Twoggle won our prediction contest and we did a Q&A with him

i read twoggle's response, and it comes off as mostly reasonable. He is missing one thing though, that I think is the most likely answer of the nandrolone source. A different PED (plain old test?) contaminated with nandrolone. i think it's likely she was on something that should have cleared her system by the time of testing, but OOPS! Not gonna get that batch of test screened for nandrolone, are you?

I’ve never understood why it has to be one of the 2 extremes that she knowingly took nandrolone or the burrito was the source. Twoggle seems to acknowledge this. A tainted supplement (or tainted banned PED) seems like it is reasonable. This wouldn’t be a defense since 1) athletes are responsible for making sure their supplements are clean or 2) she would have had to admitted to using something illegal.

Her knowingly taking nandrolone is not an extreme position. She did.

Suggesting a burrito was the issue was the only extreme position taken and it was rightfully rejected.

I slept in in Europe.

Tainted supplement? She said that a) all still available supplements in January 2021 got tested and were clean and that b) the ones that she used up in those 4 weeks didn't result in a positive during her earlier tests in October and November. Of course she could have lied, as dopers are not exactly honest people...

My bet is on the good old undetectable testo cream contaminated with nandro (that also explains the synthetic origin).

But did she? As a matter of fact, no one ever established the source of the nandrolone, nor intent.

As a reminder, the CAS explained that what happened was that Houlihan, under the principle of guilty until proven innocent, was unable to establish the source of the nandrolone to a panel to a threshold of more likely than not, and therefore was unable to establish non intentional to the same threshold, and was punished as if it were intentional, without intent being established.

Contrary to popular belief, nandrolone ingestion by pork, although unlikely to occur generally across the nation, is not so extreme. It is something WADA explicitly mentions, based on decades of research. Even accepting the odds of the IAAF experts as accurate (and the concession of increased soy during COVID supply issues), an athlete testing positive somewhere, sometime, was only a matter of time.

Shelby and Regina were pretty good in colllege but world-class afterwards. The difference is Shelby didn't a) break 4:00 for the 1st time at age 39 like Regina. b) didn't skip out on the Olympics when the EPO test was announced c) didn't claim to be great by training with her tiny dog and some HS boys.

Regina was MUCH more suspicious as a result. Race has nothing to do with it. People have gone after Rupp and Salazar for years on here.

Now Shelby still could be a doper. But she's not a very smart one. If Shelby is an intentional doper, the thing she should have done is what Mo Farah did at least once - not answer the doorbell.

Correct, I don't get why everyone thinks I wildly defender her.

We 1) Paid a guys Ross Tucker a significant sum of money to write about the case and his writing was very ant-Shelby.

2) I made a tshirt mocking the Burrito defense. Yes I felt a bit bad about it and said I'd give any profits we made from it to Shelby (I'll send the check this week).

My problem with the case is I've been told by multiple people that is USADA was in charge of the case, she wouldn't have been charged. So that means the whole drug testing thing has a major problem.

The number of peole who have tested positive in recent years and gotten off certainly makes me question the foolproof nature of the system - Bol, Wilson, Lawson, Jeruto (ABP), etc.

Rojo, whatever the rumors are. and wherever they come from, Tygart stated directly in an interview that the dope was not in the burrito. Let's not forget that.

Why do people think you defend her? Because of statements like that:

"My problem with the case is I've been told by multiple people that is USADA was in charge of the case, she wouldn't have been charged."

and

"Regina was MUCH more suspicious as a result.....Now Shelby still could be a doper."

"still could"?? Really, are still doubting that she did dope?

That's actually a very shocking statement, if true. Not even charging someone who was caught with a whopping 275% of the "allowed" limit of an anabolic steroid?

That means that USADA can't be trusted at all. Yes, then our whole drug testing thing indeed has a major problem.

I think I understand what the USADA people may have been referring to.

The initial test is for one of the metabolites of the steroid. The concentration of the metabolite was below the levels that would lead to an *automatic* Adverse Analytical Finding (AAF) but at a high enough level to require another, different confirmation test. The question is what type of other test is appropriate. Two studies have shown that the test the WADA lab used can lead to false positives. The WADA technical document spelled out an alternative path for testing (in this case) which would have not led to an AAF. If WADA believes that the alternative testing path shouldn’t be used (as they argued), then it never should have been put in the WADA Technical Document (and it is still in their Technical Document!) I suspect that USADA may have used the alternative testing path. I still think there are testing problems whether Shelby is innocent or not.

Tygart was not involved, and furthermore, was not so direct. He thought it was more likely in a contaminated supplement, but that was his personal speculation based on nothing, as again, he was not involved in the case.

Another reminder here of what was not in the CAS decision: no one established where the nandrolone came from. Not Tygart, not the "experts", not the AIU, not the WA, not the CAS -- no one. The default penalty for not establishing the source, and therefore non-intent, it is 4 years.

Meant to respond to this ...

The WADA Code, and associated ISTI is carefully crafted by lawyers to give benefits of the doubt to the anti-doping agencies. This makes prosecution quicker and cheaper, but almost certainly convicts athletes unjustly as collateral damage.

While it clearly leads to sanctions for those bound by the WADA Code, it does not remove the doubts. There are doubts about the source of the nandrolone, and if it was due to one or more non-castrated edible pork parts, or pork fat, ingested in a greasy burrito or not, there are doubts about whether the diet of the uncastrated boar was more soy than corn, during a short period during COVID supply issues.

So yes there is still doubt because the WADA Code, and the CAS adjudication process doesn't remove these doubts, but rather ignores them if they are not disproven.

Because you give her the benefit of the doubt when you are staunchly anti-doping for everyone else. It doesn't matter who you think is "more suspicious". She tested positive for nandrolone, we don't need to speculate.

Also Rojo, giving twoggle a platform is absurd.

3.54 is off the scale of the shade-o-meter.

This is factually incorrect of course.

Of course not.

The adjudication process didn't identify an exogenous source beyond reasonable doubt, nor did it establish intent beyond reasonable doubt.

This means that reasonable doubt remains. The WADA Code eliminates uncertainty by contractual obligation, rather than fact-finding.

No it doesn't. Also you are moving the goalposts. Your original statement was that the process "ignores them [the doubts] if they are not disproven" which is simply and evidently outright incorrect.

No doubts mentioned by any party, whether disproven or not, get ignored. On the contrary, they get discussed in detail, with expert input from both sides. Read any CAS decision (Kiprop, Lawson, Houlihan,...), it's always the same procedure.

Then a decision is made based on how strong the doubts are. You should know that. Read the decisions, there are quite some details discussed!

Yes in theory based on the rules, an athlete might get banned even if reasonable doubt remains if it is "improbable". This however was not the case for Kiprop, and it was not the case for Houlihan with her combo of several "improbable" and "highly improbable" scenarios that all would have to be true for her to be innocent.