We merged two threads on the same subject into 1 and kept the title of the 1st one posted. The 2nd thread title was, “Whether you believe me or not, I’m coming back,” Shelby says. “I’ve served the time.”
So there was no appealable defect in the processes followed; it is only that you don't like them.
I am not the only one who doesn't "like" a process that railroads innocent athletes to 4-year bans and treats them like intentional cheats, based on a set of presumptions that are known to be difficult to rebut.
Yes, dopers don't like the process - for obvious reasons - but it isn't being changed. That's because it holds them accountable.
There is no need to persuade you of anything. You are deluded. Your views are also irrelevant: they change nothing in the outcome of this case or how others will be decided. That is an accurate measure of their merit.
It will be unfortunate for future innocent athletes if nothing changes. However things have already changed since then, with higher limits applied to many substances reguarly found in meat (that unfortunately for Houlihan, did not include nandrolone -- maybe next time), as well as increased athlete representation at WADA for deciding regulations that impact athletes.
One thing future female nandrolone users should have learned though. It seems that female athletes using norethisterone can never test positive for nandrolone, especially for low amounts less than 10 ng/ml.
If athletes have to be more careful - good. But nothing else is going to change in the system to suit you. Even better.
It’s ridiculous! He’s focused on the fact that the panel made subjective findings, despite the fact that every judge and every panel in every location ever since mankind has graced this earth has made subjective findings. Every court is confronted with a situation where two different parties offer two different versions of the facts, and the court then must weigh the evidence and make subjective findings as to what happened. Subjective does not mean wrong though. Unless the hearing is before a judge who was 1: present at every event relevant to the case; and, 2. had the ability to perfectly understand the hearts, minds, and intents of every party at all times relevant (I.e., unless the hearing is before God himself), every legal decision will always be subjective. He literally is arguing for a system that cannot exist. Heck, even if the burdens were reversed and WADA had to prove the source of the drug, the tribunal they would appear before would still be making subjective findings. I guarantee you though that he would not be complaining about subjectivity in that situation.
In the context of this discussion it is misleading to say the findings of the Court were "subjective". They were not subjective in the sense rekrunner uses the term, which is mere opinion unsupported by facts and evidence. The relevant facts in the case had to be proven to the express standard of the balance of probabilities, which is the civil law standard. The confirmed positive test easily met that standard. She failed to rebut the presumption of intent according to the same standard. However, if the Court's findings were seen as not meeting that test then she could have appealed on those grounds. In the same way, we see that in a criminal trial a jury's verdict can be appealed as being "against the weight of evidence". So there is a required element of objective measure to these things. The findings have to be in accordance with the evidence. Consequently Houlihan had no grounds for appeal that the findings of the Court failed to meet the standard it was required to apply. In a nutshell therefore, the most probable facts before the Court showed she intentionally doped.
Sure it does, precisely because the higher standard was not applied. Logic 101.
And again, she did dispute the intepretation of the test results as an AAF and an ADRV.
She didn't dispute she had tested positive for a banned substance. The higher standard of reasonable doubt was not applied because these were civil and not criminal proceedings. You prefer that she was facing criminal charges and likely imprisonment if found guilty?
She did dispute that the test result was a positive, arguing it was properly an ATF. She persuaded one of the panelists that the AAF reporting deviated from the WADA standard for WADA Labs.
I agree nothing was proved beyond reasonable doubt, because civil processes are not robust by design, deciding arguments on the strength of "probably" or "probably not". In this case I give athletes the benefit of the doubt.
After the CAS ruling, with no chance for appeal, where is she supposed to contest that finding, except to the public -- which she did.
You're correct. There was no chance of an appeal because there were no grounds in either fact or law on which to base an appeal. So she whines to the public, just like you do, her lap dog.
I am correct, but you are not. It is the Code which says that "CAS decisions are final and binding except for any review required by law". There is no option to appeal a CAS decision based on grounds in fact to the Swiss Courts.
It is similar to the Supreme Court decisions, e.g. interpreting the 14th amendment, or declaring presidential immunity, in ways that some experts disagree are lawful. The avenue for appeals is a dead end, and the final recourse is in the hands of the people (e.g. non-violent public pressure on Congress to further clarify the laws).
