Content warning: This story covers disordered eating. If you are struggling with an eating disorder and are in need of support, please call the National Eating Disorders Association Helpline at 1–800–931–2237. For a 24-hour crisis line, text “NEDA” to 741741.
In November, the University of Colorado confirmed that it had launched an “independent, comprehensive fact-finding inquiry” into its prominent cross-country program for issues related to body composition and culture.
Six months later, findings have yet to be made available to the former student athletes whose allegations launched the investigation. Meanwhile, CU alumni appear divided, with some contributing their complaints to the process and others expressing passionate support of the program, and of longtime head coach Mark Wetmore and associate head coach Heather Burroughs.
The inquiry began after Kate Intile, who ran for CU from 2017–19, submitted complaints from 14 athletes to Athletic Director Rick George and Jill Keegan, senior associate athletic director for compliance and senior women’s administrator, in May 2022. Keegan told Intile on June 7, 2022, that they would conduct an inquiry in response.
On January 27, university spokesman Steve Hurlbert said a draft of the report was nearing completion. The investigators—two members of the university’s internal audit team and an outside attorney—spoke with more than 60 people, he said. But as of May 10, he could not provide an update on the status of the investigation or when its findings might be released.
In a call with Runner’s World in early May, Intile expressed dismay at the pace of the proceedings. “We don’t have answers. We don’t have a timeline,” she said. “That’s frustrating for people who took part and feel like there’s not a conclusion.”
Origins of the inquiry
The allegations center around Wetmore, Burroughs, and Laura Anderson, a registered dietitian and CU’s associate athletic director for performance nutrition.
Intile and the 13 other former student athletes alleged various types of mistreatment. Several reported that a combination of compulsory body composition testing and a focus on reducing body fat encouraged or exacerbated disordered eating (restricting food and other irregular behaviors) and eating disorders (conditions, such as anorexia and bulimia, diagnosed by specific criteria). In addition, they said private medical information was shared with the coaches and between athletes without their consent.
For example, several runners alleged they were encouraged to reach specific body-composition targets, often after being shown other athletes’ testing results.
Many nutrition and eating disorder experts have said these types of practices are harmful to student athletes, and many other prominent programs—including Brigham Young University, winners of the 2020 NCAA women’s cross-country championships, and North Carolina State University, whose women claimed the title in 2021 and 2022—have either put safeguards in place or stopped conducting body composition testing altogether.
In emailed responses to Runner’s World provided in November, Wetmore called the claims unfounded and said body composition tests were never mandatory. “Body composition tests specifically are highly valued by some of our athletes and avoided by others,” he said. “We coaches agree that there is value to them, but we also agree that if they are triggering or too stressful to an athlete, they should be able to opt out of them.”
He also disputed that athletes were treated differently based on their results. “None of them can honestly cite an example when an athlete was punished or rewarded for their body composition values,” he said. “This is not a subjective sport—we do not determine playing time, team travel, individual coaching attention or scholarships based on these measurements.”
Rather, he said, the program uses the latest sports science and support staff to allow athletes to train as elites while protecting their health. “We never hesitate to emphasize the importance of working with our nutritionist or to talk about these issues, such as RED-S [relative energy deficiency in sport], amenorrhea, low bone density, and disordered eating, which are far too prevalent in young women and female athletes,” he wrote. “We believe these problems are not discussed enough, both at the college level and by parents, family doctors and scholastic coaches.”
Wetmore, 69, has coached at CU since 1992 and became head coach on November 6, 1995; in that time, he’s led eight teams and five individuals to national cross-country titles. Burroughs, 47, was a three-time cross-country All-American at CU who ran under Wetmore and has been the associate head coach since 2011; the two are also a couple. Anderson has worked for the university since 2014 and was promoted in 2018.
Wetmore’s current three-year contract expires on June 30, 2024. It includes a clause that he can be terminated for cause for, among other reasons, conduct or coaching practices contrary to “recognized conduct and techniques” and that “in the determination of the athletics director, endangers, or could endanger, student athlete health, safety, or welfare.” Wetmore makes $160,000 yearly, with additional performance-based bonuses.
Statements of support
As they processed news of the inquiry and awaited the results, former CU athletes expressed vastly different stories of their time in the program—and interactions with Wetmore, Burroughs, and Anderson—both in public statements and interviews with Runner’s World.
Many shared positive experiences, including Tabor Scholl, who ran for the team from 2015–20, overlapping with Intile. Scholl, a three-time All-American at CU and currently a professional trail runner and coach, said she found the team culture celebratory of athletes with different body types. She understood body composition testing to be optional, and she said Anderson was sensitive in delivering results and never encouraged her to restrict her eating, including when Scholl was returning from a fractured femur.
