16 Questions That Need To Be Answered In The Shelby Houlihan Case

The principle here is "innocent until proven guilty", and not commenting on on-going cases is a principle that should cause the least reputational harm to innocent athletes.(quote).

The principle in doping is "guilty until proven innocent" - that is how it works. It isn't an "ongoing case", it is a final decision by CAS. You can choose to comment on it - but you won't, because that would mean addressing a judicial determination of guilt - and you would never acknowledge that the athlete in question has doped. The "least reputational harm to innocent athletes" is that they don't dope. Some - as we see - do.

1) Houlihan's "story" is not incompatible with the findings of the AIU and CAS.(quote)

Yes it is - otherwise they would not have found against her.

In Article 2.1 and 2.2 "it is not necessary that intent, Fault, Negligence or knowing Use on the Athlete’s part be demonstrated in order to establish an anti-doping rule violation". (quote)

In a hundred or more threads I have never seen anyone point out this astonishing fact, that it makes no difference if Houlihan didn't intend to dope.

4) Studies show that eating the wrong pork can raise levels above the WADA threshold "naturally".(quote)

Not to the levels found in Houlihan, which is why CAS rejected this argument. It turns out it wasn't pork anyway. Wrong menu.

.. every athlete should be on notice, that seemingly normal behavior can be perceived as "significantly risky" in a WADA/CAS context, and should not be "manifestly disregarded".(quote)

Seemingly normal behaviour is clearly significantly risky, because so many athletes seem to be eating contaminated burritos. Of course the greater risk is simply to ingest nandrolone, like she did.

"Strict liability" may sound like a good idea for catching the worst offenders, but it does place a rather high burden on the athlete, not only to defend against anti-doping charges after an AAF, but for every decision that they make both in and out of competition, for keeping logs and receipts and other evidence that may be handy in a hearing, for things that would be ordinary behavior for non-athletes.[/quote]

It is so hard for them to keep illegal substances out of their bodies.

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In all that expert analysis above we have had 'insights' into a variety of matters, mostly procedural, but are no closer to knowing whether or not the writer thinks Houlihan was guilty. That is a determination he must assiduously avoid - even if CAS hasn't shied away from it.

agree with the shelby vs armstrong not relevant stuff, but if you substitute shelby with nike, then you are back in a very very valid comparison indeed.

John_James_413 wrote:

quote post wrote:

He called one person and then called it quits. Got it

Also trying to blame this on a mexican food truck is EXTREMELY DISRESPECTFUL to Mexico.

That's some bull crap!

Wow this is extremely offensive to bulls

"Yeah, pretty sure the last time I checked supplements DON'T have steroids in them."

Oh really? When was the last time you "checked"? And by "checked," I mean that you sent a supplement to a lab for analysis.

Supplements are not regulated by the FDA. Manufacturers do not even have to prove that what is on the label is what is actually in the bottle. In fact, whenever an independent third party does a spot check and sends supplements to a lab for analysis, they frequently find that many supplements stray quite far from what is on the label and do have steroids or steroid precursors in them.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16430680/

You're playing with fire if you're taking supplements as a pro athlete, but I think many of them do it anyway. Even if you have all your supplements tested by a lab, as Kara Goucher has claimed that she did in her competition days, there's no way to guarantee that every batch you get is consistent, unless you test each bottle.

I think it's much more likely that Shelby got nandrolone from a tainted supplement, but she either doesn't know this, or doesn't want to admit it because presumably the AIU would be less forgiving about tainted supplements (something you're choosing to take) vs. tainted food, which is harder to have control over (no one can be expected to send all their food to a lab).

casual obsever wrote:

Here is a non-American perspective:

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/summer/trackandfield/bring-it-in-shelby-houlihan-promo-june-22-1.6076056

This is a good example of logical fallacies. People who make a decision on the whole argument based on a "fact" about one part of the argument.

1) Coach claims to have never heard of nandrolone... therefore, guilty. All other data is ignored. I would argue that the coach could have been lying for emphasis. People do it all the time. I wouldn't automatically assume guilt based on this.

