We reached out to Ross, who is one of the best at conveying information on endurance sports science, a few months ago and asked him to look at the Shelby case for us.
He's got two pieces for us.
If you've only got time to read one, we recommend the Q&A piece where he gives his opinion on the case, the ruling, Shelby's burrito defense and a lot more. (Spoiler alert, he agrees with how CAS ruled.)
I think many of us are looking for two things from you.
1) Consistency in who and how you jump at as seeming suspicious. I've been on these boards since I was 13 back in the early 2000s. You have been inconsistent in your suspicions. If you were so suspicious about Regina, why aren't you suspicious about Keira D'Amato?
2) An explanation to why you are still seemingly siding with BTC/Jerry. You've admitted that Jerry is handling this poorly from a PR standpoint. Make a statement that says he should not be coaching Shelby alongside the BTC athletes. If not, explain why, please.
If it was me. I would have said, "I believe in my hearts she's clean. We don't know how it got in her system but think it must have been from the meal she ate the night before the test. She ordered chicken but we are assuming there was cross contamination or they got the order wrong. Regardless, the system is broken. Shelby is the third US Olympian in the last 3 years to test positive. There is a problem with the US food supply. The head of US Anti doping - Travis Tygart - has said this for year. We need to look into it and make sure the system isn't incorrectly catching innocent athletes. Phil Knight has pledged $1 milllion to look into this and I'm adding in $50,000 of my own."
Please, Rojo, you have to stop repeating this claim that three US Olympians tested positive due to the meat supply in the US, it is pure misinformation. As the CAS decision states, and Tucker has reiterated, it is incredibly unlikely that the dope in Houlihan's system came from tainted meat. The concentration in her system was too high for it to be a result of tainted meat. The US food chain may be a problem but it is entirely separate from the Houlihan case. If she's innocent, she needs to look under different rocks for her explanation. You can't lump Houlihan in with Wilson and Lawson who both had levels of anabolic agents in their systems that were consistent with what might be expected from ingesting tainted meat. Houlihan's were way above that.
Please, stop holding Houlihan up as a victim of a broken system. Wilson and Lawson could be your flagbearers for this mini crusade, but not Houlihan.
All this said, it brings me back to the issue about Houlihan's defence. It is remarkable to me that her experts testified about pork on another continent (Jahren, point 118), and testified only that "we just can't be sure" (as per Point 117). If the defense can be made that US pork has a signature at -23, then make it! Why not throw a good deal more at that? I found this really bemusing. And to reiterate, my approach or "job" here was not to examine the specific content of the arguments from both sides, but rather to try to explain what CAS heard and how they decided. This whole section of the case, dealing with agriculture in the USA and the likelihood of a contamination felt like a really one sided boxing match, with one side throwing all the punches and landing many, with the other throwing basically none, and defending very weakly. The absence of any strong rebuttals, with evidence, is striking.
This case wasn't about pork in the US market, but about what could likely cause the test results found in the lab in Houlihan's urine. Arguing that many burritos exist that won't cause these positives or isotope ratios is almost beside the point.
What we learned from the CAS report is that while Ayotte found it is "consistent with" nandrolone she can buy an Amazon, it is equally "consistent with" ingestion of soy-fed intact boar meat/offal.
Nothing in the expert reports or the CAS reports compares these likelihoods of competing sources with each other.
Turning the conversation towards what generally happens in the US market, outside the pandemic, cannot help Houlihan's team meet it's burden to convince a panel what specifically happened to Houlihan.
I think part of what hurt Houlihan's defence is the short time, and the pressure to complete the process before the Olympic trials. With more time, they could have asked the same questions I did above.
Please, Rojo, you have to stop repeating this claim that three US Olympians tested positive due to the meat supply in the US, it is pure misinformation. As the CAS decision states, and Tucker has reiterated, it is incredibly unlikely that the dope in Houlihan's system came from tainted meat. The concentration in her system was too high for it to be a result of tainted meat. The US food chain may be a problem but it is entirely separate from the Houlihan case. If she's innocent, she needs to look under different rocks for her explanation. You can't lump Houlihan in with Wilson and Lawson who both had levels of anabolic agents in their systems that were consistent with what might be expected from ingesting tainted meat. Houlihan's were way above that.
