Red flags in the Houlihan case that need explaining

birdbeard wrote:

I agree. What does Jerry expect them to do? The story they have provided, while plausible, is an incredible stretch. If anti doping authorities let her off, the precedent would be that if you can make a story, any story, that might explain your positive, you walk.

Just doesn’t make sense.

Seems like the precedence of accepting stories for western runners was strong already . Hopefully there is a new precedence of not going that route anymore.

Maybe next time we won't have to go through this Machiavellian , "whataboutism' clown show that Nike and the media , including LR is indulging in.

I wish they could be punished for the clown show. In a smarter world we would be sure they at least would lose in the court of public appeal , but we don't have that kind of critical mass of intelligence, or honesty, and other things it would take.

I think she may have doped or maybe not. The WADA technical documents has fairly recently added a comment about pig offal and looking at how/when it is excreted to differentiate between injected and ingested nandrolone. If the AIU admits that it wasn’t injected, then that raises other questions.

I don’t find The BTC ideas believable or not believable at this point in time. To address the numbered points:

1. The amounts of different chemicals found in Lawson and Wilson’s case are not relevent to whether one considers the amount of the nandrolone metabolite a trace amount — which is a subjective statement. The amount is certainly far less than can be found after injecting nandrlone.

2. I don’t find it difficult to believe that Schumacher hadn’t heard of nandrolone. How many distance runners in the U.S. have been banned for that specific drug in the last 15 years? He probably doesn’t read LR or cycling boards and rather than learning about every drug, I’m sure the athletes get general suggestions on what to do regarding food logs, supplements, medications, etc. Not everyone hangs out on LR discussing doping chemicals.

3. I think the jury is still out on possible improvement in distance runners. It hasn’t been tested like EPO, for example.

4. The claim appears to be that she ordered one thing but got pig offal in that order — either the whole burrito was different or just the meat was different.

5. That study is being mis-represented. You have to adjust for both the weight of the individual and adjust for the maximum values of metabolite found in the urine in that study. After both adjustments, the amount of meat needed is about 5 ounces for Houlihan. But that doesn’t take into account bigger metabolism differences that would likely be seen in a study of more than just three subjects.

6. That article is from 2012. Quite a bit has changed since then including the use of immunocastration drugs like Improvest in the US. The drug can be used I believe several weeks before the slaughter.

7. For a runner coming out of college and into the hard BTC program, I don’t think it’s unusual at all to see big improvements from full time pro training as long as one doesn’t overdo it. If big jumps are suspicious, that could apply to every experienced runner at every distance throughout history. That list would be very long.

I'm surprised Marathon Investigation hasn't reported on this case yet.

My sense is that Jerry, Shalane, etc. have all been too close to the situation for too long to step back and rationally look at what they're saying.

They are trying to get us to believe that Shelby was the victim of both:

1) A series of HIGHLY improbable events (served the wrong food that happened to be tainted with contaminated meat 10 hours before being tested)

AND

2) A corrupt/broken governing body responsible for adjudicating these matters ruled incorrectly at the original hearing and in the appeal.

Both of these have to be true in order for their story to hold.

What's incredible is that media outlets are buying the story. Most articles I've read (ESPN, USA Today, etc.) are devoting a majority of the coverage to broadcasting Shelby's defense.

They should be writing: "Shelby Houlihan tested positive for Nandrolone. Despite submitting a defense of eating contaminated meat, a arbitrators unanimously ruled against her in the original hearing and her appeal".

Instead, now we all get to live with Burrito-gate 2021.

Tastes Like Chicken wrote:

Does it mean anything that Houlihan's test was run by the AIU and not the USADA? Would the AIU be testing Houlihan as a matter of routine, or do they only test athletes they suspect are doping?

The AIU and USADA were both tipped off. Only one acted on the information. That is why the timing of the test and the result.

Tastes Like Chicken wrote:

Does it mean anything that Houlihan's test was run by the AIU and not the USADA? Would the AIU be testing Houlihan as a matter of routine, or do they only test athletes they suspect are doping?

AIU tests randomly from it's pool of just over 500 athletes, USADA has around 100 T&F athletes in its pool as far as I know.

Having said that, if people have given indications in the past of concerning behavior, then the AIU will increase testing (see the Coleman case, and also Lance Armstrong). I would guess that someone like Galen Rupp who has significant suspicions on him due to his association with Salazar and other allegations will be subject to a lot of testing, and it helps that he's accessible, largely training in the US.

According to Schumacher, USADA may have been more lenient the the AIU but that overlooks the difference in the amount of dope found in Houlihan's system compared to Lawson or Wilson. I'm not sure USADA would have been any more understanding.

A general point on the idea that Houlihan, or any athlete shouldn't be eating street food: she's a human and it was the holidays. This was probably down time which everyone takes, including athletes. A little junk food is, to be honest, really nice! It's terrible for you but it's so good. Athletes need to be careful because of the potential for inadvertent drug consumption, but they can't be robots. So, I think there's enough to question in the Houlihan defense without wondering why she's eating junk food in the first place. It's pretty irrelevant.

This was always going to happen - eventually the CAS documents would be released and the facts would eventually snowball together and provide a far more accurate picture of what really happened.