“Our sport has a lot of small people in it and eating disorders are really prevalent, and it’s super sad to see,” Scholl said. But Wetmore and Burroughs encouraged athletes to be strong, not frail, she said. Wetmore would tell them, “‘Okay, everyone needs to add an extra potato—the harder training gets, the more you need to eat.’ That’s where I come from, what I experienced there.”
After Runner’s World reported on the allegations and inquiry in November, Scholl gathered testimonials from other athletes in support of Wetmore and Burroughs and submitted them to investigators. On February 2, a group of 44 alumni—including Scholl as well as Olympians Jenny Simpson, Emma Coburn, Dathan Ritzenhein, Joe Klecker, and Kara Goucher, along with her husband and four-time NCAA champion Adam Goucher and 2018 NCAA cross-country champion Dani Jones—shared coordinated statements on social media defending the program and its coaches.
Simpson, an Olympic bronze medalist and 2011 world champion in the 1500 meters, attended the school from 2005–09, during which time she won four NCAA championships. She’s still coached by Burroughs and Wetmore, and she also serves as a volunteer assistant coach for the CU program.
In an interview with Runner’s World, Simpson said that while she understands athletes will have different experiences with coaches, hers have been overwhelmingly positive; she’s also found Anderson supportive of both her athletic goals and her health. “I’m really proud of the program that I’m a part of, and I wouldn’t still be there if I felt like it wasn’t a safe and a good and successful place to be,” she said.
Two-time Olympian Goucher ran for CU from 1996–2001. She was also coached by Wetmore and Burroughs—whom she called “wonderful people”—as a professional through 2004, and again from 2014–19. While Goucher has spoken openly about struggling with disordered eating at CU—including in her new book, Running in the Cold—she said the pressure came from the greater running culture, not from Wetmore himself. She doesn’t recall any weigh-ins, body fat testing, or dictates surrounding numbers or percentages.
In fact, Wetmore was the one who first noticed she wasn’t fueling properly, she told Runner’s World in an interview. He pointed it out to Goucher and supported her in increasing her eating. “I would never lie and say that we didn’t have eating disorders on our team—100 percent we did,” Goucher said. But she credits Wetmore with helping her avoid that path and preserving her longevity in the sport.
Goucher and Scholl later deleted their social media posts. Both said they still stand by their support of the coaches.
Some commenters questioned if Goucher’s post was hypocritical, especially given her frequent advocacy against the abuse of athletes. Goucher said she understands how the approach could be viewed as inconsiderate, though she also felt the comments took a nasty turn, bringing up criminal complaints and other situations that weren’t a part of the current CU investigation. She deleted it “because it was going to a place that wasn’t helping anyone,” she said.
“I really don’t want to shame anybody else’s experience, because I do believe people on the same team can have different experiences,” she said. “My intention was to say, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of us that have had this good experience, and we want that noted.’ Maybe it wasn’t the best way to do that and I’ll acknowledge that, but I still think it’s important that everybody gets to be heard.”
Conflicting narratives
Other alumni reported negative experiences and did not sign on to the statement of support. That includes Lesley Higgins, who attended CU from 1998–2002, was the 2001 NCAA runner-up in the indoor mile, and, with Goucher, was part of the team that won the 2000 NCAA cross-country title. After a post-collegiate break from running, Higgins made the Olympic Trials final in the steeplechase in 2008.
Higgins said she remembers Wetmore testing athletes’ body composition with calipers himself once or twice per season, urging all his female athletes to maintain 12 percent body fat. “The messaging was so strong,” Higgins said, that it figured into Wetmore’s motivational speeches: “The pep talk he gave us going into indoor track was a story about a former athlete who was super frustrated that she didn’t make varsity cross country, so she went home over winter break and got down to 12 percent body fat and came back and was an All American indoors.”
Exactly how to do that safely wasn’t explained, she said. “We were never taught the proper way to fuel,” she said. “One of my biggest memories, looking back, is how hungry I was after every run.” She didn’t intentionally restrict her eating and never succeeded in achieving the 12 percent goal. She said, however, she witnessed teammates struggling with eating disorders and courting dangerously low body fat percentages.
She complained to Wetmore and to athletic director Dick Tharp at the time, but to her knowledge, no action was taken in response. She also spoke to the investigators conducting the current inquiry—in large part, she said, in hopes of changing the broader culture in the sport.