Please, stop holding Houlihan up as a victim of a broken system. Wilson and Lawson could be your flagbearers for this mini crusade, but not Houlihan.
Why would you say "entirely separate"? No one is claiming the meat Houlihan ate was "tainted" (or "contaminated") and the level is well within the amounts possible by ingesting non-tainted, non-contaminated, USDA approved intact edible boar meat alone (studies finding 7.5ng/ml), let alone more concentrated organ sources (up to 160 ng/ml).
You only need to look at USADA's chief Travis Tygart explain about 27 athletes USADA prevented from being railroaded to a 4-year ban, to realize the system is very much broken.
Nothing about Houlihan's case suggests she wasn't also railroaded to a 4-year ban, for being unable to prove the source of the nandrolone was accidental unknowing ingestion.
Athletes are generally not experts in their national food chain practices, and when there is accidental ingestion, to use Ross' observation of "one-sided", the athlete quickly finds itself against a wall of experts who have been doing this for a living for decades.
All this said, it brings me back to the issue about Houlihan's defence. It is remarkable to me that her experts testified about pork on another continent (Jahren, point 118), and testified only that "we just can't be sure" (as per Point 117). If the defense can be made that US pork has a signature at -23, then make it! Why not throw a good deal more at that? I found this really bemusing.
Well while you are right with your observations, I don't find that bemusing but telling. The defense had no real argument about the delta delta C because there was no real one. Same with the nandro concentration in stomach muscle.
That's also why they went with a Norwegian geochemist to comment on the American pig market: they couldn't find an American boar expert willing to make such comments.
That's also why the hair analysis left out the relevant prohormones: their analysis would have been too damning.
That's also why the polygraph test was "restrictive": Shelby's reaction to "did you ever knowingly dope?" would have been too telling.
All this said, it brings me back to the issue about Houlihan's defence. It is remarkable to me that her experts testified about pork on another continent (Jahren, point 118), and testified only that "we just can't be sure" (as per Point 117). If the defense can be made that US pork has a signature at -23, then make it! Why not throw a good deal more at that? I found this really bemusing.
Well while you are right with your observations, I don't find that bemusing but telling. The defense had no real argument about the delta delta C because there was no real one. Same with the nandro concentration in stomach muscle.
That's also why they went with a Norwegian geochemist to comment on the American pig market: they couldn't find an American boar expert willing to make such comments.
My observation is that they did argue that a soy-diet would give a signature of -23.
AIU expert McGlone conceded that soy was increased during the relevant period.
What is bemusing is that the CAS opined against McGlone's concession, and decide commercial pork is still corn-fed.
All this said, it brings me back to the issue about Houlihan's defence. It is remarkable to me that her experts testified about pork on another continent (Jahren, point 118), and testified only that "we just can't be sure" (as per Point 117). If the defense can be made that US pork has a signature at -23, then make it! Why not throw a good deal more at that? I found this really bemusing. And to reiterate, my approach or "job" here was not to examine the specific content of the arguments from both sides, but rather to try to explain what CAS heard and how they decided. This whole section of the case, dealing with agriculture in the USA and the likelihood of a contamination felt like a really one sided boxing match, with one side throwing all the punches and landing many, with the other throwing basically none, and defending very weakly. The absence of any strong rebuttals, with evidence, is striking.
This case wasn't about pork in the US market, but about what could likely cause the test results found in the lab in Houlihan's urine. Arguing that many burritos exist that won't cause these positives or isotope ratios is almost beside the point.
What we learned from the CAS report is that while Ayotte found it is "consistent with" nandrolone she can buy an Amazon, it is equally "consistent with" ingestion of soy-fed intact boar meat/offal.
Nothing in the expert reports or the CAS reports compares these likelihoods of competing sources with each other.
Turning the conversation towards what generally happens in the US market, outside the pandemic, cannot help Houlihan's team meet it's burden to convince a panel what specifically happened to Houlihan.
I think part of what hurt Houlihan's defence is the short time, and the pressure to complete the process before the Olympic trials. With more time, they could have asked the same questions I did above.
My dude, I'm sorry, but you're really mistaken here. Houlihan's entire case is that tainted boar meat ended up in the food chain. Read the evidence. Her argument is that this was a rare occurrence caused by cross-contamination of meat from an uncastrated pig. There's very little meat from uncastrated pig in the food supply because it's tastes awful. Plus, to show up in the levels found in Houlihan it would have to be from a specific piece of uncastrated pig offal (the kidney). Her claim is that this wouldn't turn up in the food supply in the normal run of things, she just get very unlucky.