I am not the only one who doesn't "like" a process that railroads innocent athletes to 4-year bans and treats them like intentional cheats, based on a set of presumptions that are known to be difficult to rebut.
Yes, dopers don't like the process - for obvious reasons - but it isn't being changed. That's because it holds them accountable.
US anti-doping chief Travis Tygart also doesn't like it. Innocent victims railroaded to 4-year bans don't like it. Innocent victims who clear their name, at a cost of 5-figures, a 1+ year suspension, who still have one strike against them, don't like it.
What do you have against protecting innocent athletes from false convictions?
Can you tell me which national or international class distance runners you know that have ingested such low amounts of oral nandrolone on purpose, and how have they performed?
A) she did have over twice the amount of the literature of comparable pork meat - more like over 6 times actually after adjusting for the amount of meat,
B) her -23 were not consistent with farm fed pig.
So usually you pretend - still without evidence after over 4 years - that the sneaky Mexican added some additional pork ingredient in Dec 2020 (but not in 2021-25) without telling them and that her pork came from a farm where soy was fed for an extended time period in 2020 - although even you still haven't found such a farm despite your huge investment in this case. And neither has the professional PI.
Both of that is so absurdly ridiculous that not even her famous lawyers dared to hint at that, but you are evidently not bound by any ethics.
But now? Now you even pretend that of course all those numbers are consistent with her story without any of your wild imaginations. Dream on!
I know that, and much more.
A) I know the claim was offal in a burrito.
B) I know it is consistent with increased soy, and I know that Prof. McGlone conceded diets were modified with increased soy during the relevant timeframe.
I don't pretend any Mexicans were being sneaky -- that baseless scenario only comes from you. Since intact boar is rare on the market, the same "offal" ingredients can be used in 2021-2025, but come from a castrated male pig, or from a female pig.
I am not trying to definitively prove it was in the burrito, but rather weighing the strength of the evidence before the CAS, and its subsequent findings based on a combination of evidence, unproven assumptions and presumptions. The CAS decision, in its entirety, with all its accumulated evidence, leaves many avenues unexplored, and falls far short of disproving Houlihan's burrito was the unlikely rare exception, made more likely by supply chain issues during the pandemic. Furthermore, the CAS proceeding doesn't even begin to prove any other alternative source. So we can conclude that Houlihan couldn't produce the evidence to overcome presumptions, but anything more than that is the consequence of presumptions rather than established facts.
Oh wow. Now you are trying to redefine what a positive test means. Cool story bro.
Relatedly, despite all that trolling, you didn't even reach 20 posts here yesterday. Were you too busy trolling in all the other doping threads under 88 other names?
Let's add some facts with actual quotes that you "forgot" again, so no wrong conclusions get drawn here: A) I know the claim was "stomach" offal in a burrito. B) I know it is consistent with increased soy, and I know that Prof. McGlone conceded the "diet of some pigs" was modified with increased soy during the relevant timeframe. However "this practice was not maintained for a sustained period of time because of the (higher) costs of soybean and that corn remained overall the main diet source for all pigs in the United States."
Last, if the "Mexican" wasn't sneaky, why do you still pretend that she didn't hand over the full pork ingredient list? And why did the testing of the offal not reveal any pork ingredients aside from the stomach?
Yes I know, you'll be too busy to write baseless walls of text to reply to that in earnest.
So we can conclude - adding in the fact that she conceded it wasn't in her vitamins - that Houlihan doped intentionally without any reasonable doubt.
She didn't dispute she had tested positive for a banned substance. The higher standard of reasonable doubt was not applied because these were civil and not criminal proceedings. You prefer that she was facing criminal charges and likely imprisonment if found guilty?
She did dispute that the test result was a positive, arguing it was properly an ATF. She persuaded one of the panelists that the AAF reporting deviated from the WADA standard for WADA Labs.
I agree nothing was proved beyond reasonable doubt, because civil processes are not robust by design, deciding arguments on the strength of "probably" or "probably not". In this case I give athletes the benefit of the doubt.
So what if you do. It means nothing. The standard of beyond reasonable doubt wasn't applied, since these weren't criminal proceedings, so you have no measure of that kind by which the evidence was assessed. In any case, she could have failed to have met that standard. Your opinion - your bias - isn't the standard. The measure used by the Court was the balance of probabilities, which she failed.
