The Railroading of Shelby Houlihan

moultonk wrote:

SeattleSilver wrote:

The three qualifiers owe SH nothing. They do owe their sponsor, New Balance, and the USOC, the duty of going to the games and competing. SH hasn't proved that the positive test should be ignored, and you think that the other three women should shove their dreams and the fruits of their labor aside for someone who tested positive?

I'm not talking about just the American qualifiers, but all those who actually make it into the final. And maybe leave a couple deserving underdogs in the field to get medals. But yeah, it would most likely sink the boycotters' careers, at least in the short term, and would have to be the result of personal private decisions and conversations. Cyclists should have boycotted the Tour long ago.

SH can't even prove that she ate pork, much less tainted pork. She ordered beef, and her receipt supports that. She claims that she got pork, but can't prove it, and ate it anyway. Your explanation was that food trucks mix up orders frequently. Aside from the fact that my experience with Mexican food trucks up the road in Seattle isn't consistent with that assertion, the explanation is a non sequitur. Just because some trucks screw up orders doesn't mean that the patron can't walk back up to the truck and demand the correct order.

I don't think all the detractors have really thought through the scenario properly. When she got the burrito order, it wasn't just for her, there were others (Centro perhaps?). I haven't seen it explicitly stated where she ate it, but I gather it was at her place or her boyfriend's place. So, she gets the order, walks home, and must be famished when she takes that first bite. The problem with the burrito is you can't see what's inside and it usually takes a while to work your way through all the rice, beans, and veggies before you get to the protein. At that point, I guarantee you 95% of hungry athletes are not going to wrap up the half-eaten burrito, walk it back to the food truck, and argue with them that they got the order wrong. Who does that? I bet the main protein was simply some sort of pork sausage and that it was absolutely delicious.

I hate to say it, but we should also be open to the possibility that it was, in fact, a beef burrito, and that someone spiked it, since you all are so sure they just happen to have endogenous-looking nandrolone supplements lying around. This is another reason why WADA should not rely on a single sample to make a determination. Too much potential for foul play.

moultonk wrote:

Part 3: So what does all this mean?

There is no doubt Houlihan purchased food from a Mexican food truck 10 hours before she was randomly tested because there are records which prove it. For it NOT to be the source of the nandrolone would be an extraordinary coincidence, and could only be explained by hypothesizing she visited the truck deliberately in order to consume nandrolone orally and have a ready-made excuse in case she was tested. The problem with this theory is that a single dose of nandrolone taken orally would offer no benefit, since it gets metabolized within hours, and she could just as well delay the test or take a whereabouts violation. If she had injected nandrolone, that would have been detectable in her urine for many weeks or months, and all other tests (16 performed in 2020) and the one taken 5 weeks later, were negative. If she instead regularly took oral doses of nandrolone (eg. multiple times per week), with presumably many visits to the Mexican food truck to hide it, there might be some performance benefit (though it would damage her already-damaged liver). However -- and this is a crucial point -- such a dosing regimen would have left telltale traces of nandrolone in her hair. When her hair was tested (which WADA could also test), it was negative. Therefore, the only possible doping explanation is that she somehow got hold of nandrolone that had a similar chemical signature as endogenous pork nandrolone, and the ONE TIME she ingested it happened to be in the hours before she got randomly tested. I find this extremely hard to believe, and even if it were true, the punishment would not be justified since it would have offered no benefit, just as eating tainted pork once would offer no benefit.

Why would WADA do this?

WADA is not in the business of figuring out the truth; their goal is to reduce the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports across the world in a uniform way, and using Shelby's positive test and subsequent punishment as a warning to other athletes achieves that objective. WADA needed a "win" before the Olympics, and from their perspective, it doesn't matter whether Shelby was actually clean or not.

