Red flags in the Houlihan case that need explaining

I've listened to the LRC podcast now, and let's be fair, Rojo is actually asking questions about the case, he isn't just accepting the BTC line. Jonathan seems to be taking a fan's perspective on this, he wants to believe Houlihan is innocent even though, as he says "the facts are not in her favor."

During the podcast, it was mentioned that Jonathan spoke to Houlihan's lawyer. The lawyer seems to have said they went back to the burrito truck and bought eight burritos, in which they found two that contained pig offal. If anyone from LRC is reading, do you know how much pig offal they found? And do you know if they had the meat tested for nandrolone? I noticed in the Fox News interview that the lawyer completely avoided the question of whether they tested the meat. Sometimes you have to listen to what is not being said.

On the whole, I really enjoyed the podcast, as I always do. One thing that I think LRC needs to be careful of is attacking institutions without understanding them. Rojo compared the conduct of CAS with criminal trials in the US and asked why there was no jury. Different countries have different methods for apportioning justice and no one system can claim to be best. In European countries, trials are about cold, hard facts, and have none of the theatre of US criminal trials (hence, OJ Simpson would never have got off in Europe). Also, for complex cases which require specialist, technical knowledge, many countries use expert panels because ordinary people cannot be expected to understand the evidence in sufficient detail. This isn't just in the doping realm but also financial fraud, for example. Houlihan got the same justice as every previous athlete that has stood before CAS.

The only point where I felt LRC really let themselves down was in bringing in Ayotte. This only seemed to serve a conspiracy theory about some supposed anti-American grudge. To be clear, Houlihan's team made no complaint about the technical competence of the test. Their argument was that once they claimed the nandrolone came from pig offal, then the AIU should have tested the B sample with that as consideration (essentially, pleading for special treatment). The AIU argued that it wasn't their job to change testing protocols to accommodate the athlete, it is the athletes job first to prove that the meat that they ate was tainted. It's not LRCs job to build conspiracy theories unless they have reason to believe that Ayotte acted incompetently in this case.

The BTC team have clearly decided that their PR strategy is to attack the credibility of the anti-doping institutions rather than focus on the strength of their own defense. We need to ask why that is.

davies report wrote:

Would any normal court convict on a drug offence of cheating on this evidence beyond reasonable doubt?

.

The odds that a pig that was not castrated (where every pig for American food consumption is castrated unless wild?) ended up being served to Shelby, when she in fact ordered beef, OR she was served or picked up the wrong order, AND she ate a sufficient quantity (>300g) of contaminated meat...

This is beyond reasonable doubt. And this is reason why she was served the full 4 year ban. Open and shut. See ya later.

High hopes wrote:

Sometimes you have to listen to what is not being said.

High hopes wrote:

The BTC team have clearly decided that their PR strategy is to attack the credibility of the anti-doping institutions rather than focus on the strength of their own defense. We need to ask why that is.

You're so right. Smart and experienced lawyers had plenty of time to explore EVERY possibility, so you can be sure that they have done all the testing. If they had a strong case, it would be out by now.

Two burritos out of eight had pork offal in them but definitely not nearly enough Nandrolone to spike a 5µg/L levels.

I see this as a cover up to save face. They know they got nothing, but it is important that general public sees Houlihan as a victim and not a villain, otherwise this could bring entire BTC down and maybe even Nike. They will cut Houlihan off like a gangrenous leg and will dress it up nicely.

twoggle wrote:

High hopes wrote:

Also remember that according to the evidence that Houlihan's team appears to be using, that quantity appears to be around 300g of meat.

There is not a single piece of evidence that it takes 300g of meat to trigger a positive test similar to Shelby’s reported levels. It’s just a LetsRun rumor that got started by posting a link to only one of mutiple studies and then misinterpreting the results of that one study. Not only does the research show that this is not true, but it is even stated in the WADA technical document that levels more than double what Shelby had can be obtained from meat.

But it is seemingly the study that Houlihan's team were relying on, which is where the 10 hour window stems from.

But, cool if you have evidence to the contrary. Can you send a link to the WADA document? It would be useful to have more facts in this thread. Why didn't Houlihan's team use the WADA document in their case? Seems odd.

