The Railroading of Shelby Houlihan

Part 2: The Sample

Many folks have suggested that the 5 ng/ml of nandrolone detected in the single sample was a high amount, and exaggerate by saying things like it's '250% over the limit!'. In fact, 5 ng/ml is a very low amount and entirely consistent with it being from ingested pork. From 1998, the nandrolone limit for females was 5 ng/ml (2 ng/ml for males) until it was set back to 2 ng/ml by WADA in 2004. During pregnancy, the WADA limit is raised to 15 ng/ml and according to their rules, any amount less than 15 ng/ml must be tested using the most accurate and appropriate methods for a given sample. When Linford Christie tested positive for nandrolone, for example, his level was 200 ng/ml, and CJ Hunter had a level of 2000 ng/ml. One study by Christiane Ayotte found a level of 160 ng/ml after the subject had eaten pig offal:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bjsm.2006.028027

It is remarkable that the latest WADA technical document (TD2021NA) on testing for nandrolone has a section which deals specifically with pig offal.

https://www.wada-ama.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/td2021na_final_eng_1.pdf

The document states: "The origin of the urinary 19-NA may not be established by GC/C/IRMS analysis... Therefore, if the consumption of edible parts of intact pigs is invoked by an Athlete as the unlikely origin of a 19-NA finding, this may be established based on the pharmacokinetics of 19-NA excretion." In other words, if the chemical signature of the 19-NA is inconclusive even after using the most sophisticated test available, they may look at how quickly the nandrolone was excreted by the athlete over time (using multiple tests) to help determine its origin. WADA did not do this and Houlihan's lawyer, Paul Greene, shows how the chemical signature of nandrolone in the sample was not consistent with it being from a synthetic source (either oral or injected) in this key slide shown during his press conference (queued at the 3:52 mark):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jtMMxBPxGg&t=233s

The study shown in the slide above was (again) by Christian Ayotte, the very same person who tested Houlihan's urine, and it concludes that with respect to the ingestion of pig offal: "... the urine sample 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." An easier-to-read explanation of the chemical signature of nandrolone can be found in Richard Lovett's excellent article in Women's Running:

https://www.womensrunning.com/culture/news/is-nandrolone-found-in-pork-shelby-houlihan-burrito-questions-answered

Dude, she got caught cheating. A sample positive, B sample positive, and Court of Arbitration for Sport upholding a 4 year ban is about as clear cut as it gets. Brojos are even silent now that they have dug into the facts.

Barry Badrinath wrote:

Dude, she got caught cheating. A sample positive, B sample positive, and Court of Arbitration for Sport upholding a 4 year ban is about as clear cut as it gets. Brojos are even silent now that they have dug into the facts.

Facts don't matter to these people.

Doping is strict liability. If you get popped you need STRONG EVIDENCE of your convoluted excuse. It's not innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty by having nandrolone metabolites in your system.

If all the Nike money in the world couldn't produce such evidence... is she really being railroaded?

Wait for the CAS report.

LOL, she should count her cheating little self lucky she cannot be prosecuted or locked up for her crimes.

Part 3: So what does all this mean?

There is no doubt Houlihan purchased food from a Mexican food truck 10 hours before she was randomly tested because there are records which prove it. For it NOT to be the source of the nandrolone would be an extraordinary coincidence, and could only be explained by hypothesizing she visited the truck deliberately in order to consume nandrolone orally and have a ready-made excuse in case she was tested. The problem with this theory is that a single dose of nandrolone taken orally would offer no benefit, since it gets metabolized within hours, and she could just as well delay the test or take a whereabouts violation. If she had injected nandrolone, that would have been detectable in her urine for many weeks or months, and all other tests (16 performed in 2020) and the one taken 5 weeks later, were negative. If she instead regularly took oral doses of nandrolone (eg. multiple times per week), with presumably many visits to the Mexican food truck to hide it, there might be some performance benefit (though it would damage her already-damaged liver). However -- and this is a crucial point -- such a dosing regimen would have left telltale traces of nandrolone in her hair. When her hair was tested (which WADA could also test), it was negative. Therefore, the only possible doping explanation is that she somehow got hold of nandrolone that had a similar chemical signature as endogenous pork nandrolone, and the ONE TIME she ingested it happened to be in the hours before she got randomly tested. I find this extremely hard to believe, and even if it were true, the punishment would not be justified since it would have offered no benefit, just as eating tainted pork once would offer no benefit.

Why would WADA do this?

WADA is not in the business of figuring out the truth; their goal is to reduce the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports across the world in a uniform way, and using Shelby's positive test and subsequent punishment as a warning to other athletes achieves that objective. WADA needed a "win" before the Olympics, and from their perspective, it doesn't matter whether Shelby was actually clean or not.

