Sports Scientist Ross Tucker breaks downs the Shelby Houlihan case for us

What do you do when you are dead to rights? You investigate the investigators! You put them on trial and insist everything is a simple misunderstanding from your camp and a conspiracy to get you coming from the other side.

What's also funny is that we are supposed to believe Marc Scott and Woody Kincaid both can break 13 at any given time, but Ed Cheserek, the greatest distance runner in NCAA history still hasnt done so. Just picked the wrong coach I guess

You are wrong on every point. You haven't understood the CAS decision at all. Houlihan said she ordered a beef burrito, the only way pig offal is getting in there is if there is cross-contamination. Furthermore, if it was boar offal, you would know, because it has a strong and unpleasant taste, not at all like pork.

The level of nandrolone in her system was also way above what would be expected via meat ingestion alone. I believe if she ate 300g of uncastrated boar kidney then she might get to the appropriate level. That's a lot of meat, especially since she also claimed that she didn't finish the burrito because it was greasy.

The burrito defense has fallen apart. And they knew it from the start, which is why Jerry and Shalane went out if their way to avoid stating that Houlihan ate a pork burrito in that press conference. Which, btw, is another reason why I have no sympathy for Jerry or the BTC. They have been dishonest from the start of this process.

Regina Jacobs was more of a 1500 type runner in college but had solid 800 times as well. She finished 27th, 9th, 4th, & 2nd in NCAA XC. Primarily a middle distance runner, this shows more potential than SH's college achievements.

Jacobs rapid post-college progressions were chalked up to "extreme iron deficiency" in college. Nearly as shallow and hard to believe as "extremely undertrained."

They have somewhat similar backgrounds and progressions yet one is your whipping post and the other you raise money for.

If you cannot view things objectively, even after hearing a "guilty" verdict from the very person you hired to investigate, you are simply a poor advocate for professional journalism.

Your continued defending a convicted drug cheat comes across as being too proud to admit you made a mistake in judgement along the way. And I understand. After all, you did have a conversation with her coach -- case closed!

SH claims:

B. The Respondent’s Submissions
42. The Respondent’s submissions on the merits may be summarized as follows:
- The applicable version of the TD is the TD2021NA, published on 21 December 2020,
since lex mitior applies for analytical and reporting requirements.
- Further to the A-Sample analysis, and the Athlete’s invocation of boar offal as a
possible source of the AAF, the laboratory should have reported the sample as an
Atypical Finding rather than an AAF. Had the laboratory been notified of and
considered the invoked boar offal explanation, it would have taken the same into
consideration when conducting the analysis of the B-Sample in accordance with the
applicable TD governing the analysis and reporting of nandrolone and other 19-
norsteroids:
o First, to account that the consumption of boar offal could cause a false positive
for 19-NA, the TD2019NA requires the Laboratory to demonstrate that the 19-
NA is not from the consumption of boar offal when it has been invoked by the
Athlete as the source. While this burden existed under the TD2019NA, the
TD2021NA clarifies precisely when a laboratory is required to demonstrate that
the 19-NA is not from the consumption of boar offal. Specifically, it is when
three elements are present: i) the athlete invokes the boar offal as the
endogenous source; ii) the athlete’s estimated concentration of excreted 19-NA
between -15 ‰ and -25 ‰, which is the accepted delta-delta value range for
boars.
o Second, the Athlete invoked boar offal as a source of the 19-NA prior to her BSample analysis, and therefore the Laboratory was required to demonstrate that
the 19-NA detected in her urine was not from the consumption of boar offal
before it could report an AAF. The TD2021NA mandates the Laboratory to
perform a pharmacokinetics study to establish the origin of the 19-NA detected
in the Athlete’s urine. Yet no pharmacokinetics study was ever done.
o Third, the Athlete’s urinary markers were precisely in the range contemplated
by the TD for boar offal consumption. Her estimated concentrations of excreted
19-NA were in the low ng/mL range (≤10 ng/mL) for both her A-Sample (6.9
ng/mL) and B-Sample (7.8 ng/mL) and her delta-delta values were between -
15 ‰ and -25 ‰ for both her A-Sample (-23.1 ‰ ng/mL) and B-Sample (-23.0
‰).
- Contrary to the strictures of the TD, the Laboratory wrongly confirmed that the urinary
19-NA was of exogenous origin solely based on the unreliable GC/C/IRMS result
without conducting subsequent testing or other pharmacokinetics analyses.
- Rather than reporting the Athlete’s B-Sample as either an Atypical Finding or a No
Prohibited Substance Detected, as was required under the TD further to the Athlete’s
invocation of boar offal as a possible source of the 19-NA, the AIU and the Laboratory
reported her B-Sample as an AAF. Such decision is of enormous legal consequence
since an Atypical Finding cannot form the basis for the Notice of Charge asserting that
an athlete has committed an ADRV.
- In light of these failures to comply with the requirements of the TD, the AIU has no
foundation for the case brought against the Athlete. In fact, there is no way for the AIU
to prove to the Panel’s comfortable satisfaction that the Athlete has committed an
ADRV, since the 19-NA detected in her sample should have been found to be of
endogenous origin.
- Further, the Athlete had a hair sample test performed by the toxicologist Dr Kintz,
which showed no trace of synthetic nandrolone or 19-NA. The Athlete also
successfully passed a polygraph examination conducted by former US CounterIntelligence agent, Dr Fritz. The latter concluded that the Athlete was not lying when
responding with “no” to the following questions: (i) “Did you at any time knowingly
ingest Nandrolone?”; and (ii) “Did you intentionally ingest the drug Nandrolone?”

