Shelby Houlihan: "I want to be very clear. I’ve never taken any performance-enhancing substances"

Thanks - I couldn't stomach the statements, so skipped to the questions.

This excuse is so pathetic. I don’t care what happened with past athletes of course that is why they came up with this crap. The simplest explanation is the most likely, she doped, she got caught, and the PR machine/lawyer that Nike hired for her came up with this crap.

Also any of these fools standing there in solidarity with her are morons, how many times have we seen deniers eventually be proven frauds you shouldn’t risk your reputation with anyone.

Ace_of_Base wrote:

This excuse is so pathetic. I don’t care what happened with past athletes of course that is why they came up with this crap. The simplest explanation is the most likely, she doped, she got caught, and the PR machine/lawyer that Nike hired for her came up with this crap.

Also any of these fools standing there in solidarity with her are morons, how many times have we seen deniers eventually be proven frauds you shouldn’t risk your reputation with anyone.

Actually my respect for Gwen Jorgensen has just risen a lot. She has not posted a supportive thing. I hope it stays that way.

Everything in that video was out of the Lance Armstrong playbook. The only thing missing is the power to actually ruin the lives of the people that are reporting it.

Does Shelby's story remind you of the South Park Episode when Butters is missing and his guilty parents blame it on "some Puerto Rican guy"?

What was I on? I was on THE TRACK, 6 hours a day working my tail off. That's what I was on.

ronkitaus@yahoo.com

wrote:

i find it remarkable that many of the very same people who destroyed salazar and slandered openly anyone who trained under him now attack the testing system. that fiasco was led by disgruntled athletes who are now attack foreign athletes with absolutely no proof. they sound like spiro agnew. the press conference was a rehearsed joke.

I too find it funny that rojo is pumping the brakes now that a Schumacher athlete tested positive. I don’t think we’d see Rupp given the benefit of the doubt were he in the same situation.

Quote: “ The fact is simple. Shelby cheated. And tried to hide it by eating a burrito and showing evidence she ate a burrito. After all, who saves receipts from eating burritos? Nobody. Unless your lawyer told you to save it for your future doping case because he’s supplying you with PED’s. ”

I save most of my receipts for one month until the bank clears them because I use my card so it is possible. If she paid using a credit card then it’s perfectly possible that she saved her receipt until she got proof from her bank that she wasn’t overcharged. A lot of runners are nerds and so they do those kinds of things.

rojo wrote:

You are making assumptions without knowing all of the facts....

To me, if she ate pork 8 hours before and it's written in scientific literature that her test would be just as it was, then I'm letting her off.

YOu are just assuming it's made up without knowing the facts. I'm not going to do that.

But here, I want to see the proof in this case. It's my understanding WADA accepted she ate the pork and still banned her. We need to know why.

If she ate pork you'll let her off? Really? Even though the type and quantity of uncastrated boar meat she would need to eat to ingest that amount of steroid is almost certainly not available in a random taco truck in Oregon?

I thought we'd got away from all this excuses BS and it's now simply accepted as athletes are responsible for what they put in their bodies.

She admits eating the burrito she claims caused the nandrolene spike. That makes her guilty.

What else is there to say?

Ray I understand why it's easy to think and say what you do. And tha'ts why you need to listen to Jerry's Schumacher's statement.. He addressess fellow coaches and athletes and fans and says you have the right to be skeptical and whisper as that what he himself has done.

Jerry has a VERY good reputation in the business. I have a prominent coaching friend who bascially thinks tons and tons of peopel are doping. Whenever he says this to me, I say, "I get youg logic but we know ** and **" are clean - some of her/his most prominent athletes. When this news came out, he seemed skeptical of Shelby's excuse but also immediately texted his/hjer respect for Jerry.

If anyone can get people to change the system, it will be him. Skepticism was already building as even the head of USADA - who has never been shy about going after big fish - expressed the feeling that the testing in the US was too sensitive given our food supply.

But you seem suspicious to think people can know others are doping, that the sensitive tests don't catch them but does catch innocents like Lawson, ajee etc. (or maybe you think there are all guilty as well)?

I would say this. I've always said I don't need a drug test often to know who is doping. Regina Jacobs was obvious, so were all of the Russian women, etc. That's just based on performance, late career stuff, ,etc Results.

Then you learn things on the circuit. I remember being STUNNED when a top 1500 runner told me Kiprop was dirty. Kiprop was my favorite runner. Yes its easy to think "all foreigners are dirty". I get it.

