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.
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.
I’ve never ignored any of those items and have written about them extensively. Not a single one of those five items would be necessary to get a positive test from her meal. Those speculations originated from the “prosecution” witness and were uncritically accepted by CAS lawyers (and they also uncritically accepted statements from the “prosecution” witness with a history of false testimony).
Well I think the difference here is you seem convinced that she was taking some supplement that she hasn't told us about that may have been in the gray area (or at least was sufficiently sketchy to have triggered a positive test, even if she may have thought it was legal). Whereas I'm taking her at her word that she was only taking calcium, vitamin D, a multivitamin, and a B-complex vitamin, and all of those seem pretty normal.
Of course I could be wrong. And if she was taking some sort of supplement that she believed to be legal or in the gray area and tested positive as a result, then yes, I agree with you: she should have come out and said that from the beginning and would have had a chance at having a year or two knocked off of her suspension.
But if she truly was only taking the vitamins she mentioned in our interview, then I think the burrito explanation was still the right argument to make at the time in 2021. At least with that one, pork offal was on the menu of the place where she ordered her burrito -- a loose, tangential connection to nandrolone, but better than the alternative (a bunch of vitamins with no sign of contamination).
It's official, Gault is clueless. Why would you take Shelby at her word???? Shelby was cheating on purpose. She chose to take nandrolone to give herself an advantage.
Dopers are always going to lie to protect themselves. We should NEVER believe them, because choosing to dope is choosing to deceive.
It's pathetic that LRC gave her a venue to spread more lies. She is not the victim, the victims are the ones that lost championships and prize money to the doper.
So I actually read it because I like educating myself on stuff I don't know about before referencing/making assumptions off of. Unfortunately I think you need some brushing up on your detective work mate.
First of all this study is from 20 years ago (2000-2001). I think this is relevant because this was right around the time when "supplement" use in sports - even at a non-pro level, really started gaining momentum (late 90's) and becoming a mainstream thing. I would hypothesize there is a difference between the quality and control of vitamins/supplements etc now versus back then in the formative days of their popularity and mainstream use. Also, 46% of the vitamins or supplements tested in this study came from brands that even back then were actively selling pro-hormone supplements in their ranges.
Secondly - even though a "main ingredients declared on positive samples" list is given, the actual vitamins/supplements tested aren't named. So we don't know if these were just calcium tablets, iron capsules, multivitamins etc etc. Was it some kind of funky Victor Conte "ZMA" supplement? We don't know. When you look at that declared ingredient list and do a simple cross check with the ingredient list of a simple vitamin, they don't look immediately very similar (and that's very basic checking).
Final ones just for now, this is from the discussion section of the study:
"With regard to prohormones of nandrolone, 12.8% of the positive supplements contained more than 1 ug/g"
Which is the concentration point at which a positive test for nandrolone could occur. But also...
"Many of the positive nutritional supplements show nandrolone prohormone concentrations lower than 1 ug/g. Nevertheless consumption of these nutritional supplements may lead to positive doping results because the recommended dosage can be as high at 50g a day".
Well okay, 50g a day of contaminated supplements. A typical vitamin/multivitamin capsule/tablet/gummy comes in at around 4g. That would be unfortunate - to take the equivalent of 12+ servings a day and they just so happened to all be contaminated.
The other highly ambiguous part of this surrounds how much "contamination" is needed to keep someone "positive for multiple hours". The abstract of the paper says if the total uptake is over 1 ug/g a positive result could be seen for "several" hours. It also says that to test positive for a period for more than 24 hours you would need a whopping 100 ug/g of contaminated goodies. Draw your own logical conclusions from that fact.
You know, I think you are actually are owed a big thank you because now that you put this out there, maybe the burrito story actually was more plausible than the contaminated "basic" vitamins alternative. That sure is saying something.
How was that detective work, Detective?
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Here's some basic math. Suppose a product contains x micrograms/gram and an athlete consumes y grams per day and produces z liters of urine per day. Under steady-state conditions after several days would be
Concentration in nanograms/milliliter = xy/z
Because the units are the same as micrograms per liter
I don't know what sweat losses would be or if the sweat glands even remove 19-NA. It was December.
The adjustment for specific gravity depends on sodium intake.
Having trouble with pasting. Anyways, if you want to dispute my theory I'm open, but please be civil.
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.
These points, and many others, were not ignored, but have been consistently addressed in context.
1) Yes
2) Yes
3) Depends on what they were asked to provide. Note that chorizo and grease were two ingredients before the CAS, which were completely unrebutted by the "expert witnesses". Prof. McGlone conceded fat contains nandrolone.
