Red flags in the Houlihan case that need explaining

why hold that press conference wrote:

The point being that the press conference wasn't really for SH - it wasn't going to and can't change anything for her. She's banned for 4 years, that's done. Why then is it important for people to believe she was wrongly convicted ? Who does it help now?

Nike + BTC + Flanagan + Schumacher

If everyone would accept that Houlihan is a drug cheat, then the above would get into trouble too.

Plus Houlihan might reveal all the dirty laundy, if the team doesn't speak out for her (who doped her when, and who else etc.).

Saying “trace amounts” is always a relative and subjective statement. It is trace amounts, imo, compared to what can be seen when injected. It’s not trace amounts compared to the adverse analypical finding of >2ng/mL.

But that limit is far below what can be seen from the study in my last post (above). Whether this is what happened, I have no idea. But given that 1) the labs can’t tell the difference if it came from food or non-injection doping; and 2) non physically castrated pig is becoming more common (through Improvest or just not castrating), the accused will be left to hire scientists and lawyers to prove their innocence and guilt is assumed by default.

Whatever the outcome here, I think it’s a dangerous practice to set adverse analytical finding levels well below what can be seem from ingesting an increasingly common (although still not widespread) food product. Where is the testing on larger numbers of people with differing amounts of meat from different parts of animals to see what can happen.?

The issue of mg/kg body weight has not been tested for this chemical as far as I know. But the study above shows that even 100g can put one far over the 2ng/mL limit.

There’s probably other possibilities *if* she’s innocent.

So if I change my diet to have high amounts of pig protein, I should be able to start dominating my local 5ks?? Why didn't I know about this earlier?? Going to Jewel right now to stock up

Ernest wrote:

Once her whereabouts is established, she's required to provide a sample. Failure to do so is an automatic 2 year suspension.

oregon oldtimer wrote:

If she was voluntarily using nandrolone, why would she even provide a urine sample to the drug testers? Just consider it one of her where-abouts warnings and go on her way?

Olympics are less than a year away.

Just posted this in another thread ... all speculation. Makes sense for the unbiased, logical bystander IMHO.

The scientist who doped the Russians from the Icarus documentary said he warned other coaches and officials that their source of roids from China may be contaminated at the micro level. So that could be a source of contamination if other doping occurred. And if others were taking those same ‘meds’ in the BTC group they would likely lay low, not race or finish races to be tested and keep testing themselves all the way up to the trials too see if it’s cleared their own system. Hmmm who just announced pulling out of trials via weird video as if reluctantly, randomly retiring....

Wejo and rojo do your damn homework and stop being biased apologists for your shady friends.

It would be number 4, right? Her lawyer is arguing that once they advanced the tainted meat theory, the AIU should have tested the B sample with that consideration. They say this is a failure of procedure

No. Procedural rights refers to the hearing itself, was it procedurally fair.

SH's lawyer arguing the AIU used the wrong procedure is a legal argument that already failed initially and on the appeal.

Good job with this thread High Hopes.

I think it's one of two things:

1. There's a new nandrolone cream out there (keeps to the truth of it not being 'oral' ingestion, less likely because of the concentration level)

2. Shes taking testosterone that was contaminated with nandrolone (way more likely)

In either case, you can hold yourself to the line "i didnt ingest this PED" and say that with a straight face, even though its misleading

Great post! Cuts through all the BTC smoke and mirrors.

Does anyone in the running community trust or believe Shalane F?

Likely trashed everyone who she ever ran against/doped herself. Has the same dead look in her eyes as Lance

To be fair, most food trucks serve much larger food sizes than you would have at home. And didn't the study look specifically at men? Women and, in particular, fit women likely weigh less and may metabolize things differently. I don't know the pharmacokinetics, but I would imagine much less than 300g would be required in a low-weight woman.

obvious, PR 101: get out ahead of the facts because theyre bad for you if they come from wada first

Many of the media types covering these events lack both the background to even ask questions as intelligent as the ones on this list and the motivation to acquire that background.

But the main problem is that most of them are suck-ups, not journalists. They're afraid that if they "go there" even after guilt has been formally and procedurally determined, they won't get access to any of the BTC athletes, and might be viewed by the entire smallish and incestuous elite-running community as too rogue to be trusted. They're too cowardly for their jobs, in other words.

Look at some of the specific people this open letter in practice addresses, and consider their histories and intentions. Does it look like any of them are the type to want anything more than to stand out from the chittering herd? Most of them visibly don't care about anything other than their own in-group visibility, and the Houlihan fiasco has been a powerful example to illustrate this.

Had this been Jager or a male BTC athlete with all other details identical, it's doubtful that the wagon-circling you're seeing would be as extreme or even exist at all. But such speculation is besides the point. The laughable spinelessness and hypocrisy of what counts as the running media reflects the greater collapse of the U.S. corporate media, where there are no guardrails anymore, no punishment for flagrant lying whether it's MSNBC, Fox News or the NY Times. Most "journalists" today seem to be Ivy League mush-minds who want to use their columns to process their endless personal issues nonstop.

So, the odds of seeing a collective media push to resolve whatever the to-be-released documentation doesn't are low. Not in the hands of these cheerleaders posing as something else.

attack the process, attack credibility, so you get ppl, like on these boards, wondering aloud ‘well, why do we even have anti doping in the first place’

just gaslight ppl until you get what you want. ignore the fact that the same ppl would ve dancing on the graves of a hissan, makloufhi, ingebristen if a peep came out of wada on them

Androstenedione is an over the counter body building supplement that can trigger a positive test for nandrolone.

Pig defense > toothpaste defense

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Baumann

Great summary of the main questions! Though a fan of Houlihan and BTC, I definitely see these red flags as deserving of more investigation.

One other question:

Houlihan provided hair samples to prove she had no build up of nandrolone. If this is a legitimate defense, why don't all testing organizations simply test every athlete's hair once a week? Must be easier than collecting urine or drawing blood.

Why did BTC think that testing another body "part" would weaken the results of a urine test?

burrito connoisseur wrote:

...and if they just mean she maybe got a chorizo burrito by accident, rather than carne asada, that seems fairly possible. In a sense, this is just a matter of semantics (if true), because we all know that those kind of processed meats contain all sorts of "nasty" stuff, but still, constantly referring to "pig organs" as if it were some weird food truck serving bush-meat or something like that would be rather misleading if they just meant the common ingredient chorizo. It would be like saying that she accidentally ingested a sandwich with pig organ meat from a nearby restaurant, when what they meant was, she ate a Sausage McMuffin from McDonalds.

They don't mean chorizo, they mean either tripas (intestine) or buche (stomach). And even if we assumed they meant chorizo, that even more strongly raises the question of how one can't tell the difference between carne asada, and chorizo.

Metabolite.

I read the test detected "exogenous nandrolone". Does this mean they detected intact nandrolone somehow identifiable as 'synthetic' as opposed to from a pig?