As I have researched this story, one name stands out above all others: Christiane Ayotte. She is the author of numerous studies on nandrolone and is probably the world's foremost expert on how to detect it. Thus, many have unknowingly quoted her studies to defend the testing which she herself performed, which can lead to a kind of circular reasoning. She was President of the World Association of Anti-Doping Scientists, and runs the WADA-accredited doping control laboratory in Montreal that performed the test on Houlihan's sample. WADA, an international organization, is headquartered in Montreal. More than anyone, it was Ayotte who decided that Houlihan's sample was positive and exogenous. It was also Ayotte whose false testimony against long-jumper Jarrion Lawson was what helped him overturn the four-year ban he had received as a result of the test which she oversaw, as explained by a poster on Slowtwitch:

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=7537069#p7537069

And in a Let's Run feature article (behind a paywall):

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2020/04/the-amazing-story-of-how-jarrion-lawson-cleared-his-name-he-showed-that-the-head-of-a-wada-lab-provided-false-testimony-against-him

To be fair, Ayotte has been fighting a legitimate war against PEDs for decades, and in her mind, it may have reached a point where the end justifies the means, even if that means someone loses their career in a way that is not justified by the circumstances. In 2005, she even posted about nandrolone on this very message board:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=886533

It is worth noting that the 2019 Technical Document which precedes the current one (TD2021NA) does not seem to materially differ in the way Houlihan's samples should have been handled, however, the language and guidance with respect to pig offal was added only to the more recent version that became effective on April 1, 2021, which may have given them a little more wiggle room in January to misinterpret Houlihan's sample as exogenous. In any case, because WADA was dragging its feet in a way that would've prevented Houlihan from participating in the Olympics, her lawyer had no choice but to force WADA to hold the hearing with CAS at a date earlier than they had wished, which I speculate may have caused some resentment and lack of due process on their part.

Many have suggested the entire philosophy behind the current testing paradigm that WADA employs for track & field athletes needs to be replaced. I agree and believe athletes do not enjoy sticking themselves with needles and ingesting dangerous substances, and that if they felt others weren't competing against them using those means, they too, would not feel the need to resort to such measures. In my opinion, the key to fixing this problem is for world-class athletes to gain a set of common benefits by virtue of being accepted and belonging to that group, and for the athletes themselves to ultimately govern their own behavior, similar to the way professional leagues like the NBA do through unions. Although I cannot imagine an international T&F union, I can see country-based organizations that could provide, for example, comprehensive and long-lasting health care once athletes have reached a world-class level, along with incentives to discourage and treat the abuse of drugs in a discreet way that is not meant primarily to enforce fairness, but is done instead for the health and safety of those who participate in the sport.

As for me, I have no affiliations and am simply a hobbyjogger that buys all those fancy shoes you all are wearing and cares about the sport. if you tend to distrust those who post anonymously (and you should), you may find me on Twitter at the handle used here.

moultonk wrote:

Part 3: So what does all this mean?

There is no doubt Houlihan purchased food from a Mexican food truck 10 hours before she was randomly tested because there are records which prove it. For it NOT to be the source of the nandrolone would be an extraordinary coincidence, and could only be explained by hypothesizing she visited the truck deliberately in order to consume nandrolone orally and have a ready-made excuse in case she was tested. The problem with this theory is that a single dose of nandrolone taken orally would offer no benefit, since it gets metabolized within hours, and she could just as well delay the test or take a whereabouts violation. If she had injected nandrolone, that would have been detectable in her urine for many weeks or months, and all other tests (16 performed in 2020) and the one taken 5 weeks later, were negative. If she instead regularly took oral doses of nandrolone (eg. multiple times per week), with presumably many visits to the Mexican food truck to hide it, there might be some performance benefit (though it would damage her already-damaged liver). However -- and this is a crucial point -- such a dosing regimen would have left telltale traces of nandrolone in her hair. When her hair was tested (which WADA could also test), it was negative. Therefore, the only possible doping explanation is that she somehow got hold of nandrolone that had a similar chemical signature as endogenous pork nandrolone, and the ONE TIME she ingested it happened to be in the hours before she got randomly tested. I find this extremely hard to believe, and even if it were true, the punishment would not be justified since it would have offered no benefit, just as eating tainted pork once would offer no benefit.

