? I was pregnant. I was in the cover of magazines with my belly bulging out. I was doing photo shoots, I was doing appearances, and I was being promoted as heavily, Google me during that time, as women can do it all. You can be a world-class marathoner, and you can also be a mother. When my financial advisor calls me when I’m seven months pregnant and says, “Hey, your quarterly check didn’t come in.” I said, “No, it’s European season time. I’m sure they’re busy. I’m sure it’s just like a week late.” “Okay.” Then I reached out to my agent, and my agent said, “Oh, no, that can’t be anything. Let me reach out.” Then he came back and he said, “You’ve been suspended indefinitely.”
I said, “What? If I would’ve known there was no value in my pregnancy, I wouldn’t have let them use me for their financial gain during that time.” Yeah, I was suspended without pay, and I had my baby, and I’m back at practice a week later, and I’m back just trying to make it right to this company like I owe it to them. I wasn’t being paid at the time. I ran the Boston Marathon six months after giving birth to my son, placed fifth at the Boston Marathon, and I wasn’t getting paid. I was on covers of magazines, covers of the Boston Globe. Everyone’s celebrating this come back from baby. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I wasn’t being paid because I didn’t have value, because I didn’t race, because I chose to have a baby. Actually, they would never say baby or maternity. In all of our emails exchanges and all of the papers it said, “Because of your medical condition.” It’s called pregnancy, but whatever. Yeah, anyway, long story short, I was very surprised, yes.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m sorry. I’m so angry.
Kara Goucher:
I was so angry too, and I really felt like I was going crazy.
Tori Dunlap:
Right, right. Of course you were/
Kara Goucher:
I felt like, “Well, why have you been flying me all over the United States if I have no value? If I have no value, why are you setting up for me to be on the cover of this magazine? Why are you having me do this interview? Why are you bringing me into this corporate event?”
Tori Dunlap:
“I’m still doing the work for you.”
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, exactly. If I have no value, I should have been told that up front. You know what I would’ve done? I would’ve been a pregnant woman. I would’ve enjoyed my pregnancy, and instead, I worked my ass off during that time. To be honest, it was really a shattering experience, because I thought I would be with this company for the rest of my life. I had been told I was a lifer. When I’m done running, I’ll get some job there. It was just so shattering to realize they don’t value the things that they pretend to value. Their marketing is brilliant and amazing, and I was on the cover of three magazines at once, but I wasn’t getting paid.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, The New York Times, didn’t they talk about your pregnancy announcement?
Kara Goucher:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, Nike actually orchestrated my pregnancy announcement. They actually worked with the New York Times. They told me not to tell anyone I was pregnant until this article came out. Someone from The New York Times came, we did a photo shoot, a really long interview, and then they ran the article. It was on the front page of the sports section in the New York Times. Nike orchestrated that. If I had no value, why am I on the cover of The New York Times sports section? If there’s no value, why would anyone even write about it? Really, I just felt like I was losing my mind. I just felt like, this can’t be real. Yeah, it was terrible.
Tori Dunlap:
Well, you keep saying the word value, and it just breaks my heart because first of all, every human person has value. The second thing is, under capitalism, if you’re not working, if you’re not doing your job, if you have the audacity to have a child, which is work by the way, arguably the hardest kind of work, then I have, and I’m putting this in the massive air quotes, I don’t have any value anymore. That’s just so heartbreaking, but you’re not wrong from how brands and companies and capitalist society treat women.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, I mentioned that I was just at the Olympic trials Marathon, where the United States selects our Olympic team.
Tori Dunlap:
Were you commentating there?
Kara Goucher:
I was commentating, yeah, for NBC. At the press conference the day before, Aliphine Tuliamuk, who won the Olympic trials in 2020. She had a daughter between the Covid shutdown, and when she actually raced the Olympics in 2021, her daughter Zoe. Up on the stage, they had two mothers, and they were both expected to make the Olympic team. Oh no, there are three mothers, sorry. Betsy, Kyra, and Aliphine, who all were expected to make it or vie for a spot, and they’re all mothers. They were saying how it’s so different. They were very honest. Aliphine actually said, and it really made me emotional, “Thanks to Kara, we get to be moms.” I really had to sit with it later, because I thought back to … Sorry. I thought back to the 2020 Olympic trials when I was trying to make the Olympic team, which I did, and I didn’t talk about my son at all because he was considered …
Tori Dunlap:
He was a taboo.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, he was taboo. He was proof that I didn’t want it anymore. I thought back to an interview that’s really, really popular on YouTube where I said, “No one cares that I’m a mom. I’m an athlete. That’s what I’m here for.” It made me really sad that I didn’t have that experience that these other women are having, but it also made me really happy that they could talk about their children at the press conference. I never spoke about my child at a press conference because I felt like I would be judged, that I wasn’t serious, that I didn’t want it. “Oh, she became a mom. She’s not a real athlete anymore.”
