High school Born in Cuba, Salazar grew up in
Wayland, Massachusetts. His father Jose was a close friend of
Fidel Castro and a revolutionary, who then became an opponent of the totalitarian communist regime and member of the
anti-Castro movement. The younger Salazar was an outstanding high school runner who was state
cross country champion in 1975. He trained with the well-known
Greater Boston Track Club (whose members included the likes of
Bill Rodgers, Randy Thomas, and
Greg Meyer), where he was given the nickname of "the rookie".
Collegiate From Massachusetts, he went to the
University of Oregon where he won numerous All-American honors, was a member of the 1977 NCAA cross country championship team, and won the individual NCAA cross country championship in 1978. Salazar won the 1978 NCAA national cross country championship in cold, snowy conditions, handing Track & Field News Athlete of the Year
Henry Rono one of his few losses of the year. He finished 2nd to Rono in a memorable contest at the 1979 NCAA national cross country championships at
Lehigh University, in which Rono (28:19) and Salazar (28:28) ran the 3rd and 5th fastest 10,000-meter cross country times in NCAA championship history. Neither time has been matched in over three decades of NCAA cross country competition since then. After that, he finished third in the Olympic Trials 10,000-meter race in 28:10.42 to make the 1980 Olympic team (which didn't compete in the Olympics in Moscow due to the
U.S. boycott) and received one of 461
Congressional Gold Medals created especially for the spurned athletes. At the 1978
Falmouth Road Race after fading to 10th place, he collapsed at the finish with a temperature of 107 degrees Fahrenheit (41.7 °C) and was read his last rites prematurely. At the 1981
Millrose Games in New York, he set an American indoor 5,000 meter record with a time of 13:21.2, finishing second behind
Suleiman Nyambui, who broke the indoor world record with a 13:20.3.
Post-collegiate From 1980 through 1982, Salazar won three consecutive
New York City Marathons. His first-ever marathon was the
1980 race, which he won in 2:09:41, at the time the fastest American debut and the second-fastest time recorded by a U.S. runner (behind Bill Rodgers' 2:09:27 at
Boston in 1979). He was on that week's cover of
Sports Illustrated after the victory. In 1981, Salazar set an apparent world record at the
New York City Marathon of 2:08:13, surpassing the 12-year-old mark of 2:08:33 set by Australian
Derek Clayton in 1969 in Antwerp, Belgium. However, the course was found on re-measurement to be about 148 meters short of the 42.195 kilometers (26 miles, 385 yards) distance. This is equivalent to about 27 seconds. In 1982 he won his first and only
Boston Marathon after the memorable head-to-head with
Dick Beardsley. Salazar ended the year ranked #1 in the world in the marathon by
Track & Field News magazine for his wins in Boston and New York, #1 in their North American Road Rankings for his American 10K road record win of 28:04 at the Orange Bowl 10K and his course record of 31:53 at the highly competitive Falmouth road race (his second win and course record there), #8 in the world (and #1 American with an AR of 13:11.93) in the 5,000 meters, and #2 in the world in the 10,000 meters, with three second-place finishes at Eugene (27:30.0), at Oslo in an American Record of 27:25.61, and at Paris (27:29.06). Salazar enjoyed success in cross country competition, earning several All-American honors in collegiate and post-collegiate national championships. Salazar was also the U.S. national cross country champion in 1979. He fared well at the
IAAF World Cross Country Championships, finishing second in 1982 and fourth in 1983. His silver medal in 1982 marks the last time an American male runner reached the podium in World Cross Country. In addition to a fourth-place finish (only one second behind the top three placers) at the 1983 world cross country championships, Salazar twice broke the American 10 km road record in 1983 with efforts of 28:02 and 28:01 at the Americas 10 km and Continental Homes 10 km respectively. He finished as the top ranker in Track & Field News magazine's North American Road Rankings for 1983. He was also the 10,000-meter national track champion in 1983, pulling away from
Craig Virgin in the last straightaway at the U.S. championships in Indiana in June to win his second such title (the first coming in 1981). However, he finished last in the 10,000 meters at the World Track & Field Championships while suffering from bronchitis and was beaten for the first time in the marathon, finishing fifth at the Rotterdam marathon in April (2:10:08) and then fifth again at Fukuoka in December (2:09:21). (The latter time would have been the American Record for the next 17 years except that there was a problem in filing the paperwork with the authorities.) In 1984, after a 2nd-place finish by Salazar in the 10,000 meters at the
Mt. SAC Relays in 27:45.5, he finished 2nd at the men's Olympic marathon trials (2:11:44) to become a member of the United States
Olympic Marathon Team, along with
Pete Pfitzinger and
John Tuttle. He was considered a favorite to win or medal in the
1984 Summer Olympics but finished a disappointing 15th in 2:14:19 under the hot Los Angeles sun. Salazar's competitive decline is often attributed to the stress on his body from that memorable
Duel in the Sun detailed in the eponymous book by John Brant. Salazar recounts falling into a "more-is-better" mindset which led him to reason that if 120 miles per week yielded a certain level of success, then or even would bring even better results. This intense and grueling regimen of such extremely long distances led to a breakdown of his immune system, and he found himself frequently sick, injured, and otherwise unable to continue training. After failing to make the
1988 Olympic Marathon Team Salazar opened a successful restaurant in
Eugene, Oregon. Although only able to stagger through four or five miles per run, he remained obsessed with training. Brant wrote that "He couldn't run, yet he couldn't stop running." Salazar unsuccessfully visited the Stanford Sleep Clinic and a cardiologist, had surgery, and trained in Kenya. In 1994 he said that "For most of the last 10 years, I hated running. I hated it with a passion. I used to wish for a cataclysmic injury in which I would lose one of my legs. I know that sounds terrible, but if I had lost a leg, then I wouldn't have to torture myself anymore." A doctor diagnosed Salazar's running problems and
exercise-induced asthma as largely due to the 1982 marathon, and successfully prescribed
Prozac to improve his depression and physical symptoms. After Salazar closed the restaurant he owned, he began training again at the age of 34 and in 1994 won the prestigious
Comrades Marathon. He soon retired from competing, believing that he had nothing left to prove as a runner, and became a running coach. Salazar stated that the medication played a role in motivating him to succeed again in professional running though the actual effect of the drug on his performance remains controversial. ==Post-competitive career==