Malcolm Gladwell: Why Was the Decision in Shelby Houlihan’s Doping Case So Unsatisfying?

Crop Duster-84 wrote:

Houlihan did not do everything in her power to prove her innocence. What became of the foul burrito? She probably discarded it and never thought the wiser.

That burrito is at the epicentre of the crisis. Yet, Houlihan ate most of it then threw it out, never questioning why it appeared 'off'. Why it tasted extra greasy. Never bagged it and asked her powers that be at Nike if they could get that looked into.

No, she didn't do everything in her power to PROVE her innocence.

She no longer had the power to do this, one month after the fact.

As we can see since the story came out, no one would think that a burrito could cause an AAF, including the Shelby Houlihan of Dec. 2020, so there would be reason or motivation to store a greasy USDA approved burrito for later testing.

High hopes wrote:

sanootage wrote:

Look at hormone profiles, the amount of drug found, change the threshold, come to a conclusion by cross examination.

You have literally just described the CAS process. The only difference would be if that was in place for an initial finding rather than at the appeal stage

Wrong.

It would have been the initial hearing if she had bothered .

No hormone levels.

It would be the volume found as indicating a real doper and not accidental use associated with zero tolerance.

And she was found credible but against the way the rules are constructed it had no relevance .

And the hair and lie test may be allowed.

Crop Duster-84 wrote:

She's also probably a liar.

Both she and Schumacher stated that said neither of them (individually) had never heard of nandrolone.

I don’t understand why anyone thinks this is a false statement, or why would even matter.

This tells me more about you, and absolutely nothing about Houlihan and Schumacher.

rekrunner wrote:

Crop Duster-84 wrote:

Did Houlihan do everything in her power to prove her innocence? Everything?? NO.

Her statements to that effect are false. She's being untruthful. Untruth is dishonesty.

This fails to convince me that she made any false statements.

We don’t have an exhaustive account of all she did.

The CAS report summarized the arguments they found relevant.

What she needed to really prove her innocence was beyond her power.

All she needed to do was prevent the AIU ’s office from proving her guilt.

She couldn't do this. She could not provide an apparently overwhelming evidence of innocence.

Had she kept the burrito, there'd be some trace of food potentially supporting her theory. In addition to keeping the burrito that she had in her possession, her lawyer could have potentially been able to obtain meat from the source to prove her innocence. Think of it this way: If Houlihan faced a DUI charge based on a high BAC, the breathalyzer device calibration records may show that the device was not properly calibrated at the time of Houlihan's arrest. And she walks.

WADA President John Fahey:

"The simple fact is that anyone who has a prohibited substance in their system is a cheat. It is as simple as that. The only argument then comes as to what was the nature of how that prohibited substance got into the athlete's system. But you're a cheat, effectively, the moment you've got that substance in there."

rekrunner wrote:

Crop Duster-84 wrote:

She's also probably a liar.

Both she and Schumacher stated that said neither of them (individually) had never heard of nandrolone.

I don’t understand why anyone thinks this is a false statement, or why would even matter.

This tells me more about you, and absolutely nothing about Houlihan and Schumacher.

Are you serious? I give it an outside shot that SH never heard of it, but Jerry? Even the most casual fan has heard of it. USATF coaches got through training:

Although I don’t agree, I am sympathetic to most of your point of view. Not here though. They are clearly lying and muddying the waters.

People ask "who keeps their burrito?" Some athletes will do a complete 180 the moment something seems 'dodgy'. Take Benjamin Hill (cycling), for example:

Hill claimed that during a competition he was given a supplement by another cyclist who told him that it was legal. At the end of the 2012 season at the Tour of Tasmania he was racing with an NRS team. He asked if anyone had any caffeine - some No Doz.

A team-mate told him that he had some caffeine powder, like 'Prerace', which is a legal supplement. But it was a bit more than just caffeine powder. He got tested (after the stage), and after he returned from testing he said, 'that thing I gave you I think it might be dodgy.' They checked it and sure enough it was on the ASADA website as banned. It was not what he told Hill it was. Hill called ASADA two days later. He put Prerace down when they asked him in thetesting what he had, because that's what he thought he had. It took about three months before he got a call saying he had a positive result. Hill thought it might have been okay. They back-dated his AAF to that phone call.

No doubt had she kept and preserved the burrito, and it tested in her favor, this would tip the balance, and we wouldn’t need the AIU experts.

But you say that as if it is a reasonable expectation for athletes to keep samples of the food they’ve eaten (and for how long? until the 10-year statute of limitations), and that being able to prove your innocence doesn’t involve a great deal of luck, and expense, and an extended time off from competing.

WADA president John Fahey may be unaware that the WADA code doesn’t express rule violations in terms of “cheat”, and he may also be unaware that the WADA code he is describing is a broken system in need of reform, due to the heightened risk of railroading athletes into 4-year bans and treating them as intentional cheats.

Sure — maybe supplements, but food? What reason would she have to think a greasy burrito was dodgy and should be preserved in case of any anti-doping needs?

llort_vbo wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I don’t understand why anyone thinks this is a false statement, or why would even matter.

