Red flags in the Houlihan case that need explaining

How likely is that? Every Pro athlete these days knows not to take any "supplements" for fear of contamination.

Just re-read parts of the most recent WADA technical document and I agree with the Houlihan lawyer that the procedures appear to not have been followed correctly:

1. Nandrolone metabolites in urine due to pig ingestion is defined as “endogenous.” I wouldn’t have said that, but it’s the way they define the term for testing purposes. See comment at the end of section 1.

2. The comment at the end of section 3.2.1 specifies one way to determine whether the nandrolone metabolites are “endogenous” (from pigs) or exogenous (from injection). That one method is based on the pharmacokinetics of the nandrolone metabolite (19-NA) excretion.

3. If that excretion pharmacokinetics showed that it was not injected nandrolone as Houlihan’s lawyer claims, then the source is “endogenous” by WADA’s definition.

4. If the nandrolone is considered endogenous, the second row of the table in Section 4 states that it should have been recorded as a “atypical finding” and not an “adverse finding.”

Presumably CAS's decision was based on judging that these procedures were properly followed.

Thanks for posting. Maybe you can tell me if I'm reading this incorrectly. Table 2 of the paper linked by Harambe seems to more or less confirm the results of the other paper that a lot of people are citing. At the levels of nandrolone found in Houlihan's system (or greater), 300g of pig offal would need to be consumed. There is one result (for a 24 year-old male) which showed that similar levels could be found by eating 100g specifically of boar kidney. And levels returned to normal after 13 hours. Again, we are in the land of extraordinary bad luck - not only would she have to have somehow received a beef burrito that contained boar meat (which is less than 2% of all pig meat in the US), but it would have to be specifically be 100g of kidney meat, or else 300g of mixed offal. It's possible, I guess.

Let's also quote from the conclusion of that paper:

"With regards to the highly improbable ingestion of non-castrated pig offal outside research context..."

We're being asked to buy an incredible story. I think it's fine if you want to but I don't think we should pretend this is based on even moderately convincing evidence. Jonathan Gault at least acknowledges that his belief in Houlihan's innocence is based on gut instinct that flies in the face of all known evidence.

twoggle wrote:

Harambe wrote:

Paper is free here:

https://sci-hub.do/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039128X08002481

Thanks. Didn’t know there was a free link. :-)

NP. Sci-hub is a miracle for those of us addicted to full-texts. I had missed this study, too, so many thanks for bringing it up.

The Ayotte paper linked above this post confirms that 300g of tainted meat will regularly result in triggering urinary concentrations.

If anything, the minimal we have evidence suggests there may be preparations/breeds/characteristics of pig that have MORE nandrolone than what's seen in the literature. There's no reason to believe this is an upper bound.

21 year old studies with good methods are perfectly trustworthy. IF is functionally useless to judge the quality of a paper. Nobody is saying this is a definitive study of all sources of nandrolone meat contamination. It is, however, a landmark paper showing that natural sources of nandrolone can trigger a positive test.

And who thinks a burrito had 2/3 lb meat cooked in it? thats 300 grams and a ton of meat.

Made a pound of beef the other night for tacos. Made three good-sized ones, had 3 left for leftovers.

What was interesting in listening to Jerrys comments again was this claim:

'they refused to charge her for months and left her on provisional suspension'

Does anyone have any corroboration for that claim? Is that 'refusal' to charge because of exhausting all your appellate options?

If so, a little hard to chide WADA for not charging an athlete that until these released the charge wanted to keep said charge out of the media

Surely it is more likely that she consumed some tainted supplement Vs tainted meat.

The burrito she may or may not have ordered and may or may not have consumed is surely a red herring? It's the only thing she did "differently" so maybe sticks out

the media is corrupt wrote:

Subway Surfers wrote:

Schumacher is dirty, now the whole world knows it and LRC kept deleting my numerous attempts to expose it. Shame on them.

Yup … the Brojos anti-doping stance has been decimated by their hypocrisy.

100%. Lost all credibility with the anti-shoe rhetoric too IMO.

