Red flags in the Houlihan case that need explaining

hank jr wrote:

nearest hippie wrote:

Then again, if she bought the burrito as a cover for a failed test, she would have presumably actually gotten a pork burrito, instead of a steak burrito, and then tried to claim a messed up order when the supposed smoking fun food receipt didn't help her case at all.

What a freaking mess.

The whole thing is a mess though, you are right. Why did it take WADA 6 months from notifying her she got popped until they issued the ban. Very convenient that she doesn't have enough time before the trials to appeal. I wouldn't put it past WADA to pull some nonsense like that.

WADA didn't take 6 months from notifying her until they issued the ban. WADA notified her, they kept it quiet and allowed the appeal process to take place. BTC encouraged them to come to their conclusion before the trials deadline because they were confident that she would be innocent and be able to race.

Shelby's defense was that she ate a pork burrito 10 hours before the test. Shelby could not prove she ate a pork burrito 10 hours before a test, only that she ordered a carne asada burrito from a place that could possibly contain contaminated pork organs.

Shelby lost her appeal before the agency stated that she could not even prove she ate pork. If Shelby got off with all of these (currently known) facts, anyone at anytime could get away with doping.

According to their own testing procedure above, as the last page flow chart shows, you can have less than 15ng/ml, and still not have an aaf.

You're starting from the wrong premise. Anti-doping works like this - the foundation is that the athlete is responsible for everything that goes into their body. If a banned substance is found, that brings a sanction. The athlete can then appeal the finding and present evidence for mitigation. Now, anti-doping is a strict liability offence which means that the prosecuting authorities do not have to prove how the substance got into an athlete, they just have to prove it is there. If they had to prove how it got there, there would never be any sanctions as that burden of proof is just way too high. You might as well legalize doping.

When the athlete appeals, the burden of proof shifts to the defense. The athlete has to present a plausible reason for the presence of the substance and proof. In this case, Houlihan's team need to prove that 5 ng/mL of nandrolone can occur in pig meat AND that it could plausibly have ended up in her burrito. It is not the responsibility of the AIU to disprove Houlihan's theory - and a theory is all it is at this stage. If the BTC team present evidence, then the AIU get a chance to counter. Again, Houlihan needs to present proof, and it would also be helpful to provide a plausible and comprehensive story.

I agree that the focus on her 5ng/ml result vs the 2ng/ml limit needs more context. Is WADA's limit of 2ng/ml a realistic threshold that indicates something more nefarious than accidental ingestion? It is pretty damning that she tested 2.5x the limit, but if her argument is that WADA and AIU screwed up, I think they should have tried to produce evidence showing random mystery meat can elevate levels in nearly anyone.

Newby here: I thought I heard the lawyer Greene indicate that her "B" sample was 3.8 or something whereas the "A" has been indicated to be a 5. Why would these be so different? And, is a 1.2 difference significant to make one wonder or not?

If that threshold was very low and it was very likely to be crossed by tainted or normal food we would not have violations and (regularly successful) appeals with tainted meat excuse every year but every week or month. And would have heard at least of some of such cases.

I eat three of these each week. Just saying.

https://assets-prd-spr.unataops.com/web/product_medium/59aeda111024b143bd78727e16a53b7219471a67.jpg

Someone here made an interesting point that cooking the lard off of the organs would probably collect all of the steroids with the fat. Cooking with this fat could introduce concentrated nandrolone.

That Fox News interview did not look good for them. While it's possible she was nervous and/or fighting back tears, she and her lawyer seemed like they were dancing around the questions.

I can't help but think that this media campaign could end up backfiring on her.

mar828 wrote:

I feel like they committed to the burrito defense too readily - leave it open, for the love of Pete. Say it could be a supplement, or pregnancy, or whatever. You want to increase the potential for doubt, not decrease it. Assuming she was knowingly doping and is trying to avoid the charge, of course.

Too readily? It’s been half a year since she tested positive.

She’d have likely had to provide some proof of pregnancy that they couldn’t. Same with the supplement excuse, you’d have to provide evidence. Clearly in their appeal they didn’t take either of those routes for a very good reason.