This post was edited 14 minutes after it was posted.
You're correct. There was no chance of an appeal because there were no grounds in either fact or law on which to base an appeal. So she whines to the public, just like you do, her lap dog.
I am correct, but you are not. It is the Code which says that "CAS decisions are final and binding except for any review required by law". There is no option to appeal a CAS decision based on grounds in fact to the Swiss Courts.
It is similar to the Supreme Court decisions, e.g. interpreting the 14th amendment, or declaring presidential immunity, in ways that some experts disagree are lawful. The avenue for appeals is a dead end, and the final recourse is in the hands of the people (e.g. non-violent public pressure on Congress to further clarify the laws).
You have simply agreed with me, that she had no grounds in law by which to make an appeal. That means the case was properly and fairly heard. Principles of natural justice were observed. An appeal on the evidence could have been made if it could be shown and proved she had not in fact tested positive, because that would automatically result in an exoneration. But of course she couldn't.
Yes, dopers don't like the process - for obvious reasons - but it isn't being changed. That's because it holds them accountable.
US anti-doping chief Travis Tygart also doesn't like it. Innocent victims railroaded to 4-year bans don't like it. Innocent victims who clear their name, at a cost of 5-figures, a 1+ year suspension, who still have one strike against them, don't like it.
What do you have against protecting innocent athletes from false convictions?
Travis Tygart represents the body that has been found to have suppressed unfavorable test results amongst US athletes.
I am all for protecting innocent athletes from convictions - that's why I support the present process that convicts the guilty. Athletes must be responsible for what is found in their body - there is no other way of enforcing an effective antidoping system. The innocent don't take drugs and are mindful of their obligations under the Code. "Bad luck" is carelessness. Houlihan is absolutely not an innocent victim of this process. A system of the kind that you would prefer would make it immeasurably more difficult to hold the dopers to account. That I'm not in favour of.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Intent doesn't have to be established because otherwise you could just have athletes get off scot-free with doping done on them by others without their intention. If they ingest doping products with or without their intention it still violates the rules and confers an advantage to them and disadvantage to their competition.
Oh wow. Now you are trying to redefine what a positive test means. Cool story bro.
Relatedly, despite all that trolling, you didn't even reach 20 posts here yesterday. Were you too busy trolling in all the other doping threads under 88 other names?
It's not me, but the TD that is not so binary. "positive test" isn't really defined as such. According to WADA's TD, the test results can be reported as an AAF, an ATF, or a Negative Finding.
She disputed whether the AAF was correctly interpreted and reported, arguing that the GC/C/IRMS test may not be used to establish "exogenous" origin, if the athlete invokes intact boar parts consumption. The CAS Panel vote on this point was split, which is troubling if we expect the TD should be predictable and unambiguous.
Let's add some facts with actual quotes that you "forgot" again, so no wrong conclusions get drawn here: A) I know the claim was "stomach" offal in a burrito. B) I know it is consistent with increased soy, and I know that Prof. McGlone conceded the "diet of some pigs" was modified with increased soy during the relevant timeframe. However "this practice was not maintained for a sustained period of time because of the (higher) costs of soybean and that corn remained overall the main diet source for all pigs in the United States."
Last, if the "Mexican" wasn't sneaky, why do you still pretend that she didn't hand over the full pork ingredient list? And why did the testing of the offal not reveal any pork ingredients aside from the stomach?
Yes I know, you'll be too busy to write baseless walls of text to reply to that in earnest.
So we can conclude - adding in the fact that she conceded it wasn't in her vitamins - that Houlihan doped intentionally without any reasonable doubt.
Sorry, I don't think your facts are facts, and/or relevant.
A) The claim the the AIU was "pig offal" and the CAS told us the claim was "the 19-NA entered her body by eating a burrito from a food truck containing pork offal".
B) That doesn't seem relevant at all. It doesn't need to be maintained over a period of time, but only up to about the time of slaughter.
If you want to argue that the Mexicans were sneaky, that's between you and you. I don't blame the food truck owners, who seem to have responded to the best of their ability with answers to the questions and the receipts they could find. I can only go by what the CAS reported. The "expert witnesses" failed to discuss expected nandrolone concentration from the "fat" in a greasy burrito, except to concede it can contain higher concentrations of nandrolone, and failed to discuss "chorizo" at all, which may also contain various offal. This alone proves their rebuttal analysis is incomplete, regardless of the existence of any ingredient list. That leaves reasonable doubt.
