LRC “interviews” Shelby about burrito defense and doping

What you think is possible is mere conjecture. That Russia tampered with tests doesn't show any one else has. Courts don't make decisions about what is possible but what is either beyond reasonable doubt (in criminal cases - this wasn't a criminal case) or what is proven to be probable on the basis of the known facts. If something is merely possible it has no persuasive effect until it is at least shown to be probable. Nothing Houlihan argued met that test.

I have periodically differed with the brojos but they don't routinely spout the toxic or plain dumb bs that clutters these threads. Doping apologists, unrealistic fanboyism and right wing propaganda all get what they deserve.

You keep looking for facts to support a theory. None of it can be shown to apply to Houlihan.

According to Wikipedia, 75% of consumers are sensitive to boar taint.

"Vitamin-gate" doesn't have quite the entertainment value of "burrito-gate," but I think that's more likely. Trouble was, she didn't have all the bottles or remaining product. It would be literally walking into court empty-handed, and the burden of proof is on the athlete.

It's called free speech and freedom of belief. Courts can't stop people from discussing possibilities and forming opinions.

1. Disagreed. All neutral experts argued that it wasn't in the burrito, Houlihan herself is realizing that now too, and she herself had ruled out her vitamins.

2. "traces of weird stuff" - double nonsense here. It was neither "traces" nor "weird stuff" but a commonly (ab)used steroid.

You have a cowardly way of tacitly admitting you finally realize you were wrong to say 99%. Recall you also said "You could count on the fingers of one hand the number who are exonerated in a year". How many fingers do you have on your hand again? Can you count them for us? 4? 5? (if you count your thumb) 49? 620?

If we had a critical mass of facts, as you suggest, the CAS wouldn't have relied necessarily on the presumptions, the way the CAS clearly explained they did multiple times. Do you think the CAS lied about the importance of the presumptions in their findings? When you take away the presumptions, and give her the benefit of the doubt, her case could arguably be among "no case to answer", or "exonerated", or, similar to Peter Bol, among the 99% of tests not considered an AAF, because it was an ATF.

But instead, as the CAS clearly explained, the case before the CAS permitted several unfavorable presumptions for the athlete, and its findings were the direct consequence of presumptions precisely because the facts were insufficient.

It would be different if the AIU had helped conducted a fact-finding exercise to support its suggestion that an exogenous oral nandrolone precursor, possibly purchased from Amazon, was intentionally orally ingested by Houlihan. After all "Wetcoast" just assured us that "What the AIU is after is the truth."

This fact-finding approach is not so far-fetched as USADA's long-time chief Travis Tygart has repeatedly argued that it is the duty of ADAs/ADOs to help investigating the facts, in order to best protect innocent athletes. In an article on Houlihan's case, the "Oregonian/Oregon Live" reported: "Travis Tygart, director of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, fears that Houlihan’s may be one of a growing number of "innocent positives.""; ""We know that these innocent sources are out there," Tygart said. "We need to work just as hard to exonerate the innocent as we do pursuing the true cheaters.""

We know it’s you thoughtsleader, you have to ask this sort of questions sneakily just to satisfy your perverse cravings of Shelby.

She has taken the supplements off the table. Literally in an interview with Runners World right after the ban.

Arguments were that a) the current batches tested negative and b) the older batches never caused a positive result during her tests in November 2020 (implying that she took them regularly in November of course).

I'd also add that it's next to impossible that calcium or vitamin B come contaminated with a steroid. That would be quite a weird manufacturing process.

Always.

1. That's a case of "prosecutor's fallacy" with statistics, and a researcher did recently detect 19-NA in a pork kidney in the US just by having his grad student drive around 8 cities. Offal was on the menu, and soy-corn ratio changed during 2020. But I think contaminated supplements were more likely. Trouble is, they informed her 30 days after the test.

2. You might want to look at the science of detection times and doses of nandrolone, then compare to accidental routes and threshold values. Then compare to the more strategic alternative of microdosing testosterone and HGH. Sure, it's possible she used 1 or 2mg of nandrolone on Nov 23 after the negative test on Nov 22 to get 5ng/mL on Dec 15 adjusted for specific gravity, but I think that's unlikely.

She didn’t take the supplements off the table in that Runner’s World article. She specifically said, “Maybe it was in a vitamin. I just don’t know.”

She did say that she “probably” took the supplement prior to a test she passed two weeks earlier. Did she take the supplements every day at the same time? Unless she took the supplements from the same batch at a similar time prior to the test two weeks earlier, it can’t be ruled out. That would have been a good followup question by Runner’s World.

About the ruling out the vitamins, she also stated in the article, “Maybe not 100 percent. It’s hard to know, really. I’m not really sure what happened, and I guess that’s ultimately why I’m in this position.”

