Shelby Houlihan is Clean, USADA Still Tests Her Regularly Since Ban

I was about to make this same point hahaha

Sheesh people. The Passport levels are to flag someone as sus.

In comp testing is a softball

Random testing goes like this: whew, lucky, lucky, lucky, sweet, (ups the levels a bit), whew, lucky , lucky, Oh Sh!t. [deny, never been +, wouldn't put that in my body, doesn't help *insert my sport here*, I was clean when I was tested for my record *see also whew/lucky/softball*
Obviously she gets off the gear after her bust

I agree with all except for the last statement. Her 9 (!) tests in Q2/2022 alone imply that there was a new reason for suspicion.

to be this naive.

OMG LOL. Perfect.

Yeah am I missing something here? She's under suspension right? I mean she could have had every PED available in her system in Jan 21 and I would expect her to be testing clean now - as others have pointed out why would she be still cheating while on a ban when she can't do anything and if she was to get caught, then that's really the end of the road for her "career" (or what's left of it).

But for you to suggest that because she is testing clean now that it must mean this was all a mistake to begin with? You're trolling people right? You can't possibly believe that's remotely plausible right?

You can't be tested at night unless they have a specific reason to suspect you're doping. If you take a small dose (depends on what) in the evening, you are clean by the time the testing window opens in the morning.

Not the same thing at all. We are not talking about murder and dead bodies; we are discussing athletes who dope. In doses. That work. Over time.

I guess you fall into the camp that thinks the FIRST time someone is caught is the ONLY time they have ever taken a dose. That is laughable.

she resembles the soviet middle distance women of the 80s,so its a fair bet shes on several different drugs,or at least she was.still,if she muscles up a bit more she could have a new career as a physique bodybuilder

While I see where you are coming from in principal, this sadly isn't how it works in reality. Is it plausible that SH was cheating prior to officially being caught? Well when you look at the change in appearance and how that coincided with the jump in performance it is plausible, in fact highly likely. But that's not the way this works unfortunately (most unfortunately for the athletes that now have to somehow break her American records that are more than likely doped). Trying to void those performances prior to the fact (of her positive test) is simply impossible for obvious reasons and would cause way more issues than it would solve.

It is also plausible (though I agree unlikely) this was the first time she ever took anything. It's plausible because there was literally a first time she took something that put her in this position so for all we know it could be this instance, though again the optics of everything would be counter to that narrative.

What makes this case interesting is that it's probably somewhere in the middle because we do know that the most likely cause of her positive test was that she somehow got greedy/f--ked up the stuff she was likely taking for a while which didn't necessarily generate positive tests. It's pretty well known that a lot of these athletes more than utilized the WADA threshold limits when it comes to substances like adrenaline, testosterone and nandrolone - not to mention their hematocrit levels. Chances are she had been taking her nandrolone precursor supplements for a while pushing her levels as close as possible to the allowable limit without technically "cheating" but got careless - most likely due to drug testing essentially grinding to a halt during Covid.

So even if she was artificially bumping production of a natural steroid like nandrolone, if it wasn't above the WADA limit was she technically cheating?

...Rojo is this you?

Agreed. You can’t take away someone’s records if they tested negative when they broke them. What would that say about the sport’s own testing system?

Also: where do you draw the line. Shelby tested positive in December of 2020. Exactly how far before she tested positive do you want to punish her? Take away her 5,000 record set 5 months before that? Take away her 1500 record set over a year before her positive test? Take away all her US national titles dating back to 2017? Take away her NCAA championship? High school records?

Ross Tucker alluded to this during his letsrun interview (everyone should read that regardless of their position on Shelby) and it seems that the final WADA report implied that she may have been taking pre-anabolic "vitamins" that may have triggered her positive test. I wonder if this is the new way to dope where nothing taken is strictly illegal but put together has a positive effect on performance. A lot of the testosterone vitamins you can buy online have very poor quality control, its entirely plausible that she didn't take nandrolone but took a slew of things that triggered a positive test or that what she took was tainted. As discussed on these forums ad nauseam, nandrolone can appear in blood samples when taking testoerone drugs or anabolics manufactured with low QC standards.

Oh I would guess there is almost zero chance she directly "took" nandrolone - which ironically would have been way easier for her to control. Because at that point you know a certain amount/dose of it correlates to a known "footprint" in your urine/blood so if you know you are working with a limit and purely being on one side of it, it's almost impossible to get busted (case in point microdosing EPO up to the WADA threshold a-la Lance, Mo Farah etc). Plus nandrolone in its pure anabolic form is most often injected directly into muscle and the AIU report was pretty conclusive that they were dealing with an ingested form of whatever she was doing.

I wouldn't wonder if this is the new way to dope, this is THE way to dope. Nandrolone precursor supplements are incredibly easy to buy and it has nothing to do with poor QC control. She could have walked into GNC supplements over there at Cedar Hills Beaverton with her debit card and walked out in 5min with a high quality supplement that would do exactly what she wanted it to do - boost the bodies natural production of nandrolone.

But now you can see how this gets tough to monitor. You are taking something that stimulates your own natural production and how do you control this with any real accuracy? What more than likely happened is "someone" "close to her" tells her about this supplement that "does something" and to only take a certain amount of it every set number of days. But then think about the human element to this - she's taking the supplement which doesn't directly contain the banned substance - first act of mental gymnastics. Then she's taking it, getting tested and passing - hey, there is nothing really wrong with this - second act of mental gymnastics. Oh now there is Covid and nobody has knocked on my door in 12 months - third act. So what do you start doing? Getting greedy. Taking more, taking it more often - hard workout? I'll take it twice a day now and all the while you are just ignorantly starting to believe that this stuff can't ever really get you close to that threshold number (if you even know one exists). Next minute someone is at your door wanting a sample of your piss and you have 3 times the legal limit of this substance in you which YOUR body created thanks to the overload of this over-the-counter stuff you bought from an innocuous retail store just up the road.

Really, let’s look at all of the options:

1) she is clean

2) she found a better way to dope that tests can’t detect

3) she hasn’t used any substances that produced the abnormal test since then given the heightened security she will be under

What option is more realistic? Probably three. You can’t just throw out all of the evidence collection to say well she’s clean now must have been clean then. Only someone getting poor advice would be like yeah, let me double down on what got me busted in the first place, they won’t catch me again.

She might be clean now (when she isn't competing), but that doesn't mean she has been in the past.

"After all, the USADA drug testing works"

You severely underestimate the benefits of microdosing and how easily undetectable it is if you cycle properly.

How is this a serious post

Subtlety knows not thy name it seems. I thought what I posted was CLEARLY sarcastic. What does my user name say?

This is VERY, VERY boring - she's a banned drugs cheat. Nothing changes that.

Move on folks