La sopa de Sabadell wrote:

I see this as a cover up to save face. They know they got nothing, but it is important that general public sees Houlihan as a victim and not a villain, otherwise this could bring entire BTC down and maybe even Nike. They will cut Houlihan off like a gangrenous leg and will dress it up nicely.

Agreed - this is about saving Shalane and Jerry and BTC, not Shelby (Shelby is done for). And the PR is unfortunately working in the US.

Nike is safe though.

wejo wrote:

We need her biological passport 100%.

Has any runner ever released their biological passport data before?

If Rojo really asked why Shelby wasn't entitled to a jury with CAS, the answer is simple. It's because CAS was an appellate proceeding. If antidoping was anything like the American legal system, she would have been entitled to a "jury" for the AIU charge, but from what I've read it sounds like she AGREED to her AIU charge so that she could expedite the appellate process with CAS. It was a gamble she had to take, but it failed.

With CAS, I believe she would have been entitled to pick one of the members of the panel. WADA would also get to pick one of the arbitrators, and then CAS independently assigns the third member of the panel.

If innocent, I’d gladly share my TUE’s or state that I have none, biological passport, what meds and brand I take (Vit C, Iron, daily vitamin), last injection or IV and why....

If a teammate or coach, I’d say to SH I’m so sorry but I can’t train with you right now even if I thought you were innocent.

Seems simple info is omitted to gaslight/smoke screen the audience in this drama.

Ernest wrote:

A 15 ng/mL threshold is only applicable in 19NA testing protocol for pregnant women.

The flowchart seems to indicate Mass Spectrometry was performed and indicated Exogenous origin.

wada test wrote:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/td2019na_final_eng_clean.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjil-yNsZzxAhUDCs0KHVVXAcEQFjALegQIFhAC&usg=AOvVaw1pUWpXHtJyZBtRes7e_3GK

According to their own testing procedure above, as the last page flow chart shows, you can have less than 15ng/ml, and still not have an aaf.

they would be better off challenging the reagents used for mass spec. There's a global shortage of quality reagents

I doubt that the Houlihan team is relying on that one study since there are other studies mentioned in that WADA technical document such as: Guay C et al. Excretion of norsteroids’ phase II metabolites of different origin in human. Steroids 74: 350-8, 2009.

The Guay study shows much higher levels of nandrolone metabolites after ingesting much less meat. I posted some of the results of that study earlier in the thread.

If one relies on only the one tiny study posted to LR, even that showed a much higher ng/mL result than what Houlihan’s results were. So take (Houlihan’s result) / (max result in study) * 300g to estimate meat needed from this one study. But I suspect the Guay study was the one relied on the most.

Here is the most recent WADA technical document (and the one from April, 2021 has similar wording). See end of Section 3.2.1.

High hopes wrote:

The BTC team have clearly decided that their PR strategy is to attack the credibility of the anti-doping institutions rather than focus on the strength of their own defense. We need to ask why that is.

Once again, you have nailed it.

Thank you for taking the time to think through this so carefully and write it up so clearly. The readers of LRC owe you.

Work Commute Track Club wrote:

davies report wrote:

Would any normal court convict on a drug offence of cheating on this evidence beyond reasonable doubt?

.

The odds that a pig that was not castrated (where every pig for American food consumption is castrated unless wild?) ended up being served to Shelby, when she in fact ordered beef, OR she was served or picked up the wrong order, AND she ate a sufficient quantity (>300g) of contaminated meat...

This is beyond reasonable doubt. And this is reason why she was served the full 4 year ban. Open and shut. See ya later.

Plus, from the press:

"From what I've been told, pig offal has high concentrations of nandrolone," Houlihan told Fox News. "This food truck that I happened to go to that night (before the test) — I've eaten there a lot before — this food truck serves pig offal as part of their menu. I happened to ingest this hormone, and 10 hours later at the peak of when it's supposed to be in your body while you're digesting it, I happened to get tested. Honestly, it's a very unlucky series of events. I'm kind of blown away by what happened."

[quote]DQ wrote:

[quote]

In her interview with Fox News, SH's answers are not nearly as clear or as complete as they should be to make us any more confident of her version:

"From what I've been told, pig offal has high concentrations of nandrolone,"

No, the high concentrations are in the offal of non-castrated boars, a tiny, almost infinitesimal portion of the pork consumed in the US.

