Red flags in the Houlihan case that need explaining

looki wrote:

AlohaState wrote:

Androstenedione is an over the counter body building supplement that can trigger a positive test for nandrolone.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11086369/

Metabolite.

I read the test detected "exogenous nandrolone". Does this mean they detected intact nandrolone somehow identifiable as 'synthetic' as opposed to from a pig?

Androstenedione is also a banned substance just like DHEA, so it really doesn't matter if she took it and popped for nandrolone because she'd be banned either way

To my mind, the biggest red flag is that she ate a food truck.

Thanks to Letsrun for correcting Sally Jenkins' article, which stated incorrectly that her food log claimed she ate a pork burrito!

looki wrote:

Someone here made an interesting point that cooking the lard off of the organs would probably collect all of the steroids with the fat. Cooking with this fat could introduce concentrated nandrolone.

That was me. I even started a thread about it. Which for some reason got zapped pretty much immediately. LRC HQ seems to dislike anyone who thinks outside the box.

Anyways: Lard - which is made from melting down pork offal so what remains is mostly just fat - is to authentic Mexican cuisine as olive oil is to Italian cuisine. Lard used to be the main cooking oil in all American cuisine until for various reasons it got phased out in the 20th century.

Lard is widely used in authentic Mexican food. Tortillas & other pastries are made with lard. Meats cooked on stovetops in pans or pots are cooked in copious amounts of lard. So are vegetables like peppers & onions. Refried beans have tons of lard. Even black beans cooked in water usually have lard added to them. Eating authentic Mexican food means ingesting quite a bit of offal in the form of lard.

Steroid hormones & substances that mimic them are lipophilic - they like fat. So when pig offal is rendered, presumably the steroid hormones & similar therein ends up in the resulting lard.

Not disputing the culinary content of your comment, but if rendered offal (i.e. lard) is so common in Mexican food, then why aren't Mexican food-loving athletes (think Scott Fauble) testing positive left and right? I suppose said offal/lard would still have to come from an uncastrated boar, which as others have noted is extremely unlikely.

In a vacuum this is a reasonable point. But, you still run into the issue of BTC/ Shelby saying they had an investigator go back to the truck, but only noting that some burritos were "greasy" and some were not. So we're to believe they knew they had to have someone investigate the meat, but stopped at evaluating its greasiness and not actually testing the meat?

He's suggesting maybe they tested the meat (obviously with no luck) but didn't think to test the lard in the tortillas.

Lard is rendered fat. Not offal. Offal are organ meats/entrails.

If you bit into a burrito made with offal, you would know it, and most likely immediately spit it out.

Also, offal is not “greasy.” It is actually quite lean.

Hardloper wrote:

He's suggesting maybe they tested the meat (obviously with no luck) but didn't think to test the lard in the tortillas.

Well this is frankly absurd. To the extent that lard includes any rendered offal, it would include FAR more rendered fat from other places (leaf, etc) because organs are nowhere near top sources of fat in a pig. So any hormones concentrated in the offal would have been more present in the unrendered offal served as protein than it would be in lard used as a cooking oil. I may not know the chemistry of doping but I do know pork

zcxvzxcv wrote:

To my mind, the biggest red flag is that she ate a food truck.

Thanks to Letsrun for correcting Sally Jenkins' article, which stated incorrectly that her food log claimed she ate a pork burrito!

The biggest red flag is that she tested positive and after a lengthy appeals process they still suspended her. Don't get me wrong, I too am reading through all of this jibber jabber with great interest, but the whole thing boils down to the headline: Houlihan tested positive and was suspended. I find it amazing that we can spend so many thousands of words analyzing and parsing and questioning and justifying why she is likely guilty.

When it comes down to it, the old, "I ate contaminated meat" excuse is so common it is funny. Are they auditioning for a sketch comedy show about athlete clichés?

Then again, here I am reading it all and contributing, so carry on fellow Lets Runners!

This drama does not pass the smell test. Schumacher and Houlihan stating initially they never heard of Nandrolone, what...are you kidding me?????????? This clown is a professional running coach and does this running coaching/training 24/7, of course he knows what that steroid is.