- The Athlete engaged Dr Strahm, a former certified scientist at the WADA-accredited
laboratory in Stockholm to conduct an independent review of the results of the analysis.
Dr Strahm confirmed that the results of the Athlete’s 15 December 2020 urine sample
“show all the evidence of boar meat or offal consumption the day prior to when the
urine test was performed”.
- Prof Anne Hope Jahren, a paleobiologist at the University of Oslo, confirmed that “a
pork-meat meal, be it standardly derived from muscle tissue or non-standardly derived
from offal, may not only possibly to exhibit a carbon value between -21 and -25, but is
indeed likely to do so”.
- In conclusion, the AAF was wrongly reported solely on the basis of GC/C/IRMS
results, which are insufficient to report an AAF under the TD2019NA / TD2021NA
given the Athlete’s urinary markers and the estimated concentration of 19-NA detected
that was below 15ng/mL and because the Laboratory did not perform a
pharmacokinetic study to confirm that the 19-NA had not been endogenously produced
as a result of the Athlete’s inadvertent consumption of boar offal.
- The Athlete’s case is a false positive caused by boar offal and to find otherwise would
result in a miscarriage of justice because the Athlete is not a cheater, as evidenced by
her own testimony, that of all the character witnesses she has brought forward, and the
fact that there is no doping scenario that could explain this one-time presence of 19-
NA in her urine sample.

SH testimony summary:

43. The testimony of the Athlete at the 4 June 2021 hearing can be summarised as follows:
• She had never even heard of nandrolone until she opened the documents sent by the
AIU and saw that she was tested positive.
• Her dream is to win an Olympic gold medal, but only on what she can do naturally.
She even refused to wear carbon-plated spikes on her shoes because she thought that
would give her an unfair advantage. Her coaches begged her to wear the carbon-plated
spikes at the World Championships in 2019, but she refused.
• She would never intentionally take any banned substance. She is morally opposed to
doping, since cheating the sport and herself goes against everything she stands for as a
person. She would even go as far to say that cheaters should face jail time. She wants
to have a family one day and would never do anything that might jeopardize that.
• After reviewing everything she ingested with her legal team, it became clear that the
most likely source of nandrolone was a burrito she bought from a food truck in
Beaverton. She ate the burrito at about 7:30 pm the night before her positive test for
nandrolone, i.e. about ten hours before she gave her urine sample just after 6 am on 15
December 2020.
• On 14 December 2020 she had a group text conversation for plans to have dinner and
watch the show Bachelorette.
• She arrived at the food truck at 6:56 pm, after Ms Courtney Frerichs, and ordered and
paid for her own burrito and a mandarin Jarrito. The food truck is very authentic and
sells burritos that are made of beef and pig organs. She was handed her burrito that was
unlabeled and wrapped in foil. The service was very quick that night, and she was
handed her burrito more quickly than normal.
• She sat with Ms Courtney Frerichs and her sister Lindsey and ate the burritos at around
7:30 pm. She remembers she was really hungry since she had only eaten cheesecake
for lunch that day. The burrito meat was chopped diced meat. It tasted very rich
compared to other burritos she had eaten before from the food truck. She also
remembers it being very uncharacteristically greasy with grease pooling at the bottom
of the burrito into the foil. It was so rich and greasy that she was not able to finish it
(she believes she ate about three-quarters of it).
• Thinking back now on that night, she thinks she might have been mistakenly handed a
different kind of burrito than the carne asada burrito she ordered by the person working
the food truck.
• The outcome of this case will deeply affect her reputation in the world of sports and
could stay with her for the rest of her life. She has always been a clean athlete and did
not intentionally take nandrolone.

Excellent post.

None of what you said can be found in the CAS decision.

The 1 in 10,000 figure from the AIU expert has already passed the sniff test, so there is no question of strong or unpleasant taste.

