Someone Should Tell Shelby No One Really Cares

While I agree with most of what you wrote, just FYI: doping is a crime in many countries, see for example Operation Aderlass and Armstrong's worries back then about doping in Italy. Here too (but not for the athletes themselves), they can even send the FBI after you under certain conditions since RADA:

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2022/01/is-it-safe-to-take-a-test-this-morning-fbi-investigation-reveals-text-messages-from-olympic-doper/

Lira, 41, was charged with one count of international sports doping for providing performance-enhancing drugs including HGH and EPO to athletes who competed or intended to compete at the 2020 Olympics. If convicted, Lira faces up to 10 years in prison.

My guess is she will want to compete at USATF Indoor Nationals on Feb 22. This means she will need to get a qualifier. She will have five weekends between January 13 and February 16 to get it. Her best bets would be:

Jan 25 Dr. Sander Invit
Feb 2 New Balance Grand Prix
Feb 8 Millrose

There is a scattering of other meets she could use at UW or BU, but the above are the most competitive. I guess the question is, will they invite her?

I read her new agent is Paul Doyle and he carries a lot of weight in T&F. He is head of the American Track League, so I expect to see her competing in those meets come summer. Doyle has a lot of big female athletes, including Anna Hall, Valerie Allman, Shelley-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Sandi Morris, Addy Wiley, Heather MacLean, Masai Russell, Alysha Newman, Molly Caudery, and others. I expect he will be able to get her into some big meets.

Kissing another man is illegal in many countries.

University of Arizona, home of Mo Trafeh aka E-P-MO

No one cares about you, except me! Feel better now?....Loser!

lol dopers, the lot of them.

It’s honestly hilarious that you guys think Nike would let her do any of this.

If anything makes the Shelby story interesting, I'd say it's this: the degree to which she has sacrificed some of the best years of her life to prove a point (which, if she really did dope, she wouldn't actually be proving).

My feeling is that, as someone with no connection or inside knowledge relating to her particular situation, the only appropriate way for someone like me to react to her being busted is to assume that more than likely she was guilty. That's just reality - most people convicted of something are guilty. But I can also recognize that it's an area with some uncertainties, so I'll say maybe there's a 10% chance she's innocent. Obviously, 10% is somewhat arbitrary; you could probably argue convincingly that I should have said there is a 0.1% chance she's innocent. But the general point is, to an outsider like me, it's much more likely that she's guilty than that she's innocent

When you're 27 and banned for 4 years, and your appeals have all failed, you face a harsh reality. Granting a huge benefit of the doubt to Shelby and supposing she is in reality innocent, she still has to wait 4 years to come back. Based on her career trajectory up to that point, those 4 years would likely have encompassed her absolute peak as a runner, and then perhaps the gradual diminishing of her ability. It would be easy - again, assuming you were in reality innocent - to throw up your hands and say, well, time to get on with my life, because even though I'm innocent and it's important to me that people realize that, there is no way for me to convince most people it's true. I could hang around, train for the next 4 years, and then make a comeback that nobody particularly wants, in order to somehow (fail to) prove a point, but I'll be past my prime when I come back. I can't live off my so-far decent but not spectacular earnings from my time as a runner forever, and I'm never going to be able to show the world my peak abilities, so I need to go out and get a normal job. And age 27-31 is an important time period in the career world too. You probably don't want to be 33 years old and looking for your first serious job.

So, in a nutshell, I think that what's at the root of the interest in Shelby's case is how she's consciously screwed herself in order to prove a point (which she is likely not actually proving). From a pure cost/benefit analysis standpoint, it was almost certainly a bad idea, even if she had the moral high ground.

what annoys me, is the "woe is me" attitude of returning dopers, their "problem/stress" doesn't even register in the scheme of ACTUAL problems that people have in the world. Just get on with it, it's debatable that you should even have a second chance at competing, so just enjoy it. Stop indulging in selfish self-importance. Your running post drug bust problem belongs only to the privileged.

It seems some do care, including the author of the original post.

True.

But use a better example. Lance is on top of the cycling world again with great guests and a long list of people lined up to be in his show. Its weird but true. They all know they cheated too.

Once I ran to you (I ran)
Now I run from you
This tainted BURRITO you've given
I give you all a boy could give you
Take my tears and that's not nearly all
Tainted BURRITO (oh-oh-oh-oh)
Tainted BURRITO

Well of course that will never happen. She already accepted Nike's money. That wasn't the question (the question was: "How can she redeem herself?").

She shouldn't make us care for a drug cheat again. She should retire to a lake in PA.

you obviously care enough to write an essay about it

Yes. It is worth noting that in the US in particular distribution and possession of most forms of doping is still a crime (unless you have a prescription), and can land offenders in jail/prison along with sizable fines. All the doping that happens is strictly under the table with mostly black market drugs. This is one of the obvious rebuttals to the "Why don't they just permit doping, what's the problem?" crowd. You have to address the fact that it remains a crime in most of the world to have and distribute let alone use these drugs over-the-counter.

Her agent also represents Addy Wiley who we all know has a checkered past here. So clearly he doesn’t care either.

Yes they do.

She will ALWAYS be a cheat and the liar who used that idiotic burrito defence.