Why would WADA do this?

WADA is not in the business of figuring out the truth; their goal is to reduce the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports across the world in a uniform way, and using Shelby's positive test and subsequent punishment as a warning to other athletes achieves that objective. WADA needed a "win" before the Olympics, and from their perspective, it doesn't matter whether Shelby was actually clean or not.

As I have researched this story, one name stands out above all others: Christiane Ayotte. She is the author of numerous studies on nandrolone and is probably the world's foremost expert on how to detect it. Thus, many have unknowingly quoted her studies to defend the testing which she herself performed, which can lead to a kind of circular reasoning. She was President of the World Association of Anti-Doping Scientists, and runs the WADA-accredited doping control laboratory in Montreal that performed the test on Houlihan's sample. WADA, an international organization, is headquartered in Montreal. More than anyone, it was Ayotte who decided that Houlihan's sample was positive and exogenous. It was also Ayotte whose false testimony against long-jumper Jarrion Lawson was what helped him overturn the four-year ban he had received as a result of the test which she oversaw, as explained by a poster on Slowtwitch:

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=7537069#p7537069

And in a Let's Run feature article (behind a paywall):

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2020/04/the-amazing-story-of-how-jarrion-lawson-cleared-his-name-he-showed-that-the-head-of-a-wada-lab-provided-false-testimony-against-him

To be fair, Ayotte has been fighting a legitimate war against PEDs for decades, and in her mind, it may have reached a point where the end justifies the means, even if that means someone loses their career in a way that is not justified by the circumstances. In 2005, she even posted about nandrolone on this very message board:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=886533

It is worth noting that the 2019 Technical Document which precedes the current one (TD2021NA) does not seem to materially differ in the way Houlihan's samples should have been handled, however, the language and guidance with respect to pig offal was added only to the more recent version that became effective on April 1, 2021, which may have given them a little more wiggle room in January to misinterpret Houlihan's sample as exogenous. In any case, because WADA was dragging its feet in a way that would've prevented Houlihan from participating in the Olympics, her lawyer had no choice but to force WADA to hold the hearing with CAS at a date earlier than they had wished, which I speculate may have caused some resentment and lack of due process on their part.

Many have suggested the entire philosophy behind the current testing paradigm that WADA employs for track & field athletes needs to be replaced. I agree and believe athletes do not enjoy sticking themselves with needles and ingesting dangerous substances, and that if they felt others weren't competing against them using those means, they too, would not feel the need to resort to such measures. In my opinion, the key to fixing this problem is for world-class athletes to gain a set of common benefits by virtue of being accepted and belonging to that group, and for the athletes themselves to ultimately govern their own behavior, similar to the way professional leagues like the NBA do through unions. Although I cannot imagine an international T&F union, I can see country-based organizations that could provide, for example, comprehensive and long-lasting health care once athletes have reached a world-class level, along with incentives to discourage and treat the abuse of drugs in a discreet way that is not meant primarily to enforce fairness, but is done instead for the health and safety of those who participate in the sport.

As for me, I have no affiliations and am simply a hobbyjogger that buys all those fancy shoes you all are wearing and cares about the sport. if you tend to distrust those who post anonymously (and you should), you may find me on Twitter at the handle used here.

moultonk wrote:

SeattleSilver wrote:

The three qualifiers owe SH nothing. They do owe their sponsor, New Balance, and the USOC, the duty of going to the games and competing. SH hasn't proved that the positive test should be ignored, and you think that the other three women should shove their dreams and the fruits of their labor aside for someone who tested positive?

I'm not talking about just the American qualifiers, but all those who actually make it into the final. And maybe leave a couple deserving underdogs in the field to get medals. But yeah, it would most likely sink the boycotters' careers, at least in the short term, and would have to be the result of personal private decisions and conversations. Cyclists should have boycotted the Tour long ago.