No one suggests we are talking about "meat ingestion alone". If she ate organs alone, the level could be more than 20x what she had -- according to a study from Prof. Ayotte. 15g, or half an ounce, would be sufficient, and easily chopped up and included in chorizo with any unpleasant taste, if at all, masked by spices.

The burrito defense wasn't provable, but wasn't disproved either. The CAS decision left the source of the nandrolone undetermined by any party.

There is no evidence that Jerry or Shalane were dishonest at the press conference, or since.

This is quite hilarious, considering what the actual facts are.

Oh don’t worry, Jenny and Wetmore don’t get a pass in my book. I’ll never forget Jenny’s face when you guys confronted her about her seeing Brown after all her NOP comments. That was good journalism.

And I don’t blame any athletes who went to Brown back then. I know several of them, some I’ve never seen mentioned as having done so.

That’s not why I’m criticizing you. I’m criticizing you because you keep repeating the assertion that Jerry stopped “once he realized what was going on.”

You’re either speculating, or Jerry said that to you personally. Neither explanation is convincing.

Neither confused about the history, nor about the many stories that popped up afterwards.

Your position seems to be that (1) nobody dopes, and (2) that doping does not work anyway so it is not cheating. That is being an apologist, plain an simple. It is a hobby I guess.

"No one suggest we are talking about meat ingestion alone"? So how does this help you argument since the claim that she hit these NA-19 levels from a PARTIALLY consumed burrito?

The evidence that they were untruthful is your lying eyes. Never heard of nandrolone -- LOL. Then the shift was, well even if it was NA-19 that isnt performance enhancing. Then that morphed into 'well you cant prove the Nandrolone DID NOT come from that burrito' which again, putting the onus back on the investigator to prove your theory of the case.

Just like the apologists are doing, you can set tests that the CAS undoubtedly cannot pass to your liking, but that is not the point here.

The point is this athlete has a banned substance in their system at the time of the test and the explanation is pure BS.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" (Sir Walter Scott, 1808).

Yeah makes me wonder if rekrunner is working for Shelbys team to persuade.

Teg got PRP injections right up until they were outlawed, but he spoke about them openly, so obviously didn't consider it cheating. (And it wasn't against the rules, although there was some discussion here about whether it should be.)

Personally, that doesn't even descend into the gray area for me.

Why? Seems like a waste of time for the majority of people on this forum. I'm cool with the shorter version.

Read further on that post, something might get jogged loose in your critical thinking on this subject.

All the verifiable scientific evidence will not be produced by the defense. What is produced as a defense? Conjecture. Here, take this explanation and if YOU dont accept it YOU go run down my story.

This isnt a court of law. Your continuation in the sports and your ‘rights’ are contingent upon your compliance with standards that are set and fixed and known to all. Thus, when your situation varies from the accepted ‘normal’ limits, the onus is on you to put forth evidence as to WHY this is the case and should be overlooked

Yes, I agree with you there. Still, the narrative pushed over the years (and still to this day) that Jerry and his group do everything by the book and are squeaky clean is total garbage.

And let's not forget that Solinsky and Tegenkamp allegedly warned Kara Goucher to back off on her Advair dosage which she wasn't even taking. They assumed everyone was taking it.

I'd like to see Rojo invite Teg as a podcast guest and bring up some of the items discussed on this thread. It probably won't happen, but it would be interesting nevertheless.

Relevant points from Tucker's article:

"McGlone next explains that cryptorchid species are rare (0.5%, or
“extremely low, approaching zero”), and so the “what if” scenario that
might explain how Houlihan ingested an uncastrated boar is also very
unlikely. McGlone’s final statement in this line of “plausibility of
ingestion” is to point out that the plant where the Beaverton food truck
obtains its pork meat does not operate a boar kill plant, which means
there is a “near zero chance” that boar meat would be mixed up with
normal pork products"

"Even if uncastrated boars (like cryptorchid species) have elevated
androgen levels, they’d only be found in the kidneys, testes and liver.
This is important because Houlihan’s claim is that she ate pork
stomach, and McGlone then explains that the stomach has far lower
androgen levels than other tissues, with reasons for this."

" The main study cited and explained in the CAS decision is one in which 19 volunteers were given various sized pork meals, containing various mixtures of meat,
kidneys, livers and heart (basically, combinations of the various edible
parts). That study, plus one other, Ayotte explained, are “loaded” so
as to find high levels of androgens, because they use old boars whose
androgen levels are higher, and they feed the volunteers with very large
meals (300g of pork, in some cases). And still, Ayotte argues, the
highest value measured in the studies was 2.4 ng/mL and 2.1 ng/mL, under
half of what was found in Houlihan’s urine sample."

You need to stop carrying water for Houlihan, or at least find some other line of evidence to hang your hopes on. The nandrolone categorically did not come from pig meat.