As I have researched this story, one name stands out above all others: Christiane Ayotte. She is the author of numerous studies on nandrolone and is probably the world's foremost expert on how to detect it. Thus, many have unknowingly quoted her studies to defend the testing which she herself performed, which can lead to a kind of circular reasoning. She was President of the World Association of Anti-Doping Scientists, and runs the WADA-accredited doping control laboratory in Montreal that performed the test on Houlihan's sample. WADA, an international organization, is headquartered in Montreal. More than anyone, it was Ayotte who decided that Houlihan's sample was positive and exogenous. It was also Ayotte whose false testimony against long-jumper Jarrion Lawson was what helped him overturn the four-year ban he had received as a result of the test which she oversaw, as explained by a poster on Slowtwitch:

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/forum/?post=7537069#p7537069

And in a Let's Run feature article (behind a paywall):

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2020/04/the-amazing-story-of-how-jarrion-lawson-cleared-his-name-he-showed-that-the-head-of-a-wada-lab-provided-false-testimony-against-him

To be fair, Ayotte has been fighting a legitimate war against PEDs for decades, and in her mind, it may have reached a point where the end justifies the means, even if that means someone loses their career in a way that is not justified by the circumstances. In 2005, she even posted about nandrolone on this very message board:

https://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=886533

It is worth noting that the 2019 Technical Document which precedes the current one (TD2021NA) does not seem to materially differ in the way Houlihan's samples should have been handled, however, the language and guidance with respect to pig offal was added only to the more recent version that became effective on April 1, 2021, which may have given them a little more wiggle room in January to misinterpret Houlihan's sample as exogenous. In any case, because WADA was dragging its feet in a way that would've prevented Houlihan from participating in the Olympics, her lawyer had no choice but to force WADA to hold the hearing with CAS at a date earlier than they had wished, which I speculate may have caused some resentment and lack of due process on their part.

Many have suggested the entire philosophy behind the current testing paradigm that WADA employs for track & field athletes needs to be replaced. I agree and believe athletes do not enjoy sticking themselves with needles and ingesting dangerous substances, and that if they felt others weren't competing against them using those means, they too, would not feel the need to resort to such measures. In my opinion, the key to fixing this problem is for world-class athletes to gain a set of common benefits by virtue of being accepted and belonging to that group, and for the athletes themselves to ultimately govern their own behavior, similar to the way professional leagues like the NBA do through unions. Although I cannot imagine an international T&F union, I can see country-based organizations that could provide, for example, comprehensive and long-lasting health care once athletes have reached a world-class level, along with incentives to discourage and treat the abuse of drugs in a discreet way that is not meant primarily to enforce fairness, but is done instead for the health and safety of those who participate in the sport.

As for me, I have no affiliations and am simply a hobbyjogger that buys all those fancy shoes you all are wearing and cares about the sport. if you tend to distrust those who post anonymously (and you should), you may find me on Twitter at the handle used here.

#noshelburrito

https://i.imgur.com/I53fuyg.png

Ok Nike/BTC shill. Feel better after getting that off your chest?

It doesn't matter. She doped. It was verified. She appealed to an arbiter. It was upheld. See you in four years.

I would ask you to look into the very plausible scenario that she took a PED that contained trace quantities of Nandrolone. If the Pork Offal/nandrolone theory was so strong why when her team sent a PI were they unable to verify it with hard evidence?

moultonk wrote:

Hi Shelby's lawyer!

Part 1: She failed her A Sample

Part 2: She failed her B Sample

Part 3: She was banned by AIU

Part 4: CAS unanimously rejected her appeal

Part 5: LetsRun crowd (rightfully) roasted her and will continue to do so

There is doubt about everything Houlihan and her Nike supporters have said. You are either a Nike stooge creating misdirection or you are not very smart.

1) Houlihan had a steroid in her system above the allowable limit. Houlihan does not deny this.

2) Burden of proof is on Houlihan to prove she did nothing wrong. It has not been proven that Houlihan purchased food from Mexican food truck ten hours before ped test.

If you are a Nike stooge. Stop. If you are not bright. Stop. She cheated. She got caught.

I'll take the reasoning of a duly authorized judicial body over your apologia for a convicted doper anyday.

someone at nike / btc seriously took a week to decide to write a rebuttal on lrc?

you have also completely skated over the bits where the guidancee say; nandrolone is deliberately manufactured to look non-synthetic, and boars have levels that screw up the gc/c/irms.

due to that the burden is even more on the athlete. if nike seriously couldnt come up with a better case in 5 months, then there wasnt one.

look at froome with clenbuterol or whatever. they smashed it.

Nike / btc were lazy and or incompetent in their systemic dopeing regime.

The cover up is a disgrace.

This story aint over - could be bigger than la.

And Christian Coleman was at the shopping mall buying Christmas presents.