SH can't even prove that she ate pork, much less tainted pork. She ordered beef, and her receipt supports that. She claims that she got pork, but can't prove it, and ate it anyway. Your explanation was that food trucks mix up orders frequently. Aside from the fact that my experience with Mexican food trucks up the road in Seattle isn't consistent with that assertion, the explanation is a non sequitur. Just because some trucks screw up orders doesn't mean that the patron can't walk back up to the truck and demand the correct order.

I don't think all the detractors have really thought through the scenario properly. When she got the burrito order, it wasn't just for her, there were others (Centro perhaps?). I haven't seen it explicitly stated where she ate it, but I gather it was at her place or her boyfriend's place. So, she gets the order, walks home, and must be famished when she takes that first bite. The problem with the burrito is you can't see what's inside and it usually takes a while to work your way through all the rice, beans, and veggies before you get to the protein. At that point, I guarantee you 95% of hungry athletes are not going to wrap up the half-eaten burrito, walk it back to the food truck, and argue with them that they got the order wrong. Who does that? I bet the main protein was simply some sort of pork sausage and that it was absolutely delicious.

I hate to say it, but we should also be open to the possibility that it was, in fact, a beef burrito, and that someone spiked it, since you all are so sure they just happen to have endogenous-looking nandrolone supplements lying around. This is another reason why WADA should not rely on a single sample to make a determination. Too much potential for foul play.

Armstronglivs wrote:

davies report wrote:

We are all tied up in accepting strict liability as a fair way of destroying lives.

I don’t know if many justice systems that know they are convicting those who are not cheating so as to maintain the system.

You don't know that because there aren't justice systems destroying lives they know aren't cheating on the basis of strict liability. On the other hand, dopers are not getting away with the inevitable defence tactic of saying "prove that I INTENDED to dope" - an impossible evidentiary burden with regard to doping. However, the presence of banned substances in the body at a specified level is evidence enough that you put them there - and that it wasn't a pig that did it. Houlihan argued the burrito defence and by coming up with that excuse the onus was on her prove that it was the most likely cause of a banned substance being in her body. She couldn't. So she's a convicted doper. End of argument - except to those who are doping apologists or can't grasp the issues.

TrackCoach wrote:

People act as if the USADA/WADA and the AIU are the Keystone Cops; these guys have access to some of the most advanced equipment and tons of data. They don't just relay on their standards and processes; they investigate, analyze and consults with industry experts when necessary. USADA use to speak at events and was very open about how the organization operates. USADA has over a terabyte of doping and performance data accumulated from decades. They have algorithms that looks for patterns in performance and test results. USADA maintains a list of likely doping athletes and is kind of like the FBI in that they will spend as much time as necessary to build their case against that athlete, albeit they tend to make their announcements a few months before global championships.

In the Houlihan case, there is almost no way guilt or innocence is being determined solely by one failed test and weather or not she ate a burrito. USADA/WADA work together and in the case of a USA high profile athlete like Houlihan, USATF was alerted as well, they where given a say in the matter, then the case was argued by lawyers and experts before a panel of judges.

Peppermint Patty of York wrote:

moultonk wrote:

Part 3: So what does all this mean?

There is no doubt Houlihan purchased food from a Mexican food truck 10 hours before she was randomly tested because there are records which prove it. For it NOT to be the source of the nandrolone would be an extraordinary coincidence, and could only be explained by hypothesizing she visited the truck deliberately in order to consume nandrolone orally and have a ready-made excuse in case she was tested. The problem with this theory is that a single dose of nandrolone taken orally would offer no benefit, since it gets metabolized within hours, and she could just as well delay the test or take a whereabouts violation. If she had injected nandrolone, that would have been detectable in her urine for many weeks or months, and all other tests (16 performed in 2020) and the one taken 5 weeks later, were negative. If she instead regularly took oral doses of nandrolone (eg. multiple times per week), with presumably many visits to the Mexican food truck to hide it, there might be some performance benefit (though it would damage her already-damaged liver). However -- and this is a crucial point -- such a dosing regimen would have left telltale traces of nandrolone in her hair. When her hair was tested (which WADA could also test), it was negative. Therefore, the only possible doping explanation is that she somehow got hold of nandrolone that had a similar chemical signature as endogenous pork nandrolone, and the ONE TIME she ingested it happened to be in the hours before she got randomly tested. I find this extremely hard to believe, and even if it were true, the punishment would not be justified since it would have offered no benefit, just as eating tainted pork once would offer no benefit.