But you really seem stuck up on the idea of "the tests are super sensitive and catch American innocents but can't catch huge dopers in Ethiopia/Kenya" argument. My resposne to that is simple. The tests aren't very good at catching sophisticated doping. As someone who said this to me once, "You'd have to be a fool to get caught doping. When you cycle up, do it at night, don't answer your door in the morning and you are good to go."

If you are looking for reasons to think she might be clean (and one her lawyer actually makes)), one of the stronger arguments is why in the hell would she be doping with the drug she was caught with. .I know her lawyer has made this argument to Jonathan Gault was telling it to me. I'm not sure if he made it at the presser or if he made it when he talked to Jonathan one on one. Now I don't know exactly what the argument is as I only got to listen to 10 minutes of the presser (I'm going ot listen to it all today).

But as a general concept, my response to you is many people think the tests are great at catching crude doping but terrible at catching sophisticated doping. So if you are going to dope a few hours before being tested, you might get caught or take an outdated thing you might get caught but otherwise you aren't going to get caught most likely.

I do think if you are interested in doping, we owe it to ourselves to listen to the whole podcast.

losing a lot of respect for Flanagan defending her, makes me suspicious of flanagan as well. i never would have though Flanagan doped. However, it was 100% obvious (worse than Makdaddy) that Shelby was cheating. It is shocking that some think she is innocent. The most obviously doped athlete since Rupp gets busted and she is using the pork excuse.

look at the red flags:

-huge jump in performance (2017-2018)

-closing out races in 61 and not out of breath

-setting 1500 and 5k records with ease

-huge change in muscular physique

-AND a positive doping test

if this was an kenyan or russian 2 out of 5 of these and this board would be screaming cheating. I would have tons more of respect for her if she just said, yeah i cheated, i had to to keep up with the other cheaters.....Christian Hesche style.

And you don't seem to have any issue with Jerry's runners previously visiting Dr. Brown?

I dont think he's nearly as squeaky clean as you would like to believe.

edward teech wrote:

losing a lot of respect for Flanagan defending her, makes me suspicious of flanagan as well. i never would have though Flanagan doped. However, it was 100% obvious (worse than Makdaddy) that Shelby was cheating. It is shocking that some think she is innocent. The most obviously doped athlete since Rupp gets busted and she is using the pork excuse.

look at the red flags:

-huge jump in performance (2017-2018)

-closing out races in 61 and not out of breath

-setting 1500 and 5k records with ease

-huge change in muscular physique

-AND a positive doping test

if this was an kenyan or russian 2 out of 5 of these and this board would be screaming cheating. I would have tons more of respect for her if she just said, yeah i cheated, i had to to keep up with the other cheaters.....Christian Hesche style.

Exactly right. The change in her body is so dramatic that it seemed obvious even then. She had 6 months to come up with a good excuse and this burrito story is the best she could do?

I've been a big defender of Sifan Hassan. But I respect those who think she's dirty. I know a few ex professional runners who think nearly every runner on the diamond league circuit is dirty.

At least with Hassan, she lives and trains here, she competes frequently, and according to Craig Engels, is tested more than anyone. I always suspect runners like Ayana and Dibaba who disappear for long stretches and rarely compete. My only beef is to say you "know" someone is dirty - even without proof. But I will acknowledge that it's probably right to be suspicious of nearly everyone. But it makes me sad because I enjoy the sport so much.

Jerry has a VERY good reputation in the business

There's zero chance Schumacher would condone, promote, or attempt to conceal any doping. He's an absolute purist.

I know most of you doucheclowns like to pound one out thinking about how everyone is dirty, but you're barking up the wrong tree here.

JohnNgugi wrote:

Jerry has a VERY good reputation in the business

There's zero chance Schumacher would condone, promote, or attempt to conceal any doping. He's an absolute purist.

I know most of you doucheclowns like to pound one out thinking about how everyone is dirty, but you're barking up the wrong tree here.

lol. tell me another joke, oh wise one!

sbeefyk2 wrote:

I think it’s great when cheaters get banned. We’re only debating this because she’s American. If she was from ant African country or Russian we’d take it as face value and move on.

I am not sure what to think about this story. But why shouldn’t someone support their country? We want believe she is innocent, because at one point (and some still) as runners we aspire to compete with the rest of the world in Athletics. So when a fellow American is labeled a doper, it stings and takes away a little bit of that dream.

Sprintgeezer: “I want to be very clear. I don’t believe you.”

So she denies it. What do you expect? "Fair cop, guv"?