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

You’re looking at the wrong WADA Technical Document … and the flowchart is just a guide/summary for the body of the document. One of the three CAS arbiters agreed with Houlihan’s main argument that the wrong testing procedure was used. It was a good argument under the circumstances and it was based on the text in the Technical Document.

The "context" was artificially narrowed by the WA/AIU and their expert witnesses based on a number of unproven assumptions.

The original full claim and testimony was offal from a burrito (we saw evidence for both the "buche" and "chorizo" burritos). It was the experts who made several assumptions to narrow the claim to "only cryptorchid", "at most 6 months old", and "only pork meat and stomach, rather than kidney, heart, liver, salivary glands, testes, and fat" and "can only be corn, despite conceding increased soy in the diets". All this to argue an indirect and non-controversial point that nandrolone positives from pork ingestion will happen, but will be rare in the USA, an argument which may or may not apply to this specific case.

This word "plausible" is often used in these forums, as if likelihood is interchangeable with plausbility. What makes offal ingestion a plausible source is the science that compels WADA to say that amounts less than 10 ng/ml are in the low range are usual, and sometimes significantly higher (e.g. Prof. Ayotte reporting 130 and 160 ng/ml), and that the (exogenous) origin may not be established after consumption of pork offal, as varying the diets of the boars can invalidate the test.

The "excuse/reason" was not ruled "unacceptable". The offal in the burrito as the source was ruled "unestablished" as the most likely source, lacking "specific and concrete elements" -- something WADA knows is a difficult proof to provide.

Had to paste my reply into a quote.

Excellent breakdown. But we know someone who won't be able to accept it.

Sorry, you're only expressing your own fantasies there.

Just guessing again. Wavelights have been available since the '70's. The shoes might add a fraction of a second - depending on the runner.

There is an earlier version of the TD2021NA in the Archive dated 21 December 2020, effective 1 April 2021. Generally, if newer versions are published and potentially favorable to the athlete, then the principle of "Lex Mitior" applies, and the newer version applies.

The TD2019NA also makes explicit that nandrolone from pork consumption is considered "endogenous", but it isn't explicit who is supposed to, and how to, make that determination. But in no case is the athlete required to establish pork consumption on the balance of probabilities to the WADA Lab, before the AAF is reported -- this burden is placed on the athlete two steps later, after the AAF is reported, and after the ADRV is charged.

You understand it better on me? More baseless assumptions or wishful imagination without any evidence whatsoever.

So you did notice Ross's explanations. Why did you pretend there were none? Were they way over your head?

And no, no new facts. Who said he brought new facts? That's one of your many problems. You keep talking about insufficient evidence, but here we are, over four years after Shelburrito got caught, and you still haven't found any "new facts". Neither has Shelby or her professional detective.

I think so. Prove me wrong.

What did I pretend about Ross? I said Ross wrote nothing new that I didn't already know. Ross also failed to address any of my expressed doubts.

The point of requesting new facts is that the existing facts are plainly ambiguous and inconclusive. The CAS made it clear that they resolved these ambiguities by ignoring them with presumptions against the athlete. I presume athletes are innocent until proven guilty -- that did not happen here.

Note the CAS Panel, faced with all the facts before them, were still split on the decision of whether doping was properly charged in the first place. The CAS rulings are not as cut-and-dry as everyone wants to believe.

And I did find "new facts" that were not before the CAS, in the athletes favor. For example, I found Prof. Ayotte's research reporting levels up to 130 ng/ml and 160 ng/ml from offal -- just like Houlihan claimed was in a burrito. I found that intact boar can end up in the food chain after USDA inspection, based on a sniff test. I found that the food chain also contains immuno-castrated boars. I found that pigs were slaughtered with 2-3 months delay due to backlogs from several supply issues.

The Buche argument was doomed to fail because basic homework wasn't done on the implications of the claim.

The AIU had an agricultural sciences expert (John McGlone) explain why even in the event that this was from a boar (uncastrated or not, itself fed steroids or not), the outer stomach which is the only part that would be used for buche, simply would not contain the concentrations of nandrolone that would be able to fuel the levels found in her. Incredibly the defense didn't (largely because they couldn't) even challenge this and other a few other salient and key points.

Ultimately I think the defense was entirely based on smoke bombs and misdirection narrative. Not like we haven't famously seen that be effective in the past (Johnny Cochrane anyone?). I think the strategy was to actually spin a story with so many ambiguities and possibilities that it could cast enough doubt to actually make it seems plausible. They were hoping that enough "so you're saying there is a chance" admissions would become a snowball of plausibility. They claimed the testing was inadequate knowing full well their interpretation of "adequate" was so expensive and time consuming it would never actually be done. But unfortunately there were just a few too many unchallengeable facts (unchallengeable because they weren't challenged) that blew up their narrative and ultimately made it impossible for her to even remotely explain how nandrolone got into her body in an excusable manner.

Good point, but it looks like the smoking gun is that Professor Ayotte may have lied about what the carbon isotopes mean. -23% does not imply use of nandrolone injections or oral precursors as stated in the CAS paper. The paper I linked measured the metabolite at -29% fairly consistently. They also tested nor-andro which was briefly mentioned in the CAS paper.

