Sports Scientist Ross Tucker breaks downs the Shelby Houlihan case for us

You’re obsessed with this fact. The truth is that genetics is strange. Shelby’s mom and dad had three daughters. Only one was a star athlete and all three tried running.

where are Mary deckers and Joan Benoits daughters then? In the Olympics? No? Ok.

It can happen that a pro produces a child with the same genetics but not a guarantee. And it’s not indicative of anything. You settle Shelby’s progression on magic genes, but it was probably drugs.

emma Colburn, Jenny Simpson, katelyn tuohy, Mary Cain, Courtney frerichs and many many more all came from parents who weren’t runners.

Did we ever get SH’s list of TUEs? or is that not a question worth asking by the overlords?

For those of us that started following the sport after Paula was retired, what made people say she was a blatant drug cheat? The crazy WRs, or was there something else?

Just note that your first line is incorrect:

"However, this creates a dilemma in anti-doping, because the carbon
isotope signature of the nandrolone produced by boars falls into the
same wide range as the carbon isotope signature of steroids that are
made in the human body. This range is mentioned in the TD above: -15‰
to -25‰."

So it is interesting that your body could make nandrolone with a -23% carbon ratio. The way they rule that out in Shelby's case is they test other substances in her body and they were ruled too far away for the nandrolone to be natural.

I believe the wide range is mostly due to wide range in the inputs: food.

Quoting from from a paper on how to find adulterated honey (they add corn syrup):

" The isotopic technique for the detection
of adulterated honey is based on the natural differences in isotopic
ratios between plants utilising C3 and C4 photosynthetic
pathways. Generally, C4 plants, for example, corn, have 13C/12C isotope ratios, referred to as δ13C values, ranging between -8 to -13 ‰, whereas C3 plants, generally nectar-bearing plants, have values between -22 and -30 ‰ ."

Another C3 plant is, for example, wheat.

So I'm assuming eating a lot of corn vs. wheat, for example, will change the isotope ratio in your body.

Shelby's difference between the nandrolone and the reference they used was 3.8%. The baseline for deciding it is definitely artificial is 3.0%.

Makes me wonder tongue in check whether too many burritos did cause her to fail. Previously she was running a percent or so higher in her C ratio, but too many corn fed pork burritos and they got her.

There were some suspicious drug samples that got leaked. She combated them pretty strongly, explaining the circumstances behind each. There’s a lot of skepticism given that the times are so out there combined with that.

Her huge performance jump over 10000 m in 2001,

her later 5000 m PR as a marathon runner,

plus her huge off-score (ABP) jumps in 2003 and 2005,

plus that she couldn't break 2:22 anymore as a 2:15 runner after the target testing started in 2005,

plus her likely doping status in 2012

and so on.

When written as a list, it really is an embarrassing barrage of leading questions.

All that was missing was, "could it have changed the verdict if CAS had been aware of the results of Jon Gault's bullsh-t meter test?"

This thread covers why people don't trust Paula:

First, what does Athing Mu DNFing at as Millrose have to do with any of this? This is such a stupid comment and it means nothing.

Second, he coaches professional runners. Of course it is his duty to know about drugs!!! It is literally his job to manage high performance elite athletes. He should 100% know what they are allowed to put in their bodies and what they are not. And to say he shouldn't have to know because Google - hahaha - Google also told me the lochness monster is real so....

Third, if BTC is dirty you give up being a fan of the sport? Why? There is no one else to root for? Did you feel this way about NOP? Spoiler alert - no you didn't. Why not? Because Jerry had "a few conversations" with you and AlSal didn't? Regardless, everyone who has posted here is correct. Your bias is showing and it is disappointing.

Yes, that too. Another way to look at that, is to compare her facts to other stars:

What if Rupp or Kipchoge or Bekele or Keitany or Kosgei:

- would have been flagged with a suspicious test at age 31 and

- would never have been able to come within 7 minutes of their marathon PR after that and

- would have run a 5000 m PR after running a marathon world record?