Rojo Wrote: Please name another 2:01 800 runner who was top 10 at NCAA xc.
Still waiting guys and gals. I just threw it out there thinking there would be one or two but I guess not. I texted a buddy and he couldn't name any. A free Burrito Track Club tshirt will be sent to the first person who can name a collegian other than Shelby Houlihan who ran 2:01 for 800 and was top 10 at NCAA xc.
Now that doesn't mean she didn't dope. Massively talented people dope (Kiprop).
And yes her improvement I'll admit was more unusual than most. But so what. My brother improved massively at like age 26 but that was directly after going to altitude for the 1st time.
To everyone on here who thinks Shelby is dirty, I'm curious what do you think of Ajee Wilson? I have no idea if she is clean or not. I'm naturally a skeptic of the consensus view. Can someone tell me why she got off - were her levels really low and the isotope's consistent with tainted beef? I've never looked into it.
I sent a follow up question to Ross regarding Wilson and Lawson that we will publish in a few days.
Dude, you just paid for a detailed review. The review came back. Ross unequivocally said she's guilty! (now, of course he can't actually literally say that, but you'd have to be a f&**king moron to not be able to read between the lines). And you still don't believe it.
You are nothing more than a flat earther, who enjoys jogging.
Your Jerry defense is maybe the most pathetic aspect of your BTC water carrying.
Jerry sent his athletes to Brown. This is undisputed amongst those remotely in the know. If the owners of Letsrun are not in that group, perhaps there’s a bigger problem here.
He stopped sending athletes to Brown when sh*t hit the fan with NOP. Not because “it didn’t seem right” or whatever brown-nosing excuse you guys have come up with.
This thread is spectacular. Brojos post their nonsense and it gets downvoted to hell. Keep it up LR.
I believe what you are writing is factually incorrect.
Yes Jerry sent at least one of his athletes to Dr. Brown (Solinsky right?). So what? WEtmoer sent athletes to Dr Brown as well (Jenny Simpson) and I think even Bob Kennedy. Brown was giving lectures at USATF clinics and came recommended by the likes of Dr. Dave Martin. He was well known. I had a superstar recruit at Cornell who had all sorts of problems. I remember saying to him, "If I had unlimited money, I'd send you to HOuston to see this famous running doc as no one here can get you well."
What's different is Jerry stopped sending his guys to Brown. Alberto didn't. Teg didn't go to Brown, Ahmed didn't go to Brown, Fisher, etc. They take pride in knowing the training works and that guys who have never been within 300 miles of Dr. Brown have run super fast.
If your boss was world famous and told you about a great doctor he saw, wouldn't you try it out? That's what he did. Then he stopped.
I interpreted this differently. And maybe I'm naive.
But they hired Ross tucker. And by asking the questions this way. In favor of Shelby (If you believe that), repeatedly, and getting clear cut "no she doped" answers, i think it even more definitively puts the nail in the coffin.
I'd tend to agree with you in theory. But all you need to do is read Rojo's post, and you see that in his feeble mind, there has been no such nail.
Dude, you just paid for a detailed review. The review came back. Ross unequivocally said she's guilty! (now, of course he can't actually literally say that, but you'd have to be a f&**king moron to not be able to read between the lines). And you still don't believe it.
You are nothing more than a flat earther, who enjoys jogging.
Rojo doesn’t even enjoy jogging. He sits at home and counts posting inarticulate jibberish on these boards as “work.”
Rojo‘s NOT well. Remember when he posted that video of seeing ONE cicada, and how seeing ONE cicada was proof that Cheptegei was going to break the world record the next day? That’s not evidence of a sound mind or body
To everyone on here who thinks Shelby is dirty, I'm curious what do you think of Ajee Wilson? I have no idea if she is clean or not. I'm naturally a skeptic of the consensus view. Can someone tell me why she got off - were her levels really low and the isotope's consistent with tainted beef? I've never looked into it.
You never looked into it. LOL. Three months ago, you tried to compare Wilson's case with Houlihan's in the Coffee Club thread.
