Here are some things to hang on to:
- according to a study conducted by the AIU-expert Prof. Ayotte, as little as 14 grams, or 1/2 an ounce, is enough to produce the amount of nandrolone that was in her urine. These studies with small sample sizes likely do not find the maximum concentrations possible. It was estimated Shelby consumed 140-180g of meat. Was Prof. Ayotte being completely honest when she said 2.4 ng/ml was “most favorable”? It wouldn’t be the first time she was selective in the truth. Her deception in the Lawson case about her own lab results was material enough to have it overturned on appeal by that CAS panel.
- The nandrolone wasn’t found in her system, but in her urine. All parties agreed that it was ingested, not injected. Because of filtering on “first pass”, much less would have actually been in her system.
- Was it exogenous? Looks like that was decided by GC/C/IRMS analysis, while the TD2021 NA says “The origin of the urinary 19-NA may not be established by GC/C/IRMS analysis”.
- why this unusual emphasis on “trace”? “Trace” is not well defined, and the claim of “trace amount” doesn’t appear in the CAS report. CJ Hunter had 2000 ng/ml. AIU expert Prof. Ayotte conducted a study with one subject producing 130 ng/ml. By comparison 5.2 ng/ml and 5.8 ng/ml are quite small amounts. Before 2004, the threshold for women was 5 ng/ml, and even then, had to be considered on a case by case basis. In a 1998 study in Nagano on 621 Olympic athletes, only 5 athletes exceeded the threshold — all women.
- so many people have heard of it, and its ease of detection, that no sophisticated athlete after the Sydney Olympics in 2000 would take it. While large amounts would will likely help women, especially in middle distance, she had a small amount in her urine, and only a smaller fraction of that would have got in her system.
- is her career suspect? This sounds like something some people want to believe is a sign of drugs. It’s certain that a Dec. 2020 positive for a small amount would not have influenced her American record performances 6 months earlier.
- There is equally no real evidence of “the use of oral nandrolone”, as speculated by the AIU-expert Prof. Ayotte. Since it is so hard to get real evidence, WADA makes it easy to prosecute without such evidence, by inserting language like “consistent with”, and “strict liability” and permitting the presumption of intent.
- In my case, it is not just about a likeable white girl — 49 Kenyans have been busted for nandrolone between 2004 and 2018 in a country with no USDA inspectors filtering out cryptorchids, no separate boar supply chain, and where farmers do not routinely castrate their pigs, and the athletes may not know enough French or English nor have the funds to mount a robust legal defense. The fact that Kenyans were busted for nandrolone has been used as “evidence” that nandrolone is an interesting drug for distance runners.
The TD2021NA foresees declaring possible intact boar ingestion as an ATF, requiring more testing to remove the uncertainty, before declaring a violation, rather than presuming there is none.