"This food truck that I happened to go to that night (before the test) — I've eaten there a lot before”

So, you know the truck. After you got busted, did you go back to try to gather evidence of your “contamination” by offal?

“— this food truck serves pig offal as part of their menu.”

But you don’t say you ordered or ate pigs’ offal, you say the truck serves it. Not convincing.

“I happened to ingest this hormone,”

So, how did this happen, according to you or your doctors? When a tub of ice cream disappears from our refrigerator, do I tell my family “I happened to ingest it?”

“Honestly, it's a very unlucky series of events.”

To say the least! So, it’s all down to luck. Just a whole series of highly improbable factors that conspired to get you convicted?

Shelby! Did you not rehearse all this with the Nike lawyers and PR people??? You're making it pretty easy for us to doubt you.

Another red flag was that this entire spring we were told by the Houlihan/BTC camp that Shelby was injured, that is why she hadn't been racing? Was this the case or were they awaiting their appeal? If they were just covering it up, then how can we trust anything that is coming from them?

twoggle wrote:

High hopes wrote:

Also remember that according to the evidence that Houlihan's team appears to be using, that quantity appears to be around 300g of meat.

There is not a single piece of evidence that it takes 300g of meat to trigger a positive test similar to Shelby’s reported levels. It’s just a LetsRun rumor that got started by posting a link to only one of mutiple studies and then misinterpreting the results of that one study. Not only does the research show that this is not true, but it is even stated in the WADA technical document that levels more than double what Shelby had can be obtained from meat.

This

twoggle wrote:

I doubt that the Houlihan team is relying on that one study since there are other studies mentioned in that WADA technical document such as: Guay C et al. Excretion of norsteroids’ phase II metabolites of different origin in human. Steroids 74: 350-8, 2009.

The Guay study shows much higher levels of nandrolone metabolites after ingesting much less meat. I posted some of the results of that study earlier in the thread.

Paper is free here:

In my opinion, this what might have happened:

- she learned about some kind of "natural" supplement that is safe, vegan, whole30, and all that speeds up recovery

- she looks at ingredients and none of them were on the banned list, so she started taking it

- she had a test and scored high on nandrolone, which I believe she had not heard about before

- she and a small involved group of people came up with a burrito excuse

- little negligence on her part started ballooning — she needed to lie to teammates and coaches and now to the public

- sure, she passed all lie detectors, etc simply saying I've not taken "nandrolone" (because it was not on the list of ingredients of whatever "natural" product she was taking — Floyd Landis defense was similar: "I've not taken testosterone", which later he explained, he took other things and only his testosterone was elevated (because of something else?) so technically he was not laying

- so now there's no return and they have to stick to meat eating BS

I feel sorry for her because I actually truly believe she didn't mean to cheat, she just naively believed in something that was advertised as safe and clean.

But of course, now, I believe she should be treated as a doper no matter stupid mistake or not.

Harambe wrote:

twoggle wrote:

I doubt that the Houlihan team is relying on that one study since there are other studies mentioned in that WADA technical document such as: Guay C et al. Excretion of norsteroids’ phase II metabolites of different origin in human. Steroids 74: 350-8, 2009.

The Guay study shows much higher levels of nandrolone metabolites after ingesting much less meat. I posted some of the results of that study earlier in the thread.

Paper is free here:

https://sci-hub.do/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039128X08002481

Thanks. Didn’t know there was a free link. :-)

Harambe, did you notice the conclusion stated that ingestion of non-castrated pig offal is highly improbably outside of the research context and that synthetic or endogenous origin CAN be determined by the isotope ration mass spectrometry?

"4. Conclusion

Our results indicate that when the norsteroids conjugates are properly measured, 19-NA and 19-NE glucuronides and

sulfates are present in relative amounts that do not permit a distinction between their synthetic or endogenous origin, which could only be proven by the isotope ratio mass spectrometry [36,37]. With regards to the highly improbable

ingestion of non-castrated pig offal outside research context, since norsteroids are normally present in the level of micrograms in the kidneys, liver, heart, not surprisingly, the urine samples collected in the few following hours can contain principally 19-NA glucuronide in an amount that could be in vast excess of the threshold for positivity."