I mean that's certainly what i think and have been saying on here, checks a lot of the boxes and still allows you to be indignant while being misleading with a straight face and great emotion about the whole affair

And what is a more relatable story for the fan base and general public:

"hey, i accidentally ate something anybody could've ordered"

or

"this thing i was taking, which is either illegal as well or unethical, was contaminated with 'trace' amounts of nandrolone and that's why i tested positive for that"

The first story is so shaky, vague and general people can identify with it and focus on her as a person passively. The second would bring up a slew of other questions that could be just as damaging as the test results

jackamo wrote:

And what is a more relatable story for the fan base and general public:

"hey, i accidentally ate something anybody could've ordered"

or

"this thing i was taking, which is either illegal as well or unethical, was contaminated with 'trace' amounts of nandrolone and that's why i tested positive for that"

The first story is so shaky, vague and general people can identify with it and focus on her as a person passively. The second would bring up a slew of other questions that could be just as damaging as the test results

This seems by far the most likely explanation. and counters the point "nobody would take oral nandrolone". it seems - given the shakiness of the burrito defense - a lot more likely that she was illegally consuming a supplement that was contaminated. which happens a lot in the supplement industry - as production lines get used for multiple substances and don't always get cleaned properly

jackamo wrote:

And who thinks a burrito had 2/3 lb meat cooked in it? thats 300 grams and a ton of meat.

Made a pound of beef the other night for tacos. Made three good-sized ones, had 3 left for leftovers.

Nobody thinks that. Some of the dumber members of this board read a study that used that amount and leaped the conclusion that you need to eat that much. Morons.

At a minimium you should do the math of

300gm,180lbs=7.5

5, 115lbs = 130 gms

Does a 4.5 oz serving size seem really absurd to you?

And realize a much smaller portions size would be reasonable. Then you can think about difference between men and woman, body fat levels, activity levels, different meats cuts and prep, absorbtion rates, and a ton of other factors. You would need to do a lot more studies to disprove it.

And let's not even talk about the idiots who don't know how to apply Bayes theorem when doing probability. There are like 3 billion woman on the planet, I have slept with .000001% of them, so the odds of me making any of them pregnant is low. So therefore my GF kid can't be mine right?

I sort of doubt she was done in by bad meat. But it is pretty hard to disprove since right now it is possible. We can be pretty confident she orally(injections don't clear that quick) something that caused he levels to spike.

ddidididid wrote:

Nobody thinks that. Some of the dumber members of this board read a study that used that amount and leaped the conclusion that you need to eat that much. Morons.

At a minimium you should do the math of

300gm,180lbs=7.5

5, 115lbs = 130 gms

Does a 4.5 oz serving size seem really absurd to you?

You haven't read the article. Lighter people didn't have higher urine concentrations. The heaviest of the three study participants ("Dirk") had the highest reading, and 28 urine samples out of 29 registered at less than 4ng/ml, so would not have produced a adverse finding. This despite the fact that all three men ate 300 grams of uncastrated pig, including about 75 grams each of kidney, heart, and liver.

Looking at Table 2, the first experiment of 300g of mixed organ meat (some castrated and some uncastrated), returned a max urinary concentration in the 3 subjects of 21.4, 62.6 and 130 ng/mL. My understanding is that Houlihan was at 5ng/mL. They didn’t repeat this experiment with 100g in 3 subjects. Also note the huge variation between the three subjects.

If we look at just the 300g of mixed “meat” (presumably non-organ meat) there was still one out of three who was over the limit (2.4ng/mL), but since it was a mixture of castrated and uncastrated, it may have been similar to 150g from a uncastrated pig.

The 100g of kidney organ meat showed almost three times the levels of Houlihan.

In my opinion: 1) there is a huge variation from person to person; 2) there is a huge variation from animal to animal; and 3) 100g of organ meat can cause levels that far exceed what Houlihan messured (based on both the 100g test and 300g test). But these are small studies and we can’t extrapolate to a averages or maximums that can be expected. I think WADA has a lot of work to do in this area to find additional ways to differentiate “endogenous” and “exogenous” nandrolone.

Kate grace former btc teammate openly defending Shelby. There goes the bogus theory Kate left bc she discovered doping.

How do you figure that? explain X proving Y there

This is a wada document and one that sits apart from peer reviewed papers and is aimed at protecting wada and their historical position and to stop each case being considered on its merits.