Anyway, it was a very emotional experience for me for a lot of reasons. But we have made progress. It’s not perfect, but we definitely have made progress. But when I was doing it, it was like with a rolled eye. “Kara had to have a baby.” I don’t know. It was just so weird. No, I chose to. I wanted to, and by the way, I still made the Olympic team. I’m still the same athlete that I was before.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m so sorry.
Kara Goucher:
I’m crying over here too.
Tori Dunlap:
How emotional too, to think, “Okay, I have to choose.” We saw with Serena Williams’ announcement when she retired, as she was like, “I am retiring before I want to, but in order to expand my family, I have to choose. I have to choose.” Then it’s also for you, it’s this beautiful creature I’ve created and this child that I love and that I have, I can’t even talk about, so then that must feel weird. Of course, I’m proud of him, and I love him, and I want to talk about him, but I can’t because then it’s going to impact my career. It’s just so ridiculous that we of course live in a society that does not encourage and support parenthood, but specifically motherhood, and that you had this experience of just like, “Yeah, I can’t bring my full self to work or else I’m not going to have a job. I can’t be a mother to my beautiful child, and then I feel almost maybe about being a mom, because I can’t talk about it public.” That’s awful. It’s awful.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah. No, I think that’s what made me emotional, because I felt sad for who I was. It makes me so sad. It should have been a happy moment, and he should have been able to be there. It should have been embraced, because that’s how it was being proposed in articles and on magazine covers. But when it got down to the nitty-gritty sports world, he was a problem. He was a problem. I wanted to bring him to a meet, or I want to bring him to training camp. “But why are you bringing him to training camp?” “Because he’s six months old and I’m his mom, and I keep him alive.”
Everything was a battle. Every way, all the whole way through. I’m going to run this marathon. I need an extra hotel room. “Why do you need an extra hotel room?” “I need someone to take care of my son when I’m out racing, or the night before.” It was just, everything was a battle, and it didn’t have to be like that. There was some people cheering it on, but in the world that I really truly lived in, the people who actually make the decisions, it was not. It was an annoyance. It was just a really sad time, because it wasn’t at all what I imagined. I just feel sad that I couldn’t really be myself during that time, that I was always very conscious of tempering talking about him, and not being mom-like,
I remember this woman made me a necklace with my son’s fingerprint on it, and my coach and my sports psychologist were like, “That is so fluffy. Why would you wear that? You are tough. You do not need that.” Even in my most inner circle, I had to be like, “I can’t wear this adorable little necklace while I’m running, which is just my son being close to me.” It was just a constant, constant battle. But that’s why change happens, because I experienced that, and I sat through that, and saw other women sit through that, and finally it was like, enough is enough. This shouldn’t happen, and that’s why 12 years later, women were there, and their kids were there, and no one was like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe that Zoe’s running around.” They were like, “Oh my gosh, Zoe’s here. This is so great.” We still can make change, but it is so much better, and I am very, very happy about that.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I want to get to the fuck you moment, because I feel like it’s satisfying, a little bit. When you left Nike, you took a substantially lower offer from a smaller, woman-owned company. Talk to me about that process. Talk to me about that decision, the nice little middle finger to Nike on your way out.
Kara Goucher:
Nike had the ability to extend my contract. I didn’t. They did, and I knew that they would want to keep me. I had had a stress fracture in my foot, and I knew that I was … One of the things in my contract too was not so much time could pass without me racing, or I could face a permanent reduction. My foot wasn’t healed, but I knew I was closing in on that time. I went secretly and quietly to a USATF sanctioned race, and I ran it before that window closed, and then I continued to race the rest of the year and fulfill my contract, and so Nike sent me this letter and they said, “We know you’ve been racing. We know you’re going to fulfill your race requirements, but unfortunately you missed the window. You can’t let more than 120 days lapse and you let 122 days lapse.”