Regarding vitamins, she didn't have all the vitamins from the sam batch. That again leaves reasonable doubt.
Before these questions are resolved, we can only conclude that it would be premature to exclude nandrolone from pork, as well as vitamins/supplements.
Intent doesn't have to be established because otherwise you could just have athletes get off scot-free with doping done on them by others without their intention. If they ingest doping products with or without their intention it still violates the rules and confers an advantage to them and disadvantage to their competition.
The default ban for unintentional doping is 2-years, and any "doped" results can be annulled. No one is ever talking about getting off "scot-free". This was how WADA worked up until 2015.
To get off "scot-free" requires establishing "no (significant) fault or negligence", which excludes many scenarios, like supplements and sabotage from spouse, coach, physio, and other persons the athlete chooses. Even then, the athlete is out 5-figures, and any time served under suspension, and it still counts as a first offense.
Travis Tygart represents the body that has been found to have suppressed unfavorable test results amongst US athletes.
I am all for protecting innocent athletes from convictions - that's why I support the present process that convicts the guilty. Athletes must be responsible for what is found in their body - there is no other way of enforcing an effective antidoping system. The innocent don't take drugs and are mindful of their obligations under the Code. "Bad luck" is carelessness. Houlihan is absolutely not an innocent victim of this process. A system of the kind that you would prefer would make it immeasurably more difficult to hold the dopers to account. That I'm not in favour of.
It's unsurprising you don't appreciate the risk or the irony of false convictions resulting from a Code whose mission statement is to protect clean athletes.
As there are no safeguards before the ADRV charge, the current process will convict innocent athletes who have committed no fault, no negligence, with no intention, and without their knowledge. This is explicit in the Code. Many athletes cannot afford 5-figures to launch a defense which is well known to be difficult to provide, so they will simply have to bend over and take their whacks.
In hindsight, Houlihan's best course of action would have been to say they looked everywhere, but simply don't know for sure and can't collect the evidence for any reasonable scenario, and due to the known low probability of success, plead "no contest" and take the 3-year discount ban. Hooray for innocent athletes.
You have simply agreed with me, that she had no grounds in law by which to make an appeal. That means the case was properly and fairly heard. Principles of natural justice were observed. An appeal on the evidence could have been made if it could be shown and proved she had not in fact tested positive, because that would automatically result in an exoneration. But of course she couldn't.
It's not so simple. You said "grounds in either fact or law". There is no avenue to appeal CAS decisions on the facts. There are limited ways to appeal on Swiss Law.
It is not against Swiss law for an arbitrator to interpret rules and weigh the limited evidence before them, and make an assessment of whether presumptions were rebutted enough, even if they are wrong. The Swiss courts will be reluctant to second guess these judgements.
Recall the panel was split with the majority deciding the AAF was "probably" correctly reported, while a minority decided the WADA Lab "properly" deviated from their procedures when reporting the AAF. None of these arbitors broke any Swiss Laws or violated Houlihan's human rights.
I know I am in the minority when I side with the minority, but you must know my reasons by now.
She didn't dispute she had tested positive for a banned substance. The higher standard of reasonable doubt was not applied because these were civil and not criminal proceedings. You prefer that she was facing criminal charges and likely imprisonment if found guilty?
She did dispute that the test result was a positive, arguing it was properly an ATF. She persuaded one of the panelists that the AAF reporting deviated from the WADA standard for WADA Labs.
I agree nothing was proved beyond reasonable doubt, because civil processes are not robust by design, deciding arguments on the strength of "probably" or "probably not". In this case I give athletes the benefit of the doubt.
1. It is a lie to say civil proceedings are not robust.
2. You completely ignore that Shelby had the benefit of the EXACT SAME STANDARD in rebutting the evidence. She only had to prove by preponderance of the evidence that the burrito was the source and not beyond all reasonable doubt. She couldn’t even meet this lower standard. If the process isn’t robust, as you incorrectly claim, then that only highlights further just how pathetic her defense was. You can’t have it both ways.