The most damning fact is unfortunately for her the most quantifiable and that is the amount of allegedly contaminated meat needed to have been consumed to match the amount of nandrolone found in her system which is ridiculous. I don't know what kind of burritos they serve in Beaverton but I know what size they serve in Portland I would be surprised anyway if a pro athlete was ever eating a burrito the size of a large bag of potato chips.

The public reactions aren't surprising - in particular those in support of Houlihan. One thing I've learnt here in the US is that opinions very rarely are formed off facts and measured rational thought - it's always black or white and extreme black or extreme white. I would now even doubt in this face of facts like you have extracted here it would change the majority of opinions even one iota.

What's really concerning - and more concerning than even Houlihan cheating is the vehement support of Schumacher and Flanagan. I'm just stunned at how people on this earth really believe that the masses can be so stupid and not be able to interpret basic information. Did they simply believe that by overloading the airwaves with emotional jargon and verbiage it would somehow conceal the realities of the situation?

You feed everyone this "trace amount" BS knowing full well it's not a trace amount. You also surely then know how much of the allegedly "contaminated" meat you would need to get to the "trace" amount but you stick with it anyway hoping what, nobody other than you would get the CAS document/findings?

This now reeks of an American classic - get in there early before the facts, concoct a messy tangled story of emotional levers - "Shelby I know the type of athlete you are and more importantly the type of person you are....", do a bit of name-calling "I do not understand how any competent and unbiased body could fail to conclude...." and hope that this works to smokescreen any rational construct or logic. It's crazy that it works. It's actually an indictment on the intelligence of track and field supporters that so many people - including just as an example Jonathon Gault, really buy this hook line and sinker. Really it's hoping and praying for the laziness of the public not to bother looking anymore into this once they have made an initial judgement.

This alone I find more concerning than Houlihan because now I know that Schumacher and Flanagan are either incredibly malleable and have no backbones (as they were basically told by "someone" - makes your guesses on who) to simply read out the story and ask no questions (which btw to me is most likely) or they are completely complicit and not a single athlete in that group can be trusted now or ever in the past (which I don't believe). Either scenario is horrible for the legitimacy of this group and the legitimacy of American distance running given they are the most eminent group in the sport here.

Excellent summary! Also, it is interesting to note that the CAS decision was by majority and not unanimous. So, some in the judgement panel dissented.

As good as the original post is, yours is absolutely rotten, a dreadful effort.

Is it possible they made a strategic decision to base their defense on #1, rationalizing that if they were successful she would be cleared? Even if #3 is what really happened, Shelby would still face embarrassment and suspension, albeit less than 4 years. Maybe they made the wrong bet and doubled down?

Once they started with the food truck defense, there is no turning back from it.

This was a great post and illustrates just how much you have to squint and blur the picture for the BTC explanation to make sense.

Shelby Houlihan did not fail her drug test because she is clean and ate from a food truck. There is no credible way that happened. At the very least, and it is still implausible, the tainted offal meat would have tipped her microdosing past the legal maximum but the doping was still the actual cause for the failed test, not the food.

Someone on another thread mentioned Occam's razor and it is true here. This situation is a case study in the theory.

Option 1: Shelby Houlihan doped. Simple, one sentence with three words.

Option 2: A long list of events, each with low probability, have to align in a way that has even lower probability for Shelby Houlihan to fail her test and her appeal. This would take paragraphs to fully lay out.

The simple answer is the true answer.

A wise man once said "... Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know... "

Tipped off? How do you know this?

Surprise! wrote:

byron evans wrote:

Not just meat-- offal meat.

Do another zoom meeting with her eating 300g of offal wild boar meat with a straight face like it's MFing carne asada and maybe I'll buy her story.

Chipotle suggests that they have 113 grams of meat in their burritos. One 4oz scoop. Even if this taco truck does double the amount AND it's 100% pig offal meat, still might not trigger a positive test.

Presumably she's significantly smaller than the test subjects from the crucial paper.

Also, if she actually got a burrito of sausage/offal/whatever it maybe had more organ meat than the combination of meat and organs that the test subjects consumed.

Also eating a burrito and not just raw meat leads to a different absorption curve, I'd contend.

Great summary. LRC should tweet OP's points as a must read article.

Don't forget the head of the lab in charge of the testing has misrepresented her lab's ability to accurately test for nandrolone before.

Is there any way we can find out her nandrolone levels on passed tests? She claims (and supposedly AIU agrees) that it must have been taken orally because she "passed" the test one month later but given the half-life of intramuscular nandrolone is only 6 to 12 days it could have easily been below the test threshold after one month.

CGN expat wrote:

A better excuse would have been a pregnancy imho.

This probably was or could have been checked in her B sample. They couldn't have ruled it out easily if not true.

I would like to believe that she is innocent, but I would also like to believe in Santa Claus.

Going off on a tangent, I'm just a lowly high school coach, but if my athletes eat at McDonald's or drink a soda, they go on the burpee squad. They police themselves and we have some fun with it, but come on. Do Olympic hopefuls really head on down to the corner and chow down at the Mexican food truck? That would get you on my burpee squad for the entire season.