I have to tell you, Tori, it was like one of the happiest moments of my life, because I was like, “Fuck you. I did race, because I knew you fuckers were going to do this.” I showed the letter to a lawyer and he said, “Oh yeah, if you can provide those race results and you can prove that it was a USATF sanctioned event, you’re free.” What they wanted to do was suspend me without pay for 122 days, because that’s how long I didn’t race, and then renegotiate my contract, and I said, “See you,” and I left. But I was still on the hook a little bit, because while they couldn’t extend my contract, they could hold me for 180 days, so I had to be released from them.
I started meeting with other companies, and I got to be honest, a lot of them just felt like smaller Nikes. I remember being in a pitch. These people flew to Colorado, super nice men, but they have this whole pitch and they’re like, “Are you ready to be the future of our brand?”, and, “We’re leaning into women’s running,” and there wasn’t a single woman there but me. I just felt like, “You guys are nicer and smaller, but you’re missing it still. How are you making a pitch to me about being the face of a brand and leaning into women’s running when there isn’t a woman here?”
I met this company, Oiselle. It was women-led apparel. Everybody at the company was a woman. A woman started it, woman president, everybody that worked there was female. I was like, “Is this real? This is what heaven must be like.” I fell in love with this brand and I told him I wanted to sign with them. Actually at the time, the CEO said, “We can’t take you. We could never make you an offer that would do you justice.” I cried. I cried like my heart got broken or something. Finally one night, my husband just called her and said, “Just make us any offer.” She offered me a very small contract, but with a percentage of the company.
Then when we went to Nike and said, “I want to be released,” and they said, “Well, we can match that contract. That’s nothing. That’s like not even a 10th of what we’ve been paying her.” It was actually 1/20th of what they had been paying me. My husband said, “Yeah, but she’s getting a percent of ownership in the company,” and it was seriously … They said, “We’ll release her.” It was just one of the happiest moments that I got to leave on my own terms. I saw an out. I’d been there long enough, I was there for 12 and a half years, I knew the way the game was played. I could see the future. I knew they were going to try to keep me and make me stay, and I was able to just use that experience and get out, and get out on my own terms.
Tori Dunlap:
You don’t have to share this. Have you made a substantial amount of money getting a percentage of the company as opposed to just taking a flat deal? Has that been a smart financial decision? But of course, based on your values, which is great, it doesn’t matter. But also the financial part of me is curious.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, no, it was a big discussion, obviously, at the time with our financial advisor. We’re going down from this huge salary to nothing, but we knew we could make it work. Playing the long game was so worth it, because this was back in 2014. I’m in 2024 now. I just signed for the 11th year with this company, plus I still have part ownership. It was so worth it, not only just for my soul, it was worth it, but financially, it’s totally paid off.
It’s easy for me, because I was older and I had the ability to walk away from the big check, but I really would love younger athletes and younger women just in general to think about, who do you really want to be? I was like, “I cannot go back to this company. I can’t do it. I can’t represent something like this.” It was scary, and I didn’t make a lot of money for a while after, but here we are now 11 years later, and I’m actually doing better than I did back when I was at Nike. A lot better. It’s really when you can lead with your values, sure, there’s tough times, but it’s so worth it. It is so, so, so, so worth it.
Tori Dunlap:
I’ve literally opened up another tab and I’m Googling Oiselle, and I will be supporting their organization from now on, because I do have a couple of Nike sports bras, and we’re going to keep wearing those until those fall off, but in the future, we’ll be making a different choice with our money.
Kara Goucher:
Our bras are okay right now, but we have some new ones coming out at the end of February anyway.
Tori Dunlap:
Cool. My last question for you, being married to another Olympic runner, speaking about your husband, do you ever compare endorsements to see the disparities? Do you ever talk with other athletes at all, talking about money, or talking about deals? How does that work for you?