2) The other point is that Shelby threw the food truck under a bus. Really! That's your main reason for presuming guilt?!

Here is my take.

After wading through pages here and listening to multiple podcasts, I don't understand the testing protocols, the oral vs injection argument, the pig offal defense, or the reasons why the appeal was rejected. I've read lots of *opinions* but I still don't know any facts, other than she had a PED in her system and her appeal failed.

I tend to look to Occams Razor for answers.

Based on what little I've read, the most logical argument is that she injected or ingested a substance that was laced with trace amounts of nandrolone. It could have been an illegal substance that had long since left the body, but the trace amounts of the type of nandrolone used lingered longer.

It could have been a legal substance, but since athletes are responsible for all the supplements they take, this could not be a defense. Hence, we have the weak burrito defense.

The only question that needs to be asked is:

Was the meat from the taco truck tested for nandrolone?

If yes and the result was positive: remove ban, because unintentional ingestion is plausible

If yes and the result was negative: keep ban as there is no evidence of unintentional ingestion

If the meat was NOT tested, keep ban as there is no evidence of unintentional ingestion.

Armstronglivs wrote:

I can see the "pork" excuse growing under your expert ministrations. The fact is she has been convicted of doping - the rest is pedantry, as hard as you find that swallow. If she had had the same aversion to nandrolone as you do to uncomfortable truths we wouldn't be discussing any of this.

If we could only stick to facts and truths ...

jda9ball wrote:

It has been confirmed she had taken it orally. I believe they said when it is taken orally it is cleared from your system around 12hrs (I could be slightly off here). If this is the case & she WAS micro-dosing, what I really don't get is:

Why would she not just micro-dose at 7:30am? Wasn't it confirmed her testing window is 6-7am? If so, then her body would have almost 24hrs to clear it. It does not make sense that if she was knowingly micro-dosing with oral nandrolone, why would she ingest it within 12hrs of her 1hr testing window?

I'm probably wrong with some of my "facts"...but I don't understand the argument that she could have been micro-dosing orally. You would have to be THEE biggest idiot to ingest late in the day & be glowing during your testing window!

What many people fail to realize is this.

These are incredibly POWERFUL drugs.

Here are some powerlifting examples of what they can do.

A normal 6'0 tall and 200 pound powerlifter who benches 290 naturally can now bench press 510 after using drugs like nandralone or otherwise known as DECA in the powerlifting world.

A normal 6'0 tall and 200 pound powerlifter who squats 385 pounds below parallel naturally can now squat upwards of 690 to 750 pounds after using drugs like nandralone.

A normal 6'0 tall and 200 pound powerlifter who deadlifts 485 pounds naturally can now deadlift upwards of 800-850 pounds after using drugs such as nandralone.

And the deadlift is ALWAYS something that steroid users see the biggest increase on due to steroids always growing out the back, traps, and shoulders, more than any other body part.

ALL OF HER AMERICAN RECORDS NEED TO BE DELETED IMMEDIATELY.

Yeah one of ROJO's questions is really good.

Have her get tested EVERY SINGLE DAY for 25 months straight.

Prove it to us.

Let's see if she can break 3:58 naturally since she's such a great athlete apparently.

Such an athlete. Yeah sure. ...... What a joke.

I bet she doesn't even break 4:25 naturally if she got tested every single day for upwards of 25 months straight.

That's how powerful drugs like these are..

They just don't magically show up in meat.. WOW... So dumb.

Shelby doped. As did all of her teammates. And they are not the only ones. Doping has a tremendous effect on performance and you could just see at the trials. I would say every major pro distance runner was doping. These runner were just visibly stronger then their peers and did not seem to get tired.

Exactly. Supplements are manufactured in non-clinical environments so it's very difficult to keep track of what's going in them, especially when firms are making a whole range of supplements that are both legal and banned for sporting purposes. Even so, batch-tested supplements can be bought by anyone and you'd think BTC, with Nike resources behind them, can conduct their own testing on every delivery of supplements they give to athletes.

