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

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!

The #1 question Track and Field needs to ask itself is:

-Is drug testing athletes worth it?

The answer is no.

There’s a major PR problem when the major assumption is even with drug testing every athlete dopes, everyone microdoses, I saw so and so at the taco truck earlier, yada, yada, yada.

As a spectator it takes away from the enjoyment of watching athletes do some superhuman stuff.

Go down to your local track and run the straight away as fast as you can. These athletes are doing faster than that pace for 25 laps without stopping!

I just want to enjoy these people racing and competing at the highest levels. I don’t care if they like their burrito grande and their salsa muy picante!

TLDR: Drug testing takes the fun out of athletics. Stop drug testing and let’s see some amazing stuff!

I actually agree completely. At this point, the cat is well out of the bag and we need to just accept that high level athletes will be using PEDs, and stop testing for it. Testing just means the ones who get caught are punished while everyone else, who is also using, isn't. What's the point? It's stupid. The job description is obviously "Do everything possible to run as fast as possible" and at this stage of human civilization that means ingesting PEDs.

If there were somehow a surefire way of actually banning PEDs and keeping athletes "natural" I'd be all for it, but there's not any way to do that. So all the fuss and effort and speculation is just tainting the sport, moreso than just making drug use allowed.

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.

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!

Is there some rule they can only be tested during the testing window? I was under the impression they could be tested anytime, it’s just more likely it will happen during the window and they could get a whereabouts violation if not available during that time.

Also, this is something that I haven’t seen discussed:

Why do you keep saying jerry was weary of de brown? He sent all, and I mean all, of his athletes to him. It wasn’t until the media started sniffing around in 2014 that he started to look for another doctor for his athletes. But for 5 years all of his athletes were patients.

Yeah, I don't know. That's kind of what I was getting at. It's probably any time, any day, so that would answer my question.

I've got lots of questions...but the thing I cannot get past is watching the rest of the Bowerman Track Club at the Trials.

They went 1-2 in the Men's 10,000 meters.

They went 1-2 in the Women's 5000 meters.

How are we supposed to trust those results? How are we not questioning Kinkaid, Grant, Karissa, and Cranny?

They are a TEAM that lives together and trains together. We are supposed to believe that Shelby was the only one?

I just have to say for the record, there are way more than 16 questions in this article, and they are grouped by number in a way that is very confusing. Besides that, they are all good questions that I hope we get answers to but probably won’t.

I'm glad we're talking about this. Good job.

I don't agree with this one though.

"When LetsRun.com’s Jonathan Gault called you a few weeks ago and told you we’d heard from multiple sources that Shelby had tested positive, why did you tell him that you hadn’t heard that and if she tested positive, you thought you would have heard something? Were you lying to Jonathan or did Shelby really keep you out of the loop? "

Do you really expect an agent to tell you the truth in this situation. It's not really lying if it's part of their job to protect their client. That's like asking someone on trial if they did something wrong and expecting them to tell the truth. It's not on the agent to come clean just because you caught wind of a rumor and asked them a question.

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.

A lot of people are saying you’d have to be an idiot to take nandrolone but why? Seems like oral intake would be perfect for micro dosing because it leaves your system so quickly. Wouldn’t microdosing this stuff provide recovery benefits?

opens door walks in sees whats happening wrote:

A lot of people are saying you’d have to be an idiot to take nandrolone but why? Seems like oral intake would be perfect for micro dosing because it leaves your system so quickly. Wouldn’t microdosing this stuff provide recovery benefits?

It seems the consensus is that it wouldn’t work as well. Not ruling it out either but tainted supplement/PED seems very plausible.

right??!! wrote:

Why do you keep saying jerry was weary of de brown? He sent all, and I mean all, of his athletes to him. It wasn’t until the media started sniffing around in 2014 that he started to look for another doctor for his athletes. But for 5 years all of his athletes were patients.

Agree with this. Seems like they get a pass on this here

Bad idea. Advocating for no drug testing is essentially advocating for a complete drug binge free-for-all. Do you really think athletes would just continue with the same kind of doping they are currently doing (micro-dosing, taking only as much as can be cleared out of their system in a relatively short time)? Not a chance. The sport would become unrecognizable. I mean, c'mon. If you are a track and field athlete, and all of a sudden doping is legalized, what are you going to do if you want to stay competitive? You're going to take all the EPO, testosterone, HGH, stimulants, and whatever else you can get your hands on. Some would undoubtedly die. Remember how cycling put the 50% hematocrit limit on cyclists? That was their way of saying, we don't have a test to prove you're using EPO, but we know you are, so let's make sure you at least don't kill yourself, okay?

Also, how do you get to be a sponsored athlete? For most (in the US at least), they do it by being an outstanding college athlete. So drugs would inevitably take over the college scene. How do you get a college scholarship? By being really good in H.S. Drugs would take over that scene, too. Great - a PED arms race on the H.S. track scene!

Bottom line: doing away with testing for PEDs is a bad idea.

Basically what I got from this article was that JG knew about the positive test but didn’t publish it. Why? That looks suspicious for favoritism honestly.

Those are reasonable arguments but they don’t currently test at the high school or the college level. And if people are educated about the potential dangers of PED use that’s really the best we can hope for.

Have you ever coached? There is a huge range of abilities and the very talented AND MOTIVATED are like finding EPO needles in a haystack.

The pro scouts will go down to the local turkey trot to recruit new talent...

“Incredible! This guy just ran a 17 min 5k ALL NATURAL! Once he gets on the guac he’ll break 12!”

Agree, I believe Jonathon has lost some degree of his journalistic credibility. Although Ken Goe is retired has he published anything about the Shelby situation?

Assuming the agent knew about the positive test, they could have made a plan to handle the situation more tactfully than “lie to the sport’s main beat reporter who already has multiple sources telling him the truth.”

I’m sure LRC won’t disclose how these things normally go down, but there’s a spectrum of ways to interact with a journalist other than lying. Even a vague non-denial denial (“To my knowledge, neither USADA or the AIU has ever announced a sanction against Shelby Houlihan.”) would have served their client better than lying.

Of course, it’s possible that the agent simply isn’t very good at representing high profile clients from a public relations standpoint. Track agents aren’t exactly renowned for their great professionalism.

Then there’s the other option: the agent was telling the truth and genuinely didn’t know. They could have genuinely been surprised by the call, assuming they’d hear if their star client was facing a suspension. Of course, this scenario is not one that reflects well on Houlihan’s innocence.

Keep in mind: BTC was in fact actively lying about Houlihan’s situation to both the public and much of the team. Lots of folks were suspicious about Houlihan’s lack of racing in 2021 and many asked BTC about it. They denied there was any issue and claimed Houlihan’s training plan was somehow just miraculously different than the rest of the team. Nothing to see here; Shelby will run at the Trials. No wonder multiple sources came forward to Gault when they heard the truth.

Now, keeping in mind that BTC publicly lied about Houlihan’s status and multiple sources who knew the truth talked to Gault, which explanation for the agent’s answer to Gault seems more likely?

optional wrote:

I've got lots of questions...but the thing I cannot get past is watching the rest of the Bowerman Track Club at the Trials.

They went 1-2 in the Men's 10,000 meters.

They went 1-2 in the Women's 5000 meters.

How are we supposed to trust those results? How are we not questioning Kinkaid, Grant, Karissa, and Cranny?

They are a TEAM that lives together and trains together. We are supposed to believe that Shelby was the only one?

This.

These are the questions LRC should be asking.