[5] The health of coach and project director Alberto Salazar has been in question since he suffered a heart attack at Nike's Beaverton campus on June 30, 2007.

In June 2008, Salazar chose his tentative successor as head of the Oregon Project, hiring cross country coach Jerry Schumacher away from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The Agency's Senior Managing Director, Larry Bowers said, "The argument for altitude rooms is that they make up for those athletes that can't live high.

Alberto Salazar was confident the Anti-Doping Agency would ultimately approve the altitude house, saying that it's no different from other legal scientific advances like heart rate monitors and sports drinks.

[1] On May 19, 2017, The New York Times wrote an article about a leaked and unverified U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report that claimed Salazar worked with athletes to increase their L-carnitine levels.

[10] On October 1, 2019, the USADA banned Alberto Salazar for 4 years due to allegations he "trafficked testosterone, infused a prohibited amount of L-carnitine and tried to tamper with doping controls.

The CEO of Nike, Mark Parker, reported that the situation surrounding the actions of Alberto Salazar were distracting for the athletes and compromising their ability to focus on their training and competition needs.