moultonk wrote:
Part 3: So what does all this mean?
There is no doubt Houlihan purchased food from a Mexican food truck 10 hours before she was randomly tested because there are records which prove it. For it NOT to be the source of the nandrolone would be an extraordinary coincidence, and could only be explained by hypothesizing she visited the truck deliberately in order to consume nandrolone orally and have a ready-made excuse in case she was tested. The problem with this theory is that a single dose of nandrolone taken orally would offer no benefit, since it gets metabolized within hours, and she could just as well delay the test or take a whereabouts violation. If she had injected nandrolone, that would have been detectable in her urine for many weeks or months, and all other tests (16 performed in 2020) and the one taken 5 weeks later, were negative. If she instead regularly took oral doses of nandrolone (eg. multiple times per week), with presumably many visits to the Mexican food truck to hide it, there might be some performance benefit (though it would damage her already-damaged liver). However -- and this is a crucial point -- such a dosing regimen would have left telltale traces of nandrolone in her hair. When her hair was tested (which WADA could also test), it was negative. Therefore, the only possible doping explanation is that she somehow got hold of nandrolone that had a similar chemical signature as endogenous pork nandrolone, and the ONE TIME she ingested it happened to be in the hours before she got randomly tested. I find this extremely hard to believe, and even if it were true, the punishment would not be justified since it would have offered no benefit, just as eating tainted pork once would offer no benefit.
Why would WADA do this?
WADA is not in the business of figuring out the truth; their goal is to reduce the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports across the world in a uniform way, and using Shelby's positive test and subsequent punishment as a warning to other athletes achieves that objective. WADA needed a "win" before the Olympics, and from their perspective, it doesn't matter whether Shelby was actually clean or not.
As I have researched this story, one name stands out above all others: Christiane Ayotte. She is the author of numerous studies on nandrolone and is probably the world's foremost expert on how to detect it. Thus, many have unknowingly quoted her studies to defend the testing which she herself performed, which can lead to a kind of circular reasoning. She was President of the World Association of Anti-Doping Scientists, and runs the WADA-accredited doping control laboratory in Montreal that performed the test on Houlihan's sample. WADA, an international organization, is headquartered in Montreal. More than anyone, it was Ayotte who decided that Houlihan's sample was positive and exogenous. It was also Ayotte whose false testimony against long-jumper Jarrion Lawson was what helped him overturn the four-year ban he had received as a result of the test which she oversaw, as explained by a poster on Slowtwitch:
https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=7537069#p7537069And in a Let's Run feature article (behind a paywall):
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2020/04/the-amazing-story-of-how-jarrion-lawson-cleared-his-name-he-showed-that-the-head-of-a-wada-lab-provided-false-testimony-against-himTo be fair, Ayotte has been fighting a legitimate war against PEDs for decades, and in her mind, it may have reached a point where the end justifies the means, even if that means someone loses their career in a way that is not justified by the circumstances. In 2005, she even posted about nandrolone on this very message board:
https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=886533It is worth noting that the 2019 Technical Document which precedes the current one (TD2021NA) does not seem to materially differ in the way Houlihan's samples should have been handled, however, the language and guidance with respect to pig offal was added only to the more recent version that became effective on April 1, 2021, which may have given them a little more wiggle room in January to misinterpret Houlihan's sample as exogenous. In any case, because WADA was dragging its feet in a way that would've prevented Houlihan from participating in the Olympics, her lawyer had no choice but to force WADA to hold the hearing with CAS at a date earlier than they had wished, which I speculate may have caused some resentment and lack of due process on their part.
Many have suggested the entire philosophy behind the current testing paradigm that WADA employs for track & field athletes needs to be replaced. I agree and believe athletes do not enjoy sticking themselves with needles and ingesting dangerous substances, and that if they felt others weren't competing against them using those means, they too, would not feel the need to resort to such measures. In my opinion, the key to fixing this problem is for world-class athletes to gain a set of common benefits by virtue of being accepted and belonging to that group, and for the athletes themselves to ultimately govern their own behavior, similar to the way professional leagues like the NBA do through unions. Although I cannot imagine an international T&F union, I can see country-based organizations that could provide, for example, comprehensive and long-lasting health care once athletes have reached a world-class level, along with incentives to discourage and treat the abuse of drugs in a discreet way that is not meant primarily to enforce fairness, but is done instead for the health and safety of those who participate in the sport.
As for me, I have no affiliations and am simply a hobbyjogger that buys all those fancy shoes you all are wearing and cares about the sport. if you tend to distrust those who post anonymously (and you should), you may find me on Twitter at the handle used here.