Non-castrated pig offal: This wasn't the first time CAS have adjudicated a case where this was presented to a 3-person board. They've heard it before. Athletes claiming purely theoretical causes for their adverse findings. Some athletes have claimed it was the meat, it was the meat, only to be unable to back up their claims to CAS with actual scientific evidence. The Houlihan case is no diferent.
In order for Houlihan to have avoided the standard four-year period of ineligibility provided for in Article 10.2.1, Houlihan had three escape routes to a 'lesser' penalty:
1) Houlihan was to have established on a balance of probability that her ADRV was not intentional. FAIL.
2) If Houlihan was unsuccessful in so establishing the absence of intent, she could have still had her four-year period of ineligibility eliminated or reduced if she could establish on a balance of probability (adducing concrete evidence to demonstrate that whatever she might have taken/ingested/digested actually contained the substance in question) how the prohibited nandrolone entered her system, and if she could further establish that she bore no fault or negligence; or that she bore no significant fault or negligence and that the nandrolone came from a contaminated product. FAIL.
3). Finally, barring success at step #2, Houlihan yet might have had a reduction of the sanction had she showed that she promptly admitted the ADRV. (To my knowledge, she's not yet admitted this, so another FAIL).
Houlihan: "Let's take a polygraph!" This will provide unequivocal corroborative evidence to the AIU and, more importantly, to CAS that I was not engaging in inappropriate consumption of prohibited substances!" How? "I had no control over what kind of meat, or what the meat touched that was used by the chefs in my carne asada. That should do the trick!"
A Polygraph and a hair sample: where they meant to determine on the balance of probabilities that at no point did Houlihan knowingly or intentionally consume a prohibited substance? Was it to trick folks into believing that Houlihan could not reasonably have known (or suspected even with the exercise of the utmost of caution), that she had consumed nandrolone, an Olympic Trials-killing prohibited substance -- or otherwise violated an anti-doping rule? The Polygraph and/or Hair sampling, were actions were of no assistance to Houlihan in establishing this as the CAS panel ultimately didn't find either of those defenses, singularly or cumulatively, sufficient for Houlihan to discharge her burden of proof.
In order for Houlihan (or any athlete with an Adverse finding) to prove the absence of intent, according to more persuasive CAS case law, actual evidence of the origin of contamination must be provided. Houlihan provided speculative anecdotes and was unable to satisfy this.
Seems rather illogical and implausible to presume Houlihan's accounts. Impossible? No, rather not likely. In the least.
Railroading Houlihan? No, Houlihan was riding down that broken, dangerous railroad for some months before her train finally derailed ahead a few stops before Eugene.
In essence, Houlihan, her Nike lawyer and her track club failed to offer a single element of concrete evidence for the alleged contamination of her burrito, which thus remains pure speculation.