This doesn't mean I buy the claim that Houlihan took nandrolone inadvertently. She could just have easily been micro-dosing and screwed up the timing. What is clear, is that the whole BTC team have not been honest from the start, and that is a strong signal that something is not right there.

It might seem strange that Houlihan would go for the convoluted burrito defense over a more plausible tainted supplement defense, but there's a pretty straightforward explanation:

When you're drug tested, athletes have to disclose the supplements they're taking. The testers are supposed to take this into account when conducting their analysis.

If Houlihan ingested nandrolone from a tainted supplement that she didn't disclose, then her best case scenario is trading a PED suspension for a tampering suspension.

fisky wrote:

1) Coach claims to have never heard of nandrolone... therefore, guilty. All other data is ignored. I would argue that the coach could have been lying for emphasis. People do it all the time. I wouldn't automatically assume guilt based on this.

In a matter where trust and integrity is at stake the senior responsible people lie all the time for emphasis?

Comedy gold.

JBaller33 wrote:

2nd is Shannon Rowburry, of Nike Oregon Project at the height of their misdeeds. There have never been any rumors about her doping, but the association is suspicious and she never spoke about against it like many of her teammates did.

3rd is convicted drug cheat Mary Decker. Enough said.

4th is Jenny.

A sad list indeed. As for Jenny, she was a patient of the infamous Dr. Brown, who is currently banned for three anti-doping rule violations. She also admitted to having missed an OOC test, that the non-compliant USADA failed to flag.

Let's not forget the 5000 m AR:

1: Houlihan, banned drug cheat

2: Schweizer, banned drug cheat Houlihan's teammate and supporter

3: Rowbury coached by banned drug cheat Salazar

4: Huddle

5: Flanagan, banned drug cheat's coach and supporter

6: Jacobs, banned drug cheat

7: Cranny, banned drug cheat Houlihan's teammate and supporter

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

I still don’t get why the Brojos and Gault seem to have their head in the sand that Nandrolone may have been in a tainted supplement/PED? Victor Conte asserted as much as a leading possibility for Nandrolone busts because everyone agrees it would take a moron to use.

Well this is fairly obvious so I don’t get why you have your head in the sand. Shelby claims to have this detailed food log so why wouldn’t she look into any of her supplements could have been tainted? If they had, she would have used that as her excuse. I don’t think it would have gotten her off but her story would at least be believable to the public and she didn’t get off with he BS story anyways

I'd appreciate serious answers if a hair test is a legit way to see historical drug/supplement/ped use.

I mean if it was, wouldn't WADA and USADA be collecting hair samples? It can't be any more of a personal violation than blood/pee collection.

(also I think Shelby has colored her hair bright colors for years but I think she stopped in 2018?)

I know blood flow to the hair is critical for growth so there has to be some "pooling" there, no? Looks like a whole bunch of illegal drugs can be tested up to 90 days from hair follicles.

Armstronglivs wrote:

In all that expert analysis above we have had 'insights' into a variety of matters, mostly procedural, but are no closer to knowing whether or not the writer thinks Houlihan was guilty. That is a determination he must assiduously avoid - even if CAS hasn't shied away from it.

I laid out pretty much all my thoughts on the topic, including what Houlihan is guilty of in the context of the AIU charges, the WADA code, the issues before the CAS, and the CAS findings and decision.

runlikehellfloyd wrote:

The only question that needs to be asked is:

Was the meat from the taco truck tested for nandrolone?

The problem with this question is that meat is bought in batches and is perishable. You would have to test that particular batch.

That particular batch would be consumed that day or no later than the next couple of days.

It is so hard for them to keep illegal substances out of their bodies.

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In all that expert analysis above we have had 'insights' into a variety of matters, mostly procedural, but are no closer to knowing whether or not the writer thinks Houlihan was guilty. That is a determination he must assiduously avoid - even if CAS hasn't shied away from it.[/quote]

I made that point and quoted Rule 2.1.1 on a previous thread.