I 100% think any doping violation should void ever and all previous results. Once you've proven you're a doper it should be assumed you were always doping and just got away with it.
Get caught doping at the age of 40 even your high school times are erased from history.
I found this quite amusing. Despite Houlihan having been caught and banned by the AIU in 2021, the USADA has still been regularly PED testing Houlihan since that time and all the USADA testing has returned no positives.
Number of times the USADA has tested Houlihan per quarter:
Q1 2021: 3
Q2 2021: 6
Q3 2021: 6
Q4 2021: 0
Q1 2022: 4
Q2 2022: 9
Q3 2022: 3
Q4 2022: 0
So base on this, I certainly "believe" Jerry Schumacher when he says Houlihan is "clean". After all, the USADA drug testing works and they are not reclassifying positive tests as negatives, right? The AIU must be wrong with their laser like targetted testing of American athletes.
There's nothing really surprising about this. If you know you're not going to be able to compete why would you dope? I think you're being facetious, but it would take a real moron to cheat during a lengthy ban. And to Runningart above me, maybe it is easy to beat the tests IF you have resources and a sophisticated regimen. The tests are pretty good though. I really do believe that.
I 100% think any doping violation should void ever and all previous results. Once you've proven you're a doper it should be assumed you were always doping and just got away with it.
Get caught doping at the age of 40 even your high school times are erased from history.
I'm fine with that - just needs to be written in rule and made well known to every athlete once they start competing at any level of sanctioned event. It actually would be a great deterrent because then sponsorship deals would be written up in a way that says "if you even get caught and all your records erased, that also erases the basis for why we sponsor you - hence you need to pay back every last cent of what you've earned".
Guarantee if that existed the incentive to cheat would pale far in comparison to the repercussions of getting caught and doping would go down big time.
It's illogical to think they weren't fraudulent. No one seriously believes the one time she tested positive is the only time she doped.
Totally agree with you - but unfortunately proof of some description matters. Just think about this for a second. So WADA/USADA/AIU takes your POV here and says "Given the suspension of Ms Houlihan we have looked at her performances over the years and decided that in the year 2018 when she first broke an American record that she must have been breaking the rules because it would seem illogical she wasn't, and so we are backdating the suspension to this date and her performances post this date are voided". Like let's imagine this happens and we are all happy. You know what happens? Nike comes looking for their money (contract and the heavy bonuses), so does the IAAF/WA because they have a clause about repayment of prize money under the event of suspension and where does this end up? In court. And the first f--ken question the judge asks is "do you have any proof Ms Houlihan was actually doping in 2018?" and the answer is "uhh, well, no - not really". And the first thing her defense gets up and does is slap a big folder on the table with a bunch of passed tests in it. This "case" ends right there.
So we can all sit around and (probably rightly) hypothesize that she was cheating or doing what she was doing for a long period of time before she messed it up and found herself above a limit, but the sad reality is it doesn't mean anything at all other than to us.
There is a difference between strongly suspecting something on an anecdotal basis and a factual basis. Sucks but it's the way it is.
Nike and the IAAF can write whatever they want in their contracts. Paying back of money based on future actions is legal..
And no the case wouldn't end with a list of passed tests. Nobody is dumb enough to think passing a test means you are clean. That's the lance Armstrong defense. It didn't hold up then and it will not hold up now.
I get it that a lot of people don't think it is cheating if you don't get caught. A lot of others think cheating is cheating...
But that wasn't the case here, as proven by the CIR test: the CIR was inconsistent with her own (and that of farm-fed boar), but it matched that of synthetic nandro.
Yes and no...
This is from the Tucker article....