Some people don’t like that she doesn’t know something with certainty. Not knowing can be more common if you get A Sample results a month or two after a test (unlike the immediate turn-around of B Sample results).

They're engaging in doping apologia in this very thread.

It wouldn't be all that weird. It really just depends on where it was manufactured, and what was manufactured there before, and how well the equipment was cleaned from that previous batch. See for example the case of Simon Getzmann, where his ibuprofen was contaminated with undeclared hydrochlorothiazide, but within the tolerance permitted by German law. Or the case of Asinga, where GW1516 was found on the gummies, consistent with contamination from the molds used during slurry cooling. (Unfortunately for Asinga, he couldn't establish that the gummies which tested positive weren't adulterated after the manufacturing process.)

What Houlihan told Runner's World about supplements sounds more like she couldn't bring them to the table, rather than completely taking it off the table. Her story hasn't really changed since then (or for that matter since the first week, according to her timeline):

"Funny enough, I take a calcium gummy vitamin, I take a multivitamin gummy vitamin, a vitamin D gummy vitamin, and a B complex, and when I go to altitude, I take iron. That’s all of the supplements that I take. Sometimes I’ll take collagen and put it in my yogurt, but I didn’t take that at the time of that December 15 test. The vitamins that I took and we were trying to test for were the calcium, multivitamin, and B complex. I had declared all those. We tried to test them all and didn’t come back with anything that was helpful, unfortunately. We were trying to figure out what happened."

"It was definitely something we took into consideration. We went out and tried to buy the same supplement at the same store that I bought it, to try to replicate that the best we could. I was drug tested two weeks prior to that as well and I would have probably taken that supplement for that drug test, and I passed that one, so it feels like we can rule that out in some aspect. Maybe not 100 percent. It’s hard to know, really. I’m not really sure what happened, and I guess that’s ultimately why I’m in this position. I couldn’t figure out what happened and how to prove that in a way that tipped the scales in my favor."

There's also still that small detail of turning a beef burrito into a 100 % uncastrated boar meat burrito with added 100% nandrolone-enriched pork lard that a super elite endurance athlete still ate despite super elite endurance athletes' constant, often unhealthy, obsession with maintaining low body fat (have your seen her photo?? She looks like "a skeleton with skin covering her".

And this needed to happen the night before the early morning test.

Rekrunner cites that ruling-out part more completely than you:

"I was drug tested two weeks prior to that as well and I would have probably taken that supplement for that drug test, and I passed that one, so it feels like we can rule that out in some aspect. Maybe not 100 percent. It’s hard to know, really."

So ruled out, yes, but maybe not 100%... There is also the interview from Aug 2022 in RW, without such disclaimers:

runnersworld.com

Shelby Houlihan Maintains She Didn’t Cheat. Are Anti-Doping Tests Really Snaring Innocent Athletes?

The U.S. 5K record holder’s failed appeals show a delicate balance between protecting athletes from cheaters and the tests themselves.

Open link

Yes, that's part of the cascade that the Houlihan defenders like to ignore. It is not "just" statistics, not to mention that there was no "prosecutor".

If that amount of nandro with that CIR came from the burrito, all of the below has to have simultaneously occurred:

1) She must have been given the wrong order.

2) That wrong order must have been the offal burrito (and she ate most of it).

3) The food truck owners must have used at least one additional pork ingredient not mentioned by them (either because they forgot (despite the heads-up) or because they were vicious). No evidence for that.

4) That additional pork ingredient must have come from a non-castrated boar (Prof. McGlone: "far less than 1 in 10,000" chance). No evidence for that.

5) That non-castrated boar must have come from a farm that substantially increased the soy/corn ratio in the last few weeks of his life (although soy is usually added to promote muscle growth and is therefore typically decreased before slaughtering and corn price went down and corn availability up during the pandemic). No evidence for that.

A complete quotion by any of us would have included this very clear statement from the same Runner’s World article (link below):

”Maybe it was in a vitamin. I just don’t know.”

Obviously, she didn’t rule it out. This quote was from a full interview. Even the section of the interview where she was trying to discuss the reasons that it might not be a supplement, she ended with,

“It’s hard to know, really. I’m not really sure what happened….”

If she really ruled it out, she never would have said these things.

It won’t let me post an external link, address is runnersworld dot com with this:

/news/a40093095/shelby-houlihan-speaks-out-after-appeal-rejected/

I can't bring how ignorant Gault is being. Why do you believe Shelby doesn't know how the drugs got in her system? She obviously knows how, but is lying about it.

That's like a murderer saying they don't know how their DNA got on the murder weapon and how the victims blood got on their clothes. Of course they aren't going to admit it.

Only a complete moron would believe Shelby and sympathize for her situation. She obviously purposely ingested performance enhancing drugs to cheat, and now she's just trying to lie to save face.