This tells me more about you, and absolutely nothing about Houlihan and Schumacher.

Are you serious? I give it an outside shot that SH never heard of it, but Jerry? Even the most casual fan has heard of it. USATF coaches got through training: …

Although I don’t agree, I am sympathetic to most of your point of view. Not here though. They are clearly lying and muddying the waters.

Sure I’m serious.

Many casual fans have a heightened interest in doping.

Athletes and coaches receive anti-doping training, and probably learn to avoid steroids and EPO. But who reads all the drugs on the banned doping list? Maybe they’ve heard of “Deca” but not by the name nandrolone? Who knows?

But most importantly, this seems like a big non-issue. I don’t see it as Houlihan/Schumacher muddying the waters, but as a bunch of “fans” looking for more reasons not to believe Houlihan, Schumacher, and BTC.

llort_vbo wrote:

rekrunner wrote:

I don’t understand why anyone thinks this is a false statement, or why would even matter.

This tells me more about you, and absolutely nothing about Houlihan and Schumacher.

Are you serious? I give it an outside shot that SH never heard of it, but Jerry? Even the most casual fan has heard of it. USATF coaches got through training:

https://www.usatf.org/governance/anti-doping

Although I don’t agree, I am sympathetic to most of your point of view. Not here though. They are clearly lying and muddying the waters.

Do we know the exact name that was put in the charge sheet as first hit her.

I would think it did not say Nandrolone but a chemical name of some precursor or similar.

I agree; and the comment comes from the more simplistic times of black and white of some years ago.

And whilst the many was President he comes from a non scientific background being finance minister in Aus.

Besides that he is wrong by his own rules.

sanootage wrote:

Wrong.

It would have been the initial hearing if she had bothered .

No hormone levels.

It would be the volume found as indicating a real doper and not accidental use associated with zero tolerance.

And she was found credible but against the way the rules are constructed it had no relevance .

And the hair and lie test may be allowed.

Almost none of that is true. Witnesses and evidence were presented at CAS. Houlihan's team can produce hormone levels if they like and present them in evidence, if they didn't, it was a choice.

The panel thought she was of good character, it's a legalistic way of saying "you're not all bad", it didn't help because the facts were against her.

The hair and lie detector tests were both submitted as evidence. They were both dismissed by the AIU lawyers as flawed. The CAS panel agreed with that assessment.

Honestly, Houlihan would have gotten off if she'd hired a halfway competent lawyer. The burrito story fell to pieces within hours of it being made public. How the hell didn't her legal team foresee how weak it was? Or maybe that's just the best they had to work with

Hormone levels are not provided by the document package and you can’t get them under discovery.

And the lie and hair tests have been denied under previous case law.

- Because "She was handed her burrito that was unlabeled and wrapped in foil."

- And, insofar as "The service was very quick that night, and she was handed her burrito more quickly than normal."

- Since "The burrito meat was chopped diced meat. It tasted very rich compared to other burritos she had eaten before from the food truck."

- Moreover "She also remembers it being very uncharacteristically greasy with grease pooling at the bottom of the burrito into the foil."

- Whereas "It was so rich and greasy that she was not able to finish it"

- Alas, "she thinks she might have been mistakenly handed a different kind of burrito than the carne asada burrito she ordered by the person working the food truck."

In hindsight, seeing 20/20, she probably should've kept the burrito. Especially against the backdrop in which she described her interaction with it. Absolutely as she attributes it to her adverse finding.

But, no burrito was to be found.

If it were a supplement, would you not expect Houlihan to state that all of the products and supplements she used were available readily, locally and checked thoroughly before she even considered them? If they were supplements, she could claim that she did not misread a label or that she did not 'import' illegal tablets with her credit card. She could vehemently state that she was not ignorant of the WADA code and that she was aware of the strict liability principle and made sure she used numerous resources to ensure everything she ingested was safe. That's thoroughness and doing ALL she could to try to clear her name.

There were a few other key retorts available to Houlihan:

1) Inadvertent consumption of a nutritional supplement

2) Banned substance contained in medical treatment

3) Accidental purchase (ie: Houlihan importing growth hormones, or fat burning/weight loss products for illustrative purposes)

4) Accidental whereabouts violation

5) Accidental consumption of banned substances used by a third party (ie: eating Lindsey Frerichs' burrito)

6) Accidental over-consumption of prescribed medication (not applying for a TUE)

7) Accidental testing violation (being too dehydrated to provide a sample)

Notwithstanding, Houlihan chose the most improbable, far-fetched 'reason' -- the burrito.

If Houlihan had been given a bad burrito, having taken a couple of bites, she shouldn't have trusted eating any more of it as it was from a potentially unreliable source. Eat the mandarin Jarrito. Surely Courtney and her sister wouldn't understood. C'mon, she hadn't eaten anything since the cheesecake, right?

But, no dice.

