Red flags in the Houlihan case that need explaining

Something is up. It is extremely unlikely that Shelby was taking oral nandrolone for performance benefits. I have seen zero examples of this.

You cannot 'microdose' orally, as the necessary dose required to hit your bloodstream at all would be quite large and spike your urine metabolites for days.

This was not intramuscular injection, WADA conceded, as the half life of urine metabolites after injection is 30 days or more.

Contaminated supplement, maybe?

Contamination of some other undetected steroid, maybe?

just catching up on the press conference now.

I have discovered that Shelby is a wonderful person who loves her cat.

what more evidence of her innocence did CAS want?

Wada is a closed shop with its science.

Drug testing was set up when the assumptions were simple. A positive was positive and that was it.

So, the first hearing was called an appeal as the assumption was guilty cos the lab said so.

We still have these assumptions built into the system.

Thus, the assumption is that the lab did its work ok and the assumption is that the athlete must prove his/ her innocence.

We should not keep seeing drug control from the eyes of the drug control industry but rather from the more normal eyes of accepted jurisprudence.

Good point OP except for the incredulity that Jerry could not have heard of nandrolone. I've been a track fan for over 25 years but I don't remember the name of the drug Baumann claimed was in his toothpaste. It was a long time ago. Aside from EPO I don't remember the names of really much of anything.

Hell I can't even tell you what Kiprop was busted for and this guy was the greatest miler since El G.

So I find that entirely plausible because I don't remember it either. Don't use that as a talking point.

Lol. This reminds me of the high school meathead giving a rather ill-prepared chemistry presentation. I'd give him a solid B- for an 11th grader.

Good points. So, likely not direct use of nandrolone, but another PED taken orally or topically?

OK. Seems, as pointed out, that by far most likely conclusion is that was using another illegal supplement that was contaminated. see e.g https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2004/jan/12/tennis.vivekchaudhary as well . Does the community have an idea on what most likely was the supplement that was taking but doesnt want to confess taking?

Glowing for a few days does not seem terrible. She could plan to miss a test.

typical dude wrote:

Good point OP except for the incredulity that Jerry could not have heard of nandrolone. I've been a track fan for over 25 years but I don't remember the name of the drug Baumann claimed was in his toothpaste. It was a long time ago. Aside from EPO I don't remember the names of really much of anything.

Hell I can't even tell you what Kiprop was busted for and this guy was the greatest miler since El G.

So I find that entirely plausible because I don't remember it either. Don't use that as a talking point.

It's a question I think should be asked, and it's possible that Schumacher really was ignorant of nandrolone.

Of course, you can't know every drug though my expectations of a coach who has a team of some of the most prominent athletes in the US are higher than they are of the average track fan. I think it's fair to expect a coach to do a bit of due diligence.

At the very least, I would be asking what doping education BTC is providing to their athletes.

I’m not trying to prove anyone’s innocence. But yes I would like people that say “I can’t believe she thinks we are dumb enough to believe that she achieved 5 ng/mL of nandrolone by eating pig meat. Doesn’t she know that she would have had to eat 300g of pig offal? Does she think we are fools?”

to back it up with some facts, when it appears NONE of you know how much pig meat it takes to achieve 5 ng/mL of nandrolone except that there was a study with a guy once. And when Lawson and Wilson used the same excuse no one batted an eye.

oregon oldtimer wrote:

If she was voluntarily using nandrolone, why would she even provide a urine sample to the drug testers? Just consider it one of her where-abouts warnings and go on her way?

if she got her timing wrong, and she'd been getting away with it for years.

I agree with a lot of these points- however- when one is tested many dozens of times coincidences are more likely to occur.

How many times has she been tested in the last 5 years? 1:1000 odds sound like a long shot. But if she’s been tested 300 times it’s actually a 33% chance of it happening. The shear volume of her tests speak volumes to me. If she had some abnormal tests and was missing tests that’s difference. But my understanding is she’s had zero abnormal or missed tests. If true that’s pretty compelling.

And to clarify- 1:1000 isn’t good enough. 1:100,000 false positives isn’t good enough.

Doping needs to be an absolute certainty before they ruin someone’s reputation and life. In this case it’s not. I think it’s more likely than not she was doping—but it’s by no means a certainty. Not even close.

TomPettyLives wrote:

I agree with a lot of these points- however- when one is tested many dozens of times coincidences are more likely to occur.