This is a great post...and I think sums up every question I have too. The only thing I think that is not being discussed enough is that after the CAS ruled, there is NO OTHER APPEAL. She is 100% gone for 4 years. You can't appeal the appeal. So it does seem BTC and Nike are simply waging a PR war here to make sure the spin works in there favor, as there will not be a freeing of her in this case..

High hopes wrote:

3. The claim that nandrolone does not benefit runners is absurd. Nandrolone has a nasty history in T&F and sport in general. It is proven to improve athletic performance, aiding endurance by carrying more oxygen to the muscles via red blood cells, building muscle mass, and enhancing recovery. Why did the BTC team feel the need to include this patently false assertion?

Hear hear.

Also nandrolone is an anabolic steroid.

See: Non-medical uses

Nandrolone esters are used for physique- and performance-enhancing purposes by competitive athletes, bodybuilders, and powerlifters.[7]

The issues is that people may be trying to call it by a chemical name they've never heard of however brand names they have: Deca. More searches for deca will let people realize they (a) have very much heard of this, and (b) this is totally a friggen anabolic steroid.

Here's a good story about Deca:

"Once I started the Deca, I didn't even think about lifting weights. I wanted to get stronger, not bigger. Within two weeks, the pain I felt in my left knee after 100 miles or so—100 was now just a standard ride—went away, coming back only on the most brutal hills. My shoulder felt much better. And then one morning I stepped on the scale."

or

""What's the problem?" Dr. Jones demanded when I told him I was freaking out over the weight gain. He had me stand on a machine that measured body weight and fat. I weighed 207, but my body fat had dropped to 6.5 percent, down from 10 percent.

"Don't give me this you're-getting-fat crap," he said in an exasperated tone. "You sound like some teenage girl. You've lost six pounds of fat and gained 12 of muscle. That's why you're heavier. And like I told you, the Deca supersaturates the muscle cells with fluid. That's one of the reasons your joints feel better.""

Like seriously sheeple. Drug abuse.

Shalane stated in her video that the burrito she ate contained the drug instead of saying "We believe..." How can she say this? There is no proof at all this is the case.

High hopes wrote:

5. How likely is it that Houlihan ate around 300g of pig offal at precisely the length of time (10 hours) before she was due to be tested? In this article, it states that 310g of offal from a particular type of uncastrated boar raised nandrolone levels to around that found in Houlihan's system after 10 hours, but the level returned to normal after 24 hours. This is one hell of a coincidence. A sceptic might ask whether the details were made to fit around the evidence

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10861987/

.

This is also scary AF. Seriously. A drug that clears 24 hrs that she can take often and have low chance of being tested for.

How many BTC/athletes are on this shiit and what else?

this is one of the best, most objective posts I've seen on letsrun yet.

thanks for putting time into it.

This is really and truly everything.

Do people not realize that 300g of meat is 10.5oz??? Like holy F.

Per some research Chipotle uses about 4oz of meat in a steak burrito. Let's say you double that. Okay you're at 8 oz. Apparently this burrito had even 50% more meat than 2 burritos???

oldlegs wrote:

This is a great post...and I think sums up every question I have too. The only thing I think that is not being discussed enough is that after the CAS ruled, there is NO OTHER APPEAL. She is 100% gone for 4 years. You can't appeal the appeal. So it does seem BTC and Nike are simply waging a PR war here to make sure the spin works in there favor, as there will not be a freeing of her in this case..

There is one level of appeal left to her, to the Swiss court. It's very unlikely to succeed, I can't recall a case where a CAS appeal was overturned. But, at this stage, I guess they are going for reduction of the ban and I can see a possibility of that based on the level of nandrolone found and, possibly if she has a clean biological passport. However, if that passport isn't clean, well, she might be in trouble. Remember that the biological passport can contain a lot of irregularities that can suggest dubious activity but which falls short of the required level of proof. Even well-respected athletes like Centro have apparently had samples that prompted suspicions of doping.

byron evans wrote:

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.

LMAO! This is fantastic. It should be quote of the day.

To her credit, I would accept 200g as she's quite petite.

I hope all you people that think she actually tested positive due to a burrito know that you sound like holocaust deniers and like the people that think Sandy Hook didn't really happen and a bunch of dead kindergarteners was faked. Fing Loons.