Honestly, who would think about anti-doping in the case of getting a wrong burrito? Absolutely no one in Dec. 2020.

You make it sound like the right thing for any athlete to do is to make a shopping list of excuses and just go with the one that the most sceptical fans will believe the most.

We know she tested her vitamins supplements, and they were all negative, but also that some of them were no longer from the same batch.

I think she went with the burrito story exactly for the reasons she said — it was the only possible explanation left, and two decades of research on boar meat and nandrolone positives made it seem possible.

It was just her bad luck that boar meat in the pork market is low probability across the whole United States, and soy in their diets was also a low probability across the whole United States and Canada, except for a short time during the pandemic when there were supply issues, and that her fate depends on general probability rather than the impossibility of obtaining specific evidence.

She didn't get a wrong burrito. She ate most of a burrito pooling with grease at the bottom of the burrito into the foil. She was able to distinguish the burrito's richness compared to other burritos she'd eaten from said food truck, something she realised at the time of consuming said burrito. Yet, she persisted. She continued eating despite the risks.

And what was one of those non-PED risks?

E. coli. There have been known outbreaks around the US (Chipotle Mexican Grill; a burrito-associated outbreak in Florida caused 644 elementary kids in 66 schools to get sick after lunch; and more).

No one is suggesting that Houlihan think about anti-doping concerning that burrito, but as she's claimed at least six factors concerning that burrito purchase, she should at the very least have considered the consequences of eating said burrito; bag it, don't bin it. If she contracted a gastrointestinal illness associated with that burrito, she'd have been able to provide the contaminated burrito to a hospital clinic upon admission. No, normal people don't do that. Olympians with everything on the line should. Unless they're in a protective bubble.

But, again, no dice.

Crop Duster-84 wrote:

rekrunner wrote:Another improvement would be to consider reasonable doubt, given that all parties agreed on oral ingestion, and the lack of a pattern, and the low quantities involved.

Micro-dosing to the rescue. Quoting Uncle Vic:

“Can athletes micro-dose with EPO and testosterone and get away with it? Yes, they can. Can they use insulin?” he asks. “Yes, they can. Can they use thyroid medication? Yes, they can. It’s like taking candy from a baby. That’s how easy it is for smart chemists and advisers to circumvent Wada testing.”

Risk can be looked at as having a 'low probably and high impact' -or 'high probably and low impact'. People don't run in the rain even though their chances of getting hit is around 1 in 1 million simply because if you do get hit, the impact is high. People routinely drive over the speed limit and risk getting a ticket because even though getting a speeding ticket has a probability of around 1 in 10, but the impact is low as-in getting a speeding ticket won't kill you or end your career. Perhaps the possibility of getting busted micro-dosing is relative low, but the impact is extremely high. About 400 Americans get struck by lighting every year, statistically, that's about equal to the ratio of athletes who get busted for doping. Plain and simple, no matter how secretive your doping routine is, you can get caught and the impact is extremely high. "Doping ain't easy"

The result came a month after the test.

This must influence reaction and thinking.

Would not be if Usada caused he to go in the good direction as they have been moaning about such.

Jarrion Lawson had a similiar story (beef contamination):

CAS:

To satisfy his burden the Athlete must provide the Tribunal “with actual evidenceas opposed to mere speculation” as to the origin of the substance (emphasis in original, see CAS 2014/A/3820 WADA v. Damar Robinson & JADCO at para. 80). The evidence must establish the specific source of the allegedly contaminated meat and demonstrate the likelihood that said meat was contaminated (see e.g. CAS 2016/A/4563 WADA v. Egy-NADO & ElSalam at para. 57: “In cases of meat contamination, it must – as a minimum – be a requirement that the Athlete sufficiently demonstrates where the meat originated from. For example, where did the butcher buy the Brazilian meat, how was the Brazilian meat imported into Egypt, has any of the other imports of meat been examined or tested for the presence of ractopamine etc.?”).

Evidence establishing that the Athlete’s suggested source is “possible” is insufficient to establish the origin of the Prohibited Substance (see e.g. CAS OG 16/25 WADA v. Yadav & NADA at para. 7.27 where the Panel “found the sabotage(s) theory possible, but not probable and certainly not grounded in real evidence”

Further, the Athlete must demonstrate that the suggested source produced the concentration of the substance detected in his Sample; otherwise his explanation will lack an essential component.

The Athlete cannot therefore simply limit himself to identifying the source of the Prohibited Substance (see CAS 2010/A/2277 La Barbera v. IWAS at para. 36: where the panel held: “Mr. La Barbera did not supply any actual evidence of the specific circumstances in which the unintentional ingestion of the Prohibited Substance would have occurred. Mr La Barbera does in particular neither bring any scientific evidence that would explain how the Prohibited Substance could still be found in his system one week after the end of the dogs’ treatment, nor whether such a potential ingestion through his biting his nails could result in the level of substance found in his body. As a result, the Panel finds that Mr La Barbera’s explanations lack corroborating evidence and prove unsatisfactory, thereby failing the balance of probability test”