If I remember correctly, the positive test came from Ayotte's lab, so we have to question the validity of that.

I was asking about cows, and he was talking about pigs, and you imply in elegant fashion that this disputes the cow argument. I have to question the motives of some people commenting here.

No smoking gun. The case was lost as soon as McGlone opined - unrebutted by Team Shelby - that there is a "far less than 1 in 10,000" chance of boar in a pork burrito. As Salvitore just mention, the Buche argument came on top of that. By the time the CIR came up, the case was lost three times over.

And what in the world is the problem with the Ayotte lady? Is everyone here playing the telephone game? Even rekrunner had to concede that all she did was calling all earlier test results "low" that CAS considered "large". No one has defined low or large in that context, or given any actual values. A big nothing burger. Indeed CAS never said she lied or anything of the sort, just that they weren't "entirely persuaded by Professor Ayotte's evidence":

Please explain her statement about -23% implying injection or precursor verus the paper I found showing -29% consistently and the lack of her publishing anything to support -23%.

Smoking gun bro.

Given the WADA TD mentions both "the occurrence of preparations of 19-norsteroids" with CIR between -16‰ and -24‰, I'm inclined to think Prof. Ayotte didn't lie about the existence of pseudo-endogenous nandrolone. This must have been something new around 2015 timeframe. Back in 2015, the TD2015NA lists "less than -27 ‰" as a necessary criteria to "to reject the hypothesis of endogenous 19-NA formation". However, the TD2016NA first mentions "pseudo-endogenous" "preparations of norsteroids", and removes this criteria, permitting values in the "endogenous range" to now be rejected as "endogenous". This is yet another change that seems to increase the risk of false positives against the athlete.

Note that the TD also mentions that, depending on the diets of the boars, these values may range between -15‰ and -25‰". This is relevant given the evidence that the diets of pigs included increased amount of soy, which would shift the CIR. This means that values around -23‰ and -24‰ are ambiguous. As Shelby wrote in her timeline, according to her expert, "the science cannot definitively prove otherwise (it cannot distinguish whether the levels were due to exogenous ingestion of nandrolone or endogenous consumption of pig offal)" and "the science cannot definitively prove otherwise (it cannot distinguish whether the levels were due to exogenous ingestion of nandrolone or endogenous consumption of pig offal)."

Prof. Ayotte's deceptive testimony is falsely reducing the original claim of "offal" to just meat and stomach, and then representing to the CAS that the "literature" shows values of 2.5 ng/ml as some kind of maximum, while neglecting to mention to the CAS that she herself has published papers supporting Houlihan's claim of "offal", reporting values as high as 130 ng/ml and 160 ng/ml.

LOL. Good for you for admitting that you again made a baseless assumption. And now you want me to prove you wrong??

Poor memory on top of a huge superiority complex. Of course Ross did not respond to your "expressed" doubts. They are way too outlandish for anyone to seriously consider.

And of course that is not what you said. This is what you said (just yesterday lol):

"With all due respect to Ross, he just expressed his opinion, without making the case."

Also wrong. It's neither "deceptive" nor "falsely reducing". Didn't you just claim to understand a lot?

Shelby's "claim" was offal from a certain specific food truck. Said owner had Buche on the menu, and told the PI that the pork ingredient was stomach. McClone told CAS that only the outer stomach muscle is sold, not the whole organ - something you can quickly verify.

Remember "concrete and specific"? Mysteriously claiming "offal" may be good enough to fool you, but specific evidence is needed. If you only provide stomach as pork ingredient based on the invoice, then the experts and CAS will go with that, and exactly that, regardless how the dish was called. Not deceptive but logical. And so they did. Unrebutted by Shelby and her esteemed experienced lawyer. No surprise there. That should tell you something. But you won't accept any facts, you made that perfectly clear.

Feel free to claim now that the owner lied, without any evidence whatsoever, added kidney and liver and testicles in December 2020 to the burritos, but not in January 2021 because the test didn't show any kidneys etc. in the burrito in January. It's not like you any credibility left to lose.

Looks like they were trying to be diplomatic. The problem with Prof. Ayotte is the real conflict of interest by wearing two hats.

What did I concede? That "large" is not "low"? Lawson's agent Paul Doyle gave us numbers. He said large values were 208x larger than Lawson's value. As you quoted, Prof. Ayotte said "levels measured in her laboratory were always low" and "intentional cheaters could not be separated from athletes measured at levels of picograms consistent with food contaminated by hormones". Her lab data records said otherwise.

According to the "letsrun" scoop:

"Lawson’s team requested records from Ayotte’s lab to confirm these claims; the lab denied the records, forcing Lawson’s team to appeal to CAS to compel the lab to turn them over."

"The actual records revealed Ayotte’s claim was not accurate. The CAS panel noted some of the levels measured “were large” and that 18 of the 21 positive tests for trenbolone since 2013 contained higher concentrations than Lawson’s .65 ng/mL. Lawson’s agent, Paul Doyle, told LetsRun.com the average concentration was 208 times higher."

"When reached for comment by LetsRun, Ayotte wrote in a statement that she believed her evidence was correct when she gave it."