New Shelby houlihan article out in WSJ. Big respect again to gds

Just copy the article title and paste it into bing or google. You will get the MSN version that is readable for free. I do this with all paywalled articles.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/spor...

Better make sure it's an "Authentic Mexican food truck".

Thinking about this on a run recently, I concluded that presumably ridiculous excuses (like the burrito), are the direct result of presumed guilt, and putting the burden of proof of innocence on the athlete. The athlete is then put in a position of grasping at any possible excuse for the positive test, even if facially implausible, when they can't establish the more plausible one (e.g., if they no longer have a container of a supplement that may have been contaminated, or something like that).

If they’ve going to let people off the hook, why bother with testing? Of course the burden of proof of evidence is on her, and even if it did come from a contaminated supplement, it’s still on her for being careless about what she consumed.

Clearly the burden needs to be on the athlete to prove contamination for the anti-doping rules to make any sense. Leaving aside what you think about Shelby's specific case, I think it's worth acknowledging that this kind of system will inevitably at some point lead to a situation where someone is banned due to something they consume being contaminated despite them not being able to produce evidence to prove that. If we look outside the doping context, it's just a fact that people occasionally are convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Any set of rules will result in some innocent people being convicted and some guilty people going free. You can change that ratio depending on how stringent you make the rules, but there's no system that never makes mistakes.

If someone like Shelby thinks the rules are currently resulting in too many people who did not knowingly dope being banned I think the argument instead has to be about changing the thresholds for substances that result in a doping ban, or maybe just issuing a warning instead of a ban for out of competition testing. Based on what I know about these tests I can see the perspective for increasing the thresholds , but I think you'd have to combine that with much more frequent testing, which no org has money for.

Houlihan measured 5ng/mL adjusted one time after many negative tests.

A bodybuilder would be in the thousands or tens of thousands many times.

Posting the image with big muscles is deceptive and wrong. And the people posting this know that this is wrong.

The burrito excuse was a Hail Mary. Either a tainted supplement OR doping were always more likely, but she wouldn't admit the latter or have any proof of the former. At least we can put aside the burrito thing once and for all though.

“Offal Burritos”

It's called humor Detective. 🙄

1st point is an unsubstantiated rumor, coming only from Lawson's side, repeated endlessly on letsrun and letsrun only. Maybe on reddit too, but you get my drift.

2nd point - if true - is irrelevant. Source? Nobody ever argued that there can't be nandro in pork kidney.

3rd point doesn't apply here, after Shelburrito ruled out her supplements.

She needs to admit what she did.

Breezy Johnson recently won gold at the world championships downhill. She was greeted with a long, warm ovation from fans, competitors and national media. No mention of her 14 months whereabouts suspension. Will Shelby receive the same reception if she wins world championship gold? She served her time the same as Breezy.

Lol. Finally she says it out loud. Maybe now the trolls can stop with the boar nuts nonsense.

But - did she ever really think so? I highly doubt that.

As to your last question, you are joking. Of course Shelby never thought it was the burrito because she knew the source of the Nandrolone, and now she is trolling us, like post acquittal OJ, when he said if I did it, or wrote a book with that name, and then proceeded to tell us how he did it, and Shelby is dancing closer to that line by acknowledging that she never believed in her defense in the first place.

WADA has made some threshold changes. But that is just the tip of the iceberg as far as needed changes, IMO.

1. WADA has no *functional* ethical standards. In the Houlihan case there were numerous violations of common ethical standards, but WADA did nothing. In 2016, The Guardian published an article entitled, “Can Anti-Doping Bodies Maintain Their Scientific Integrity? The Answer Is Troubling.” I’ll post the link here, but links seem to end up at the bottom of my posts. The lack of ethics pointed out in this article has not changed. Without a major change and a real Ethics Working Group (with 100% of participants outside of WADA and sports science), nothing will make it fair for the athlete.

theguardian.com

Can anti-doping bodies maintain their scientific integrity? The answer is troubling

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/roger-pielke-jr

As the scandal over alleged state-sponsored doping rocks the sports world, we look back at the worrying 2010 case of Norwegian athlete Erik Tysse

Open link

2. WADA science is a mixture of tiny studies that are mis-represented at hearings, speculation, hidden research results that the athlete & representatives are not privy to and WADA scientists doing the best they can with little funding. They need a Research Working Group (with 100% of participants outside of WADA and sports science and with expertise in research design and interpretation). This Group should have oversight on research design and how it is interpreted for use in Technical Documents and for use at hearings. In fact, someone with these qualifications should be at every CAS hearing as a scientific “translator” for the arbiters.

3. The A Samples results should be given to the athlete within 10 days. None of this 30-60 day delay making it virtually impossible to track down and test items. Any delay changes the a doping positive to non-positive result.

4. The athlete should have 30 days to respond to a positive test. Most athletes are not biochemists and need more time than a laboratory.

5. All bodies involved in anti-doping and abiding by WADA rules should preface each anti-doping violation decision that is disputed by the athlete with statement such as: “While we have decided to sanction this athlete based on WADA and [AIU] rules, nothing in this decision should be interpreted as proving the athlete was intentionally doping. WADA, [AIU] are not infallible. There can be mistakes and misinterpretations made involving scientific research. If the athlete agrees to waive their privacy rights, we will publish online the transcript of the hearing as well related documentation.”

6. How in the hell are most athletes able to afford the $50k-$100k+ to mount a defense?! Something needs to be done about this for athletes who aren’t swimming in cash.

There are numerous other issues: don’t store samples in a private home freezer, how to deal with a proven uncooperative vendor/company.

Didn’t Shelby rush the whole defense and process to try and get into the Olympics? I haven’t heard athletes blame a lack of time to prepare a defense outside of her, and it seems that’s because she expedited the process.