Why would WADA do this?

WADA is not in the business of figuring out the truth; their goal is to reduce the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports across the world in a uniform way, and using Shelby's positive test and subsequent punishment as a warning to other athletes achieves that objective. WADA needed a "win" before the Olympics, and from their perspective, it doesn't matter whether Shelby was actually clean or not.

As I have researched this story, one name stands out above all others: Christiane Ayotte. She is the author of numerous studies on nandrolone and is probably the world's foremost expert on how to detect it. Thus, many have unknowingly quoted her studies to defend the testing which she herself performed, which can lead to a kind of circular reasoning. She was President of the World Association of Anti-Doping Scientists, and runs the WADA-accredited doping control laboratory in Montreal that performed the test on Houlihan's sample. WADA, an international organization, is headquartered in Montreal. More than anyone, it was Ayotte who decided that Houlihan's sample was positive and exogenous. It was also Ayotte whose false testimony against long-jumper Jarrion Lawson was what helped him overturn the four-year ban he had received as a result of the test which she oversaw, as explained by a poster on Slowtwitch:

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=7537069#p7537069

And in a Let's Run feature article (behind a paywall):

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2020/04/the-amazing-story-of-how-jarrion-lawson-cleared-his-name-he-showed-that-the-head-of-a-wada-lab-provided-false-testimony-against-him

To be fair, Ayotte has been fighting a legitimate war against PEDs for decades, and in her mind, it may have reached a point where the end justifies the means, even if that means someone loses their career in a way that is not justified by the circumstances. In 2005, she even posted about nandrolone on this very message board:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=886533

It is worth noting that the 2019 Technical Document which precedes the current one (TD2021NA) does not seem to materially differ in the way Houlihan's samples should have been handled, however, the language and guidance with respect to pig offal was added only to the more recent version that became effective on April 1, 2021, which may have given them a little more wiggle room in January to misinterpret Houlihan's sample as exogenous. In any case, because WADA was dragging its feet in a way that would've prevented Houlihan from participating in the Olympics, her lawyer had no choice but to force WADA to hold the hearing with CAS at a date earlier than they had wished, which I speculate may have caused some resentment and lack of due process on their part.

Many have suggested the entire philosophy behind the current testing paradigm that WADA employs for track & field athletes needs to be replaced. I agree and believe athletes do not enjoy sticking themselves with needles and ingesting dangerous substances, and that if they felt others weren't competing against them using those means, they too, would not feel the need to resort to such measures. In my opinion, the key to fixing this problem is for world-class athletes to gain a set of common benefits by virtue of being accepted and belonging to that group, and for the athletes themselves to ultimately govern their own behavior, similar to the way professional leagues like the NBA do through unions. Although I cannot imagine an international T&F union, I can see country-based organizations that could provide, for example, comprehensive and long-lasting health care once athletes have reached a world-class level, along with incentives to discourage and treat the abuse of drugs in a discreet way that is not meant primarily to enforce fairness, but is done instead for the health and safety of those who participate in the sport.

As for me, I have no affiliations and am simply a hobbyjogger that buys all those fancy shoes you all are wearing and cares about the sport. if you tend to distrust those who post anonymously (and you should), you may find me on Twitter at the handle used here.

You aren't very bright, are you? What is life like with a 20 IQ? Are you given computer time at the mental ward, is that how you found the time to type all this drivel out?