I’m continually surprised at the condemning reaction of letsrun, who knows little of the nuances surround nandrolone levels and the ways they can be achieved

Armstronglivs wrote:

I'll take the reasoning of a duly authorized judicial body over your apologia for a convicted doper anyday.

right? I've never understood why people defend dopers. She got caught in violation of the rules, and has failed both in the eyes of the court and when placed in public scrutiny to substantively defend herself. There have been inconsistencies with her framing of events in the presser and the interview on fox news (still baffles me why they did that and even put her on camera to talk for herself), as well as the gross of clear disconnects between the narrative she's presented to us (she ate a special pork burrito that she did not order 10.5-9.5 hours before she was randomly tested and popped hot for a joint-health and tissue-density PED).

Shalane's defense and lack of distancing from shelby is interesting to me now. More than anything, Jerry's defense makes sense: you're a boss defending your subordinate, and either you believe no wrong has happened (whether accurately or not), or are willing to convince yourself that no wrong has happened. Shalane's makes less sense: while yes, she is an authority on the team, in this capacity she's little more than a walking talking prop. if shelby actually took the roids and that comes out later - anyone who has defended her will be immediately suspect. I don't think shalane had much to gain by way of defending her, and has a significant amount to lose when this inevitably backfires unless she does damage control.

moultonk wrote:

There seems to be a great deal of confusion and deliberate misinformation about certain aspects of the Houlihan case, which are worth clarifying. Many commentators seem uncomfortable with the uncertainty that surrounds her case and, in their zeal to combat doping, have engaged in rumor and unfounded accusations against Houlihan and others, choosing to be certain that she and her associates are wrongdoers. This witch hunting is a moral defect and will not lead to a positive result for anyone in the sport. ….

Good summary! There are a few people on LR who are actually interested in a scientific discussion on this case and a discussion of the WADA guidance.

Below are a few things I would look for in the full CAS report when it comes out:

1. Look at the Delta carbon-13 values for 19-NA (nandrolone metabolite) as detailed in section 3.2.3 of the WADA technical document:

Under normal circumstances these values can help determine if the nandrolone was endogenous (including pig offal) or exogenous (including nandrolone injections). As an example, you can look at Figure 5 (bottom left) on the Y-axis of this study to see the differences:

While Figure 5 shows values distinctly different for endogenous and exogenous, other researchers have found some overlap. What is very important however is that the WADA technical document specifically states (at the end of section 3.2.1) that the delta carbon-13 values from GC/C/IRMS may not be accurate if pig ingestion is involved: “The origin of the urinary 19-NA may not be established by GC/C/IRMS analysis, since the varying diets of migrating wild boars lead to dissimilar delta carbon-13 values which may range between -15 and -25.” This leads us to the second key piece of information to look at:

2. Pharmacokinetics of 19-NA excretion. This was the sole remedy that WADA provided should the athlete claim exposure to pork caused the exposure to nandrolone. End of section 3.2.1: “Therefore, if the consumption of edible parts of intact pigs is invoked by the athlete as the unlikely origin of a 19-NA finding, this may be established based on the pharmacokinetics of 19-NA excretion.” Doping with nandrolone can lead to it being found in the urine for months and sometimes more than a year. What was found or not found in Houlihan’s subsequent tests? This is WADA’s only guidance to determine if the nandrolone was endogenous or exogenous, so it is important to see what they report.

3. WADA early 2021 guidance on nandrolone was published in December, 2020 and became active in on April 1, 2021, two months before Houlihan’s hearing. Did the AIU and CAS appropriately use this guidance document or did they choose to follow an older guidance document without recent suggestions by WADA on how to differentiate endogenous and exogenous nandrolone where pork ingestion may be involved. If they chose to follow only older WADA documents, what was the discussion *during the hearing* about “lex mitior” that the Swiss court recently ruled the CAS should follow. So, look for discussions about exactly which WADA guidance document was followed and about “lex mitior.”

4. Look for a statement as to the *exact steps* they took to determine if it was endogenous or exogenous nandrolone and where exactly those steps are laid out in the WADA guidance document.

5. Look at the ratio of 19-NA/19-NE. If the nandrolone was determined to NOT be exogenous or inconclusive and the ratio of 19-NA/19-NE is > 3, then it is a atypical finding requiring further investigation, but not a drug test fail.

If the AIU or CAS did not discuss the things above, but instead focused on whether they believed Houlihan, it will be an interesting read, but it means they went off the rails and did not follow WADA guidance — which would be a disaster for doping as there would then be no rules for the doping agencies.

Ite ad Joseph wrote:

Barry Badrinath wrote:

Dude, she got caught cheating. A sample positive, B sample positive, and Court of Arbitration for Sport upholding a 4 year ban is about as clear cut as it gets. Brojos are even silent now that they have dug into the facts.

Facts don't matter to these people.

This is the case. Houlihan is a pretty white girl so letsrunners are trying hard to believe she is clean. They were even looking through the photos from google reviews of food trucks to try to prove there was one in the area using offal in their carne asada or something.

Agreed, but dont see how this is possible. Nike have had 5 months to throw everything at it, including the obvious and inherent threats. And CAS made such a high level decision based on some fag packet scribbling after a few beers at lunch? Nah.

But we dont know, we wait and see, and i stand to be corrected.

But this one is far from over