Another CU runner—who was one of the 14 who shared her initial experiences with investigators in writing—spoke with Runner’s World but asked that her name not be used because she feared ruining relationships with friends who felt differently, as well as backlash on social media, given the prominence of the coaches and the program.
The athlete was on the team from 2014–18 and said she was explicitly and repeatedly told to lose weight. The first time Wetmore pulled her aside was before she’d ever had body composition testing—he told her she looked like she hadn’t done her training and needed to lose about 10 pounds. At subsequent appointments, Anderson reinforced the message, comparing the runner’s body composition results to those of other athletes and telling her she needed to match it.
The runner said she once tried to refuse body composition testing, and Burroughs told her she wouldn’t be able to race until she was tested. The stated reason for the testing was to keep athletes healthy, but in her final couple of years on the team, the athlete said, she saw evidence that many of her teammates had issues with disordered eating.
Alumni at odds
Other alumni struggled to reconcile the differences between their own experiences and stories they’d heard from others. Carrie Verdon, who ran for the team from 2013–17 and is now an elite runner, said she wasn’t asked to sign the statement of support—but wasn’t sure she would have, despite her positive experiences. She also didn’t speak to the investigators.
Verdon said she already had disordered eating when she arrived at CU, but didn’t know how to get help. Her sophomore year, Burroughs pulled her aside and urged her to gain weight to protect her health, Verdon told Runner’s World. “I’m forever thankful for her, because she basically was like, ‘You need to eat every dessert you ever want—you need to gain this weight,’” Verdon said. “It saved me, honestly.”
After that, Verdon said, Burroughs and Wetmore set a target minimum weight for her. (Anderson wasn’t yet on staff, and no other dietitian oversaw the process, Verdon said.) Before each trip or meet, Verdon would step on the scale. If she weighed enough, she could race—and she ran well, including placing 20th and top American at the World U20 Cross-Country Championships in 2013 in Poland.
But even at the time, she said, many of her teammates reported receiving different messages. For them, the coaches’ directions seemed to revolve around losing weight and hitting body fat targets. Verdon never heard the words uttered directly to them, but she found herself stuck in the middle between friends she valued and coaches she respected and trusted.
“I am this naturally leaner person who was experiencing success—maybe that’s why I was not told to lose weight,” she said. “Whereas if you come in and you have a naturally fuller body and then you weren’t experiencing success for so many other reasons … maybe those people are the ones who are being pulled aside, and I just didn’t experience that.”
Beginning her junior year, Verdon struggled with injury—likely a consequence of long-term underfueling and a catalyst for new struggles with disordered eating, she said. At that point, she was no longer one of the team’s top runners and received far less individual attention from the coaches. “There’s no hard feelings there; I still was showing up,” she said. “But I think at that point, I kind of stopped loving running.”
Conversations about her weight took on a different and less supportive tone—she recalled Burroughs approaching her after a bad race and saying, “Maybe if you weren’t so thin, you would have done better.” When Anderson joined the staff in 2014, Verdon would meet with her regularly for body composition testing, which she understood to be mandatory.
“She would come in and do the skin caliper test and then give you all your results and be like, ‘Okay, your body mass is this, and this is what is needed in the sport,’” Verdon said, adding that she was never told to lose weight. “I think a lot of young women who are in college for the first time, they really need sensitivity behind those conversations. And that was not the way that she talked to me personally.”
After graduating, Verdon stepped away from the sport for more than a year before joining Team Boulder; she currently fits in high-level training around her day job as a teacher. She said she places an emphasis on fueling well and has seen success as a result, including qualifying for the 2021 Olympic Trials in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters; running 2:31:51 to place seventh in the 2021 Chicago Marathon; and, most recently, placing second The Top Celebrity Marathon Times of 2024.
Now, as conflicting reports circulate about her alma mater, Verdon once again finds herself in the middle. The athlete-versus-athlete dynamic that has emerged feels “icky,” she said. The coaches should be the ones at the center of the debate, and athletes should support one another.
“Even though, yes, I had a good experience, I don’t side with all the people who had a good experience, because I know there are so many people who had bad experiences, and I stand with them, too,” she said. And, she notes, it’s much easier to share positive memories than personal, challenging moments.
Verdon said she hopes that the investigation—whenever it is completed—leads to the truth and stops any negative cycles, so everyone can have positive memories and pride in the program.
“It doesn’t matter how many people had bad experiences or how many people had good experiences—if someone was told these horrible things, that is impacting their whole life, and that impacted their college career, and that is a tragedy,” she said. “Even if it’s just one person, that’s enough to be like, ‘Something’s wrong, and something needs to be said about it.’”
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