Letsrun, after this thoughtful and all encompassing analysis of how Shelby cheated by Ross Tucker, are you still going to sell Burrito Track Club shirts and donate the money to her? I have asked this question before in another thread and got no response from Rojo: How much money has Letsrun given to Shelby from those shirt sales? I think full disclosure on this matter would be beneficial to your site's journalistic integrity. Still, I bet you won't answer this and avoid it as usual. Letsrun, are you going to stop supporting a cheating athlete now that a foremost expert in drug testing has weighed in extensively on the matter? Where you at Rojo? How many burritos have you bought?

Ross Tucker's piece does a good job going over the details but it doesn't seem to respond to the points I raised in the case against her last year. Without getting into the broader question of WADA's approach to regulating sports, my main objections remain:

1. The statistical argument: Large sample sizes are guaranteed to find unlikely results.

2. Ross says the lab was "obliged to report the result as an AAF", but that is not accurate. The TDF2021NA document states (p.7 Atypical Finding Column, Row 4.3) that if the GC/C/IRMS results are "inconclusive" (and < 15ng/ml and NA/NE ratio > 3) it should be reported as an Atypical Finding. The results were inconclusive because: (1) she successfully invoked the possibility of ingesting tainted pork as an explanation, (2) the amount of 19-NA was less than 15 ng/ml, (3) her NA/NE ratio was 3.9, and (4) she had receipts and witnesses proving it was ingested within the small window of time for it to have made a difference.

3. The only number the lab found that was suspicious was the δ13C value of -23‰ but there has been almost no research at all on how rare such a level is in everyday pork consumed from markets and restaurants across America, just generalities. Such a δ13C number would be considered normal in Canadian or European pork, for example.

4. Lastly, none of the previous research on detecting nandrolone after consuming pork are truly applicable to Houlihan's situation, because she only provided one sample after a long period of time without drinking, whereas test subjects were permitted to urinate and drink multiple times as they were being tested over time.

These arguments and links to my previous posts are laid out at the link below:

keithmoulton.com

The CAS Report on Shelby Houlihan

Keith

A case of misleading analysis, inaccurate statements, and bogus evidence For those unfamiliar with the case, American 1500 meter runner Shelby Houlihan revealed in a press conference on June 14th, …

Open link

And your main objections remain irrelevant.

The ‘im giving you a possible theory, you go track it down’ defense is not a good one.

Again, if you believe pro athletes are just shoveling random things into their body with no thought, including random ‘supplements’, you are a bit too naive for what the landscape of professional sports actually looks like and the incentives to cheat that are baked in that cake

She had one of the most egregious off-scores in the history of the bio passport according to the medical reviewers in the leaked Fancy Bears report.

She responded to the leak by saying that her score was related to altitude training and that she couldn't say more or it would help others to cheat. She then failed to take a lie detector test after promising that she would.

She has still made no serious effort to explain what happened more than seven years later.

‘i ordered carne asada and got pig intestines’ how drunk would you have to be to mistake those two?

that’s a little beyond ‘grease’ bit more like you’d have to be in a coma to mistake the two

It shocks me that more people don’t have respect for the loyalty Jerry and BTC are demonstrating to Shelby. They clearly believe she is innocent. They know her character, or at least think they do. Of course, they could be wrong. Imagine if this were happening to someone you knew very well and whole-heartedly believed.

The scientific evidence led to her being found guilty thus she must serve the ban unless she wins the appeal or there is some miracle. As long as she’s following the rules and is allowed to be coached by jerry…. Not sure why people have such a problem with this. Im biased but believe she could be innocent and hope it can be proven.

And Jager as well.

Wonder what kincaid, scott, ahmed and fisher would show up as

it shocks me more ppl don’t respect George Hincapie and the rest of US postal, after all they kept their mouths shut and kept an obvious gravy train on its track for their own benefit

I think it's more about the cozy relationship with Jerry and with specific athletes than it is about race. LRC was very much in Christian Coleman's corner, too.