16 Questions That Need To Be Answered In The Shelby Houlihan Case

No college testing? I was tested twice in out of competition tests by NCAA testers as a D1 athlete in 2002. Is this no longer happening?

Yeah, it would be like the 90s when you could have as much epo as you wanted. I disagree the sport would be unrecognizable. It would probably look pretty much the same but with deeper fields and less East African dominance.

I hear you on normalization at the college and under level. That is a major sticking point though.

Without testing running will become a carnival freak show. Track is already a circus now with the ring for the running and several events taking place at the same time infield.

There will be less competition. This was mentioned during the Armstrong stuff but if doping is allowed the ones who can afford the best doctors and PEDs will win. This can be seen now where most very good college runners disappear after school while others find a way onto well known teams and have professional careers.

Lolz. Keyboard heroes and aggregators pretending they’re journalists.

THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:

I still don’t get why the Brojos and Gault seem to have their head in the sand that Nandrolone may have been in a tainted supplement/PED? Victor Conte asserted as much as a leading possibility for Nandrolone busts because everyone agrees it would take a moron to use.

I get it. I'm very much aware that is an option. I want that stated on the record.

I keep hearing from people that argument, "She must be clean as no one takes nandrolone. Well a lot of people are testing positive for it. So the answer is a) either unsophisticated doping b) tainted supplements / steroids c) Tainted food.

I'd l ike to see the levels though of other tests, etc.

The notion that USADA would have thrown out the case is a weak statement. USADA would clearly have a bias towards US athletes over AIU and WADA. It’s well known USADA is more lenient than the others. There’s even rumors going around USADA tipped them off. These statements would be an easy way to make people think they had nothing to do with it.

I’m not sure why you and others keep claiming 5ng is a low level. She’s testing for 2.5x the limit. That’s not low.

I cannot believe you and others are falling for this… they have the best lawyers, the best pr teams, the best everything and they couldn’t prove her innocence. Then to add fuel to the fire they gave a dishonest press conference where they essentially blamed this on questionable meat from a Mexican food truck, which by the way is racially insensitive. They had 6 months to come up with an explanation and this is the best we got?

What’s more insane to me is that people choosing to believe a group of people that have been lying to the us since this happened…. 6 months ago. I don’t believe a word they say.

rojo wrote:

I've had a week plus to think about everything and I realize there's a lot I want answered - from a lot of different people.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2021/06/16-questions-that-need-to-be-answered-in-the-shelby-houlihan-case/

Really enjoyed the article, rojo. Hope you get some answers. I like the suggestion to challenge the lawyer's comment about the idiocy of doping with nandrolone, too.

One minor issue: calling Shelby's suspension a death penalty of a running career is akin to calling a drunk driver's suspended license a death penalty of driving privileges (i.e., not on par with a death penalty case in any way).

opens door walks in sees whats happening wrote:

A lot of people are saying you’d have to be an idiot to take nandrolone but why? Seems like oral intake would be perfect for micro dosing because it leaves your system so quickly. Wouldn’t microdosing this stuff provide recovery benefits?

that probably should have been in there as I've been wondering the same thing.

One other #17 question. Why couldn't the steak burrito actually have nandrolone in it. Are cows never given nandrolone? I never understood why they are assuming the tainted foor was pork. Is it not possible to get tainted beef with nandrolone?

rojo wrote:

opens door walks in sees whats happening wrote:

A lot of people are saying you’d have to be an idiot to take nandrolone but why? Seems like oral intake would be perfect for micro dosing because it leaves your system so quickly. Wouldn’t microdosing this stuff provide recovery benefits?

that probably should have been in there as I've been wondering tghe same thing.

One other #17 question. Why couldn't the steak burrito actually have nandrolone in it. Are cows never given nandrolone? I never understood why they are assuming the tainted foor was pork. Is it not possible to get tainted beef with nandrolone?

More specifically, why didn't her coach/legal team not investigate that at all? The pork link had a study, but you don't need a study to know that beef producers are allowed to use nandro on their cows, and perhaps some of that may be in the beef they produce. Odd that they completely looked past that.

Sillyness wrote:

I’m not sure why you and others keep claiming 5ng is a low level. She’s testing for 2.5x the limit. That’s not low.

.

I almost put that in as a question. Do they consider it low?

I think the probably do, but that's why I asked about the values in the Kenyan cases so we could see if that's true.

But I think your logic is flawed. If the minimum wage is $1 an hour and you are making 2, it's still a very small salary.

I didn't put that in there because I read that when CJ Hunter - Marion Jones' husband at the time - tested positive for Nandrolone he tested positive at a level 1000x the limit.

