Is Alberto Salazar Crazy, or What Exactly?

Having just finished John Brant’s magnificent and disturbing profile of Alberto Salazar in the New York Times Play magazine, Geezer is trying to figure out if the story should be read as inspiration or admonition. Who knew that Salazar went fourteen minutes without a heartbeat after a “temporarily fatal” heart attack last summer? Who knew that in 1987 Salazar made a religious pilgrimage to a church in what is now Bosnia, where he witnessed the miraculous conversion of the chain on his rosary beads from silver to gold? Who knew that Salazar’s father once hid Fidel Castro in his Havana attic, and later took part in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion? Who knew that Alberto Salazar attended the same high school that Geezer’s kids attended? (OK, Geezer was aware of that).  Note to people who still read books: When you’ve read this, you can read more about Salazar in John Brant’s Duel in the Sun: Alberto Salazar, Dick Beardsley, and America’s Greatest Marathon.