"However, having explained what it is not, she then offers some insight into what the 19-NA may be. Her testimony, in Points 74 and 116, makes the fascinating observation that in recent years, they have begun noticing a new pattern of carbon isotope signatures in these 19-NA doping cases. She says that since 2018, 31 conclusive Adverse Analytical Findings for 19-NA can be divided into two distinct batches. One batch has an isotope signature around -29‰, while the other is clustered around -23‰. Presumably, the -29‰ is injected nandrolone, but the -23‰ belongs to what Ayotte describes as oral precursors of nandrolone. She even names two – 19-nor DHEA and nor-Andro, says they can be purchased on Amazon, and says that she has tested such a product and found that its isotopic signature was -23.8‰. Given that Houlihan’s 19-NA was measured at -23‰ , this is as close as Ayotte comes to offering what they believe to be the doping act in the Houlihan case, but of course, they never have to explain the origins of the 19-NA – that burden is on Houlihan."
This is just a simple OTC, nandrolone precursor supplement. It didn't match synthetic N, it just matched an isotropic signature of nandrolone stimulated by the precursor supplements such as the above.
You guys are close to making an important point.
In previous decades, Ayotte and other testers were confident that synthetic nandrolone (or its precursors) would display a telltale low C19 isotopic signature (say -29‰) that was far from what might be naturally produced by a human or pig. It was only later they believed it was possible for synthetic nandrolone to have higher isotopic signatures (say -23‰) which they started taking into account in their testing protocol. Tucker's presumption that injected nandrolone has different isotopic characteristics from ingested nandrolone is not something I recall ever seeing a basis for in the literature and I doubt it's true.
The point being:
Yes, it would be easy to purchase synthetic nandrolone OTC, but it would NOT be easy to deliberately buy synthetic nandrolone with a high natural-looking isotopic signature as it's not marketed that way. I suppose there's some supplement like that out there somewhere, and maybe you could buy it by chance, but if you're going to dope with nandrolone, I wouldn't leave it to chance and would make sure to get it from a reliable, knowledgeable source. Personally, I don't think that's likely (because then why micro-dose nandrolone at all, which is a poor choice?), but others will see it differently.
It's telling that your verb of choice is "believe".
That is because you have no facts. What you think is possible isn't "knowledge". It is only your speculation. But of course there is no evidence to actually support it. She failed to establish a defence on the balance of probabilities. And so do you. Always.
She was innocent before and she is innocent after. That is how our system works. Her suspension is her punishment for being guilty at the time that she got tested.
It's telling that your verb of choice is "believe".
That is because you have no facts. What you think is possible isn't "knowledge". It is only your speculation. But of course there is no evidence to actually support it. She failed to establish a defence on the balance of probabilities. And so do you. Always.
Once again -- too many pronouns. What do you mean by "support it"? Support what?
"Speculative hypothesis of ingestion by nandrolone precursor" is self-evident.
"Convicted by presumptions" was made explicit by the CAS.
She was innocent before and she is innocent after. That is how our system works. Her suspension is her punishment for being guilty at the time that she got tested.
And you know nothing about doping if you think that an athlete who chooses to dope will only do it once. I suppose you also think that once someone chooses to have sex they won't want to do it again?
That is because you have no facts. What you think is possible isn't "knowledge". It is only your speculation. But of course there is no evidence to actually support it. She failed to establish a defence on the balance of probabilities. And so do you. Always.
Once again -- too many pronouns. What do you mean by "support it"? Support what?
"Speculative hypothesis of ingestion by nandrolone precursor" is self-evident.
"Convicted by presumptions" was made explicit by the CAS.
When the facts are inconvenient there is no end to the difficulties you have with the English language. She was explicitly convicted on "the balance of probabilities".
I ran a fairly high level. I was likely what most would classify as a sub-elite. I coached college track and cross country also. So I had more direct experience than you. I find it interesting that you have dubbed youself the resident expert on doping. How long have you been doping or administering it? If none, then you know less than most of us about the topic. It is especially hilarious when you make accusations and assumptions rather than stating facts.
Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win a LetsRun t-shirt.Help us build the best running shoe review site for a chance to win one of 10 LetsRun t-shirts.