The Dirty Duck wrote:

One minor issue: calling Shelby's suspension a death penalty of a running career is akin to calling a drunk driver's suspended license a death penalty of driving privileges (i.e., not on par with a death penalty case in any way).

You can keep driving when you are 50. You can't competing as a pro at 50.

Death penalty may not have been totally accurate as Justin Gatlin came back but if the peak of an track and field career is at most 10 years and this is a 4 year ban, it's kind of the equivalent of like a 40 year prison sentence.

rojo wrote:

One other #17 question. Why couldn't the steak burrito actually have nandrolone in it. Are cows never given nandrolone? I never understood why they are assuming the tainted foor was pork. Is it not possible to get tainted beef with nandrolone?

Non-castrated pigs are known to possess naturally high levels of nandrolone. As far as I' know, cows are not. I don't think anyone is suggesting that the pig she supposedly ate was 'given nandrolone'.

Sillyness wrote:

The notion that USADA would have thrown out the case is a weak statement. USADA would clearly have a bias towards US athletes over AIU and WADA. It’s well known USADA is more lenient than the others. There’s even rumors going around USADA tipped them off. These statements would be an easy way to make people think they had nothing to do with it..

I don't agree with that. I know it's the perception for some and that's why I talked about it perception is very important. BUt i'd like to see facts to back that up.

Can you name a single other anti doping agency that has taken down naitonal star after national hero like USADA. Marion, Lance, Gatlin, etc.

I think USADA is letting these people off because they think tainted food is real but I'd like to see more studies to do it as it's even getting hard for me to accept that every star that tests positive is on tainted food and that others are having sex with people on stuff. . That's why I asked about what percent of tests are done on stars.

I probably shoudl have put this in there more directly - and sort of only hinted at it with a question to the lawyer and the question about the % of stars tested - but are random people we've never heard of in sports we've never heard of getting popped for stuff with tainted food/

Excellent piece, Rojo. Hope top-tier press pick this up and repeat the qs until we get the answers.

maclean and jerk wrote:

Burrito Picante wrote:

Those are reasonable arguments but they don’t currently test at the high school or the college level.

No college testing? I was tested twice in out of competition tests by NCAA testers as a D1 athlete in 2002. Is this no longer happening?

This didn't change for me by the late-2000s. It is still my understanding that twice a year is typical. Not a lot, but still something.

rojo wrote:

I've had a week plus to think about everything and I realize there's a lot I want answered - from a lot of different people.

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2021/06/16-questions-that-need-to-be-answered-in-the-shelby-houlihan-case/

Rojo,

Thank you for compiling your questions. A couple of comments:

1. Paul Greene probably will not and should not be releasing details about other cases to the media without client approval … and I doubt that he would go to clients and say, “Letsrun wants me to release details about your case because of some other case. Do you mind?”

2. I would love to see Houlihan’s biological passport data, but nothing good can come from publically-releasing it:

a) It won’t prove or disprove nandrolone doping.

b) The vultures will pour over it and raise suspicions about every fluctuation in values.

c) Houlihan might be forced to release private medical information to try to explain every fluctuation. Were they sick? Were they taking a drug related to past surgeries or a chronic condition? Were they at altitude? Do they have a medical condition that might lead to fluctuations in values? Were they on birth control drugs? Pregnant? Taking STD drugs? Taking antidepressants? Etc.

d) If it’s easy to release, why aren’t all athletes releasing this information since many people think almost everyone is a doper?

i lean towards rojo wrote:

The Dirty Duck wrote:

One minor issue: calling Shelby's suspension a death penalty of a running career is akin to calling a drunk driver's suspended license a death penalty of driving privileges (i.e., not on par with a death penalty case in any way).

You can keep driving when you are 50. You can't competing as a pro at 50.

Death penalty may not have been totally accurate as Justin Gatlin came back but if the peak of an track and field career is at most 10 years and this is a 4 year ban, it's kind of the equivalent of like a 40 year prison sentence.

Except she doesn't go to prison. She is free to do anything she wants in life except earn (more) money doing the sport she cheated at for the next 42 months. She doesn't even have a criminal record like a drunk driver does. A 40-year prison sentence is a bad analogy. Death penalty is worse.

Has anyone conducted an analysis of the trending in drug tests of certain athletes/clubs/etc? Some of the athletes on the higher end of the testing spectrum have not raced much of late, which begs the question of why they were tested this much. And to USADA: why don’t you post the result of any initial determination, similar to safesport (frankly, publishing it on the website would actually be less damning than safesport, where massive email blasts go out all the time to large distribution lists). It seems to reason that there should be a consistent approach applied.

When Jerry Schumacher said he had never heard of Nandrolone, I knew she doped.

Case closed.