4) Yes, except 1 in 10,000 looks like it was made up by Prof. McGlone, based on a number of unproven assumptions, and data from 1992.
5) Prof. McGlone conceded increased soy
One piece of evidence for intact boar offal are her test values, and one piece of evidence for an increased C3-plant diet is her CIR values. This meets the same standard as Prof. Ayotte's suggested alternative: "consistent with". Note that there is also no evidence for oral precursors purchased from Amazon, making both scenarios equally likely based on the evidence before the CAS.
The best evidence Houlihan needed to meet her burden was to preserve the uneaten portion of the burrito for testing.
You conveniently ignored the product that reached 190.
GREAT point - you're a clever clogs aren't you.
Out of the 31 contaminated supplements found to have nandrolone prohormones in them back in 2001 - 20 years before Shelby Houlihan tested positive, 1 of those 31 (so 1 of the 634 TOTAL tested) came in at your value of "190".
I guess it's quite reasonable to suggest that THIS was the very supplement Shelby got her hands on. I didn't ignore it, it's just so laughably irrelevant it didn't need mentioning. Plus I don't need to be citing all details in your paper there - people can read it if they care to.
Was/is that all? Yeah okay, I thought so. Go make yourself a hot chocolate it must be bedtime soon.
One piece of evidence for intact boar offal are her test values, and one piece of evidence for an increased C3-plant diet is her CIR values. This meets the same standard as Prof. Ayotte's suggested alternative: "consistent with". Note that there is also no evidence for oral precursors purchased from Amazon, making both scenarios equally likely based on the evidence before the CAS.
This is literally the funniest paragraph I've ever seen among all the Shelburrito jokes, so, congrats!
On the off chance that you were serious, I feel literally sorry for you.
It's called free speech and freedom of belief. Courts can't stop people from discussing possibilities and forming opinions.
You've missed the point. You are free to say what you wish. But what you say fails to meet the test required by a court. It remains only your speculation.
This post was edited 37 seconds after it was posted.
The number of cases that don't result in a violation are a drop in the ocean of the hundreds of thousands of tests undertaken annually. As you have helpfully shown, she satisfied none of the grounds that have resulted in positives not being confirmed as a violation.
You're also a liar when you say she was convicted on a set of presumptions without a basis of facts. A confirmed positive test is a fact as is the fact she had no justifiable defence. That isn't a presumption; given the opportunity she couldn't produce an adequate defence. CAS concluded it was an intentional violation because she couldn't show legitimate cause for a banned drug in her system. If they were wrong the decision could have been taken to the Swiss Appeal Court. It wasn't. There was no case. You would have a better case for arguing OJ was innocent. He, too, had his excuses. A civil court, arguing the balance of probabilities, said he did it. Just like Houlihan.
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.""
Drone on. Yours is the cowardly way of avoiding saying she met none of the criteria that applies to athletes who are exonerated, and a banned drug in an athlete's system for which they have no adequate excuse can only result in a confirmed violation. That isn't a presumption since anything else remains mere speculation - your tiresome specialty.
This post was edited 49 seconds after it was posted.
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.
I’ve never ignored any of those items and have written about them extensively. Not a single one of those five items would be necessary to get a positive test from her meal. Those speculations originated from the “prosecution” witness and were uncritically accepted by CAS lawyers (and they also uncritically accepted statements from the “prosecution” witness with a history of false testimony).
so she could've ingested pork offal from her beef burrito?
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:
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:
Yesterday, Weldon did a story on Heather MacLean’s 1500 meter world record and the sub-headline was:
”Drug cheat Regina Jacobs’ record from 2003 erased”
Then, in the first paragraph of the story says she broke “ the long-standing American record of 3:59.98 from convicted doper Regina Jacobs”
You guys typically use these adjectives when you mention athletes who received a ban. Yet, the title on the homepage about the Shelby interview was simply “Shelby Houlihan Speaks to LRC.”
And when Alicia Monson broke Shelby’s 5000 meter American record in 2023 you simply said she ran “…14:19.45 to break Shelby Houlihan’s 14:23.92 American Record…”
So, when will you start using these adjectives with Shelby, or conversely, treating those athletes like you treat Shelby?
Case and point.
Both Shelby and Regina tested positive for PEDs
both served suspensions
Yet Shelby is treated with a massive presumption of innocence by you and Regina is called a cheat.
Why are they different to you>
I get that you kids weren't around for Regina's bust, but her case and Shelby's are apples and oranges. Regina was connected to BALCO and the case was open and shut. Whether you believe her or not (clearly not), Shelby's isn't that.
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