This was my response back then - which you chose to ignore or forget:
But, for the umpteenth time, Houliham's case is very very very very very different: 1) According to CAS, we can rule out on the balance of probability that an intact boar made it into the burrito ("improbable", CAS wrote). {At this point, the case is lost, in contrast to the Lawson and Wilson cases, where the beef - not pork - contamination was judged to be "more likely than not"} But wait, that is only the beginning. There is more: 2) According to CAS, we can rule out on the balance of probability that a stomach offal burrito even from an intact boar would have caused such high nandro levels ("improbable", CAS wrote). {extra icing} 3) According to CAS, we can rule out on the balance of probability that a stomach offal burrito even from an intact boar would have caused such high androgen levels ("highly improbable", CAS wrote). {nail in the coffin} 4) According to CAS, we can rule out that the nandro came from "commercial pork" (not "consistent with", CAS wrote). And according to CAS, the food truck obtained their food from a commercial plant that used commercial pork from commercial farmers. With that, the coffin was burned, and all ashes spread out over the ocean. Case closed. Lawson and Wilson had no equivalent to points 2, 3, or 4. Recall that Gatlin was banned just based on 4 (CIR showed synthetic testo, just like it showed synthetic nandro for Houlihan).
Why do I defend BTC in general? Because if they are dirty, there is no point in being a track fan. I might as well get another job.
Oh, now I see why you are so reluctant to see what is obvious to all but the most-naive. What kind of jobs are there for middle-aged, day drunk, layabouts?
If Shelby wanted to go full transparency, she would release her credit card and debit card spending histories for the previous year prior to her positive test. Did she buy nandrolone precursors at Amazon or anywhere else? Sharing spending histories could answer that.
Would this really help? For one thing, if she released her credit-card history and it didn't include nandrolone precursors, her critics would (understandably) just say it was incomplete/edited. For another, you can walk into a GNC and pay cash for DHEA. So what would this prove?
Keep digging, pal. Funny how you were champing at the bit to condemn Regina Jacobs back in the day and how you are madly grasping at straws for Shelby. Deleting posts here and fundraising for her defense are unforced errors that further poison your brand.
What are you talking about? I've always said , "In a lot of drug cases, I can tell you who is dirty as their times / actions don't make any sense.
With Regina Jacobs, the woman was a so-so runner in college who was suddenly breaking records in her mid to late 30s. Then the EPO test was announced and she promptly announced she was turning down her Olympic spot. Does that not scream, "I'm on drugs?"
Then no one in the sports media would even ask her about her pull out.
I did.
(Instead, they wanted to ask an American who set the world indoor 5000 record at 38 about how she trained with her poodle).
I never said she was on drugs. I just said I found her actions and improvement to be suspicious as hell. My hunch was subsequently confirmed by a drug bust.
With the BTC it's the opposite. They once were part of the NOP. Jerry S found the whole thing and Dr. Brown to be shady as hell so they split apart. I used to be at USA meets and the BTC guys would come up to me and say, "Hey have you heard anything about Alberto?I would reply, "You guys workout 10 feet from them, I want to ask you if you've heard anything."
Unlike Regina, there is a rationale way to explain the improvements. You take some of the nation's most talented runners, have them go 100% all in in on running as well as altitude training and see what happens. My genetic equal improved a ton post college when he did that and many of the BTC runners do the same.
If Evan Jager at 32 starts running 15 seconds faster than ever before, I'm going to be suspicious as hell.
I'm not fundraising for her defense. I made a shirt mocking her excuse and felt bad about profiting about her personal downfall so decided no one should be upset if she gets a $1000 for her defense.
Rojo, I don't think anyone is saying that Shelby's positive test result necessarily means that BTC was engaged in systemic doping. What it does mean, though, is that she was very likely taking nandrolone precursors, which are widely and cheaply available. Her ban is justified. And while Jager is also suspicious (because of the FancyBears leak), I don't have any reason to believe other BTCers are dirty.
rojo wrote: Plus there is a huge difference between then and now. Namely, I feel like they are actively trying to catch people now and the media isn't afraid to ask tough questions.
Except in Shelby's case, the media immediately bought her excuse and started carrying water for her. The most egregious example was Chris Chavez's initial "reporting" on the issue, as Kevin Beck laid out here:
I appreciate that you commissioned Ross to write this piece. Given the evidence, though, it's mind-blowing to me that anyone legitimately believes she's innocent.
