If Shelby was doping intentionally why wasn't she running super spikes?

If she was doping on the level of the Eastern Bloc her 19-NA level would have been in the 1000's consistently. Instead her samples averaged around 7 ng/mL on 1 test only. I think it was supplement contamination. The numbers in the science papers are pretty substantial:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Unintentional doping through the use of contaminated nutritional supplements - PubMed

The results of this study showed that the intake of microgram amounts of a prohibited substance in a nutritional supplement could cause an athlete to fail a dope test.

Open link

And a 2006 Ayotte paper (same person in the trial) said about 300 athletes a year were having that issue of hormone metabolites, but we didn't hear about 300 people a year getting banned for it because they provided the bottles. The burrito theory was bad advice and doomed from the start, looking at the flow chart on page 9 of WADA's TD2019NA document.

This is all bullsh1t. Shelby said the only supplements she took were a calcium gummy, a multivitamin gummy, a vitamin D gummy, and a b complex and sometimes iron. She also said her supplements were tested for contamination.

Author "Laura Healey is an employee of PUMA; Wouter Hoogkamer has received research grants from PUMA and Saucony. No footwear company had any influence on the conceptualization or presented in this publication."

Sucker!!!

If she was doping, all she had to do was have a bottle of a known contaminated product, and then the case would be dismissed like the 300 people a year back in the early 2000's. Not sure if there's more recent data, but I know it's unregulated. Somebody could have spiked her food too.

And she was notified 30 days after the test. Think back 30 days... what did you consume? It's hard, isn't it?

Do you know if there were remaining gummies etc from the same bottles? Not new bottles.

She claimed some of the bottles had been thrown out. Maybe so but to me she is a liar. So it throws doubt into everything she says.

As usual, all you've got to go with is a typo. But you don't answer the point about El G and super shoes because you have nothing.

I don't ask for it. I point out that you can't and won't draw any conclusions about Houlihan doping - she failed a test without no adequate excuse - except to whine about CAS saying (so unfairly!) she therefore intended to dope unless she could show otherwise. She couldn't. And you can't.

Armstronglivs, is there any chance that you and Rekrunner could keep your hands off each other if you ever met? Like would it possibly be like in Brokeback Mountain, where you discover that the sexual tension is irresistible?

While it's possible that she intentionally used nandrolone, that requires 2 things:

1. That she would be dumb enough to use nandrolone instead of testosterone. Nandrolone is the worst steroid choice to avoid detection. (The Kenyans had a broken testing system, and cost was probably a factor in them using it.)

2. That she wouldn't keep a bottle of contaminated supplements as an excuse to avoid a ban.

She seems too smart for that. But I am surprised her coach said he didn't know what nandrolone is. It's a bit more believable for an athlete. Hard to say.

It seems quite possible she just used up a bottle and started using a new bottle before she was notified on Jan 14. The positive test was on Dec 15. She was tested in all quarters of 2020 and also Jan 23 if I remember right.

Also there could have been 3 motives to spike her food:

1. A competitor.

2. A competing shoe company.

3. Her shoe company, for not promoting the super foam which has higher sales in road running and other sports and also some sales in track.

It was also hard to detect illegal use of nandrolone in cattle farming prior to a 2024 study.

We may never know the answer. Rules and authority are one thing. Reality is another.

And of course Shelby is WHITE. That is why you cannot seem to accept that she is an intentional doper. It seems obvious to anyone who is not biased because of her skin color.

Ah yes, a typo... 🍷

El Guerrouj would be a low 3:25, maybe sub 3:25 runner with supershoes and wavelights. It is you who has nothing.

But you are wrong -- I drew many conclusions based on the quite limited extent of all of the available evidence.

I concluded that presumption is not proof, and she hasn't yet been proven guilty of either doping, or intent to dope, to any legal standard stronger than baseless presumption and speculative suggestion.

I concluded that non-cheating athletes can unknowingly test positive after consuming USDA approved food and FDA approved substances (USOC Athlete Ombudsman John Ruger estimated that 40-60% of athlete doping is inadvertent), and still be unable to establish the source to the standard required, given 1 week to answer, with 30 days notice after the fact, because, as Judge Jean-Paul Costas told WADA before 2015 -- such proofs are difficult to provide.

I concluded, based on all the available science, her positive test results (both the low amounts involved and the pseudo-endogenous CIR) are ambiguous.

I concluded under the just principle of "innocent until proven guilty", we are still at the stage where she would still be presumed innocent.

I concluded that the whole case against her, in its entirety, relies on too many unproven assumptions, and too many presumptions, and too few "concrete and specific elements" constituting evidence or proof.

You think their conclusions favor the shoe companies? This study didn't "prove" superspikes. On the contrary, it says we need more data.

A favorable conclusion would leave little doubt, but this study says what I expect every good scientist would say: scientists have many good ideas supported by experimental and empirical data, but don't really know yet how to fully explain the significant quantity of significant improvements across the board, because the subject is complex needing to factor in the specifics of the shoes, the athlete, and the distance, with several potential confounders, and we need more research to provide better data.

This is also not the only study on supershoes.

Whoever said that non-white athletes are intentional dopers? Given what we know about nandrolone and Kenya not routinely castrating their pigs, many Kenyans were more likely to be railroaded to 4-year bans for eating pork than Americans would be.

Much seems to be made of this, but I don't understand why coaches should have heard of nandrolone. If they were doping coaches, they might have known it by other names, like "deca" or "nor-steroid precursor" or "nor-DHEA" or simply "anabolic steroids". If they were non-doping coaches, they would focus on training their athletes.

Coaches probably don't have the time as some of the "fans" of the sport, to research athlete doping in forums and tabloids.

It's an unusual case with strange details. Also, listening to and reading her interviews, it sounds like she was hurt by all this but also tough and kept going.

In general, I'm suspicious of the fastest athletes regardless of skin color because of history, and I've noticed design flaws in the testing policies compared to the scientific papers. I don't know if a clean athlete can compete, especially when there were rumors that EPO was worth 20 to 50 seconds in the 5,000 meters and that any 100 meters under 10.2 is unnatural. It's possible that Houlihan used something else (EPO, testosterone, AICAR) but got wrongfully banned for nandrolone. But just being fast is not a crime and not proof.

In the Issam Asinga case (a black guy), it's bizarre that a sprinter would use something for endurance athletes (GW1516) that is detectable for a long time. I haven't read as much about it, but it kind of sounds like he was in a desperate situation and may have tampered with the product but also Gatorade may have tried to cover up something else.