Then she and Schumacher became "experts" on nandrolone (knowing how long it stays in your system, etc) once she tested positive, despite "never heard of nandrolone..."

They would have been better off keeping their mouths shut.

I know people improve but she went from running a 5000M race at 5:13/M pace to 4:38/M pace. That is a HUGE drop, almost 9 seconds per lap over 5000M........ponder that

broken arrow wrote:

This drama does not pass the smell test. Schumacher and Houlihan stating initially they never heard of Nandrolone, what...are you kidding me?????????? This clown is a professional running coach and does this running coaching/training 24/7, of course he knows what that steroid is.

Then she and Schumacher became "experts" on nandrolone (knowing how long it stays in your system, etc) once she tested positive, despite "never heard of nandrolone..."

They would have been better off keeping their mouths shut.

I know people improve but she went from running a 5000M race at 5:13/M pace to 4:38/M pace. That is a HUGE drop, almost 9 seconds per lap over 5000M........ponder that

TBF, we Letsrunners have way less at stake and you can see in this thread how much research people have done in two days. Now imagine your career is on the line and you have six months.

Highhopes

What a fantastically well-reasoned and articulated analysis.

Occam's Razor. She doped and got caught.

100% trust Shalane Flanagan. I could be proven wrong, but it would take a lot, and it would be devastating if I were.

Feel the need to say this as I have criticized her on this thread as being a bit naive/blind to what goes on around her. She is an extremely loyal person, so she is naturally going to see the best in her teammates and defend them. She also really, really loves this sport, which causes some blind spots imo.

Still, she's a credit to her team, this sport, and this country.

There's my uncynical, unabashed love letter to SF.

Carry on.

I imagine that it would be very instructive to read old Lance threads. Deciding to believe that a favored athlete cheated with PEDs is a tough process probably proceeding with stages like those introduced by Kubler-Ross. There are a diversity of opinions at the beginning, but these eventually coalesce at mostly guilty or mostly innocent when enough "unspun" evidence is revealed.

nearest hippie wrote:

100% trust Shalane Flanagan. I could be proven wrong, but it would take a lot, and it would be devastating...

Even Shalane knew in her gut that the 14:23 was too good to be true... check out her reaction in this video after Shelby cruised to the AR.

Yes, I've actually had her reaction to that exact race in mind recently. You were right there Shalane...you almost got it...you know something's off, lean into that feeling...

For SF, you got a problem with one of her teammates, you got a problem with her. She is old school, Boston Irish loyal. As a result, she sometimes can't quite admit what's right in front of her.

o0hn2 wrote:

Christiane Ayotte is a sketch ball and I don't trust her, but CAS ruling was unanimous.

I haven't read this whole thread (or all of the many other threads), so perhaps someone else has already pointed this out, but here is what the June 15 order actually says:

The CAS Panel (by majority) found that the athlete neither rebutted the presumption that the AAF was properly reported pursuant to the ISL, nor rebutted the presumption that the ADRV was properly managed, asserted and notified pursuant to the International Standard for Results Management (ISRM).

Finally, the CAS Panel unanimously determined that Shelby Houlihan had failed, on the balance of probability, to establish the source of the prohibited substance. As a result of which she was found to have committed an intentional ADRV and sanctioned with a four-year period of ineligibility starting on 14 January 2021.

The CAS Panel has issued its decision only, without the grounds which will be notified in short order.

This language strongly indicates that only two of the three arbiters found that Houlihan did not rebut the presumptions of regularity underlying the report of an adverse analytical finding, and the only unanimous holding was that Houlihan failed ("on the balance of probability," which would seem to be equivalent to the "preponderance of the evidence" standard applicable to most civil cases in the U.S.) to establish the source of the nandrolone. I would not consider that language to indicate a unanimous determination that Houlihan committed a doping violation. It also reinforces my view that conclusions that Houlihan was "guilty" are, at the very least, premature, especially among those who may view Ayotte as, in your words, an untrustworthy "sketch ball."

This is the worst reply in this whole thread. You want US to prove that it isnt possible to achieve 5 ng/ml? that is laughable. She is already guilty and the appeal denied. You should be PROVING to us how you know she's innocent.