Finally, it's frustrating to see people conflate the Shelby case with other "suspicious" athletes like Paula, Katir, D'Amato, and Farah. SHELBY TESTED POSITIVE FOR A BANNED SUBSTANCE AND RECEIVED A 4-YEAR BAN FROM CAS. Because of that, her situation is fundamentally different from that of those athletes. Like, she can't even do the whole Lance "I never tested positive thing" (which, given the way the antidoping system works, isn't a strong defense anyway).
My dude, I'm sorry, but you're really mistaken here. Houlihan's entire case is that tainted boar meat ended up in the food chain. Read the evidence. Her argument is that this was a rare occurrence caused by cross-contamination of meat from an uncastrated pig. There's very little meat from uncastrated pig in the food supply because it's tastes awful. Plus, to show up in the levels found in Houlihan it would have to be from a specific piece of uncastrated pig offal (the kidney). Her claim is that this wouldn't turn up in the food supply in the normal run of things, she just get very unlucky.
You're grasping at straws.
I did read the evidence -- it has nothing to do with "tainted" boar meat or "cross-contamination". She claims to eat USDA approved meat/offal.
The AIU expert said (on the order of) 1 in 10,000 boars make it through to the food supply, or (up to) 12,100 pigs each year in the US.
Nandrolone can come from a combination of meat and organs, e.g. in a pork/stomach/chorizo burrito, and the levels she showed are not all that high compared to what can be ingested in a single USDA approved meal.
There is no question that boar meat in the pork market is rare, but given the number of pork burritos sold across the US each year, that is a lot of opportunities, and nandrolone positives will eventually happen as a matter of time, and that unfortunate athlete will be in an impossible situation to explain it to a panel on the balance of probability likely without a sample of that burrito for testing.
Except her improvement was over 40 seconds, in an event she was familiar with. Not like SH started doing the 5000 in 2019.
Progression from 2016-2020 of 1506,1500,14:34,15:XX,14:23 is a little eyebrow raising.
And yeah, never being in the conversation to all the sudden being a world beater and running practice runs under 14:30 is going to garner some suspicion, and rightly so.
There's always a 'test' created here that Shelby can 'pass' seemingly and that's what people are getting a little annoyed by at this point
Shelby was an 800 runner for half her college career. I asked her college coach Louis Quintana at NCAAs about her and he said something along the lines of he very much undertrained her.
Yes her improvement is massive. So what. So was her talent. Please name another 2:01 800 runner who was top 10 at NCAA xc. Seriously, has there ever been anyone else like that?
And gain, if that's all we're going on, then we need to stop being fans as then I can't believe in Fisher, Kincaid, etc.
You say that going from 15:06 to 14:23 is eyebrow raising from 2016 to 2020? So that's 43 seconds over 4 years.
So by that logic, i assume you think Molly Huddle is also dirty?Y Ten years before Shelby, she went from 15:32 to 14:42 from 2006 to 2010. That's 50 seconds in 4 years - more than Shelby and she was a 5000 runner in college.
And Des Linden. She went from 16:02 in 2009 to 15:08 in 2011 That's 63 seconds in 2 years.
I could go on and on. There are a ton of US collegiate women who aren't training at a super high level but when they go pro they massively improve. It's basically what happened to Grant Fisher as well.
Look. I don't know who is or isn't dirty. She very well could have been a rogue doper. I had guys on the Cornell team ask me if Morgan Uceny was a doper and David Epstein told me the thing he learned from his reporting on Lance is people can look you in the eye and lie convincingly, but I am not thinking "Oh she's a doper based on her 5000 improvement."
Plenty of other US women have improved similarly and I doubt many of them were as undertrained or as talented as her in college.
Come on, Rojo. I apologize for the consecutive posts, but this is asinine. Did Des test positive for a banned steroid? Did Huddle? Since the answer to both questions is "no," why are you comparing their situations to Shelby's?
Lots of elite runners improve. Some are clean, some are dirty. But when someone goes from 15:06 to 14:23 (as Shelby did) AND tests positive for a banned steroid (as Shelby did), it's about as open-and-shut of a case as you're going to get. Pretending otherwise is pure denialism.