Kara Goucher:
I think just my husband and I are case in and of itself. He won four individual collegiate national titles. I won three, but I also won a team championship. He signed out of college for a lot more money than I did. I want to say his first year, he made probably $100,000 more than I did my first year out of college. We are a study in of ourselves. I am one of the lucky ones, and I do want to be clear on that. I was able to climb the ranks, and I think, doing the marathon and I won medal at the World Championships, I was able to really leverage that to get paid well. Just to be clear, I was one of the fortunate ones, but we still see it all the time.
We see the person who’s winning the hundred on the men’s side is typically making a lot more than the woman. We see it all the way down the line, and we even see it in the way that we storytell. This is something, I work for NBC, and something that I’ve really tried to be really cognizant of, is it’s really easy to make stars out of the male athletes because they have more personality. With the women, maybe they aren’t as flashy all the time, but it’s really not hard to still make them stars. You just need to get to know who they are. I have seen, too, that when the women are a little bit more flashy, oftentimes they’re called obnoxious or they’re attention seeking.
Tori Dunlap:
Cocky or conceited, that’s what I see all the time.
Kara Goucher:
Yeah, they’re cocky. Yeah, they’re so full of themselves.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. Any sort of confident woman athlete, we see this time and time again.
Kara Goucher:
All the time. With the men, we celebrate it. We’re like, “We love a good rivalry, we love all this stuff.” But with the women, we still want them to be pretty, and we still want them to be humble. I’m not even talking about anything where I work. I’m just saying, because I’m still involved, I see this constantly still of where the men, they’re the last event of the meets. They’re the highlighted event. That’s what’s so exciting about Paris is the women’s marathon is actually going to be the last event of all of the Olympics, the women are going to be.
Typically, we end with the men. They get paid more. They’re allowed to have personalities, and that makes them fun to follow, right? It’s fun when someone’s boisterous and confident, and we want to see, can anyone beat them? But when the women do that, they don’t get the same reception. I think we still have a ways to go.
Tori Dunlap:
I just cannot thank you enough for your vulnerability, for your fucking champion of women. Again, it’s going to make me cry. I can’t imagine what it was like to feel like you were putting your career on the line to talk about something that really, really needed to be talked about. I’m sure you’ve heard this from so many people, but thank you, fuck yes, and I’m sorry that it all happened, and I’m sorry that the world is not ready to hear it. I’m also just so glad that you’ve said it anyway, so just thank you for being here. Thank you for your work. Where can people purchase your book? Where can people find out more about you?
Kara Goucher:
Thank you so much, first of all, for lifting women. It’s really awesome. That’s what we need for change. People can follow me, @KaraGoucher on Instagram, and what was Twitter or Threads. You can find my book, The Longest Race, at pretty much your local bookstore, but if you can’t, it’s set up at all the big sellers. You can get it on Amazon, anything like that. I just appreciate all the support. Yeah, let’s keep changing it for the future generation.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you so much. Thank you to Kara for joining us. Her book, The Longest Race, is available wherever you get your books. You can also support her by checking out the Clean Sports Collective, which is her anti-doping initiative that she co-founded. You can also follow her on Instagram @KaraGoucher, G-O-U-C-H-E-R. We have the link down below in the show notes and description.
Thank you as always for being here, financial feminists. This is an episode I would really, really appreciate you sharing with the people in your life, especially if you have friends or family who are athletes. To be honest, I’m really re-evaluating my relationship with Nike products and determining how and if I want to continue supporting their business. It’s just really important to talk about these things, because shame lives in shadow, and I think a lot of people feel alone when abuse and when mistreatment happens. We’re really focused on this show in amplifying those stories, because they’re really important. They’re really important to talk about as women.
Thank you to Kara for joining us, and we would appreciate you sharing this episode with the people that you love and on social media. Thanks for being here. I don’t know how to end a really heavy episode like this, but thank you for being here. Thank you for being a financial feminist. We’ll talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristin Fields, associate producer Tamisha Grant, researched by Ariel Johnson, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalfe. Marketing and operations by Karina Patel, Amanda Leffew, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chou, Kailyn Sprinkle, Sasha Bonnar, Claire Kurronen, Daryl Ann Inman, and Jenell Riesner. Promotional Graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting this show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit Financialfeministpodcast.com.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over one million women negotiate salary, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of almost 250,000 on Instagram and more than 1.6 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