How many times has she been tested in the last 5 years? 1:1000 odds sound like a long shot. But if she’s been tested 300 times it’s actually a 33% chance of it happening. The shear volume of her tests speak volumes to me. If she had some abnormal tests and was missing tests that’s difference. But my understanding is she’s had zero abnormal or missed tests. If true that’s pretty compelling.

And Lance Armstrong is still the winner of all those Tours and $millions?

This has been explained many times in this thread or similar ones. Professional athletes have agreed to the rules. (They are basically forced to if they want to race professionally.)

These rules include a reversal of the burden of proof compared to criminal law. If you test positive, the antidoping agencies do not have to do anything to further "prove" that positive, To the contrary, you have to show THEM that there is reasonable/high probability of a false positive in your case. This was not achieved in Houlihan's case and the fact that the full 4 year ban was upheld seems to show that they utterly failed to convince them, otherwise there would probably been a reduction.

Red flags for me:

She has never heard of deca/ nandrolone, a famous PED popular with track athletes in the 90's and 2000's.

Mentioning a hair sample test, which won't prove anything. What's the point of having hair sample screened for Deca? Will a lower amount on it supposedly invalidate her reading she submitted prior? Does that mean she is saying the drug test was a fluke and was tampered with? Or that the machinery used was invalid?

TomPettyLives wrote:

I agree with a lot of these points- however- when one is tested many dozens of times coincidences are more likely to occur.

How many times has she been tested in the last 5 years? 1:1000 odds sound like a long shot. But if she’s been tested 300 times it’s actually a 33% chance of it happening. The shear volume of her tests speak volumes to me. If she had some abnormal tests and was missing tests that’s difference. But my understanding is she’s had zero abnormal or missed tests. If true that’s pretty compelling.

OK, so according to the USADA website, she has been tested 55 times over the last five years, plus an unspecified number of AIU tests.

That 33% chance figure that you came up with is wrong. I can't say what the exact figure is because I'd need a lot more information, but you're not taking into account the multiple probabilities that are involved here. Houlihan's version of events relies on:

1. Uncastrated pig meat making it into the food supply - an unlikely event given that almost all piglets in the US are castrated.

2. That meat actually containing nandrolone - remember, it CAN occur naturally in pigs but it doesn't necessarily, nor does it have to be in sufficient quantity.

3. That meat making it to the food truck she bought her burrito from.

4. That meat somehow getting into her burrito in sufficient quantities to trigger an adverse test - recall she didn't buy a pig meat burrito, so it managed to get into her beef burrito either through cross-contamination or by some meat being mixed. Also remember that according to the evidence that Houlihan's team appears to be using, that quantity appears to be around 300g of meat.

5. That Houlihan was tested exactly 10 hours after she consumed the meat - this is precisely the time period when the scientific paper said nandrolone of the level found in Houlihan would turn up in her system. If it was 24 hours later, her nandrolone levels would have returned to normal.

Each one of these are low-probability events, and every single one has to occur in order for Houlihan's theory to hold water. It's possible but extremely unlikely. The odds that she would be tested on any given day are around 1:30, but the chance that she gets tested on a day when all these other rare events also occurred? I think we're in the realms of lottery winner levels of luck (bad luck in this case).

As a thought experiment, follow this sequence of events as an explanation for an adverse drug test, but change the athlete's name to something like Mary Kiplagat. Be honest, and ask yourself how credible the story sounds.

TomPettyLives wrote:

I agree with a lot of these points- however- when one is tested many dozens of times coincidences are more likely to occur.

How many times has she been tested in the last 5 years? 1:1000 odds sound like a long shot. But if she’s been tested 300 times it’s actually a 33% chance of it happening. The shear volume of her tests speak volumes to me. If she had some abnormal tests and was missing tests that’s difference. But my understanding is she’s had zero abnormal or missed tests. If true that’s pretty compelling.

Also, you don't know she hasn't had abnormal tests. She hasn't made that information public. You can have a test that raises suspicions without actually failing. That's one reason why Galen Rupp is the most tested athlete in the US. She can add some weight to this by publishing details of her biological passport, I don't see a reason not to do this at this point.

She was asked for an explanation.

She said that the only one she could think off was the food in question.

What if there is no explanation that she has not cheated.

The burden should not be on the Athlete as strict liability requires.

Would any normal court convict on a drug offence of cheating on this evidence beyond reasonable doubt?

All seem content to see it all from the paradigm of the drug control industry.

I also repeat that if anyone really things an athlete would cheat with Deca when they are tested so regularly then they are fools.

I would want, at the minimum, to see historical hormone profiles and bio passports to see if any other evidence of cheating.