Jonathan Gault has written an in-depth feature on what Shelby Houlihan's prospects are moving forward. He quotes 3 shoe execs as to whether there is a market for her, has quotes from her new agent Paul Doyle and also a quote from Jerry Schumacher as to whether or not he'd want to coach her.
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The calendar just turned to Monday, January 13th, 2025.
Shelby Houlihan is now a free woman.
Whether justice was served, or an injustice committed, the ankle shackles are now off.
Some of you have no clue what slavery was like, and to talk about Shelby as if she were just released from a plantation shows how utterly clueless and insensitive you are. Shelby has been free her entire life.
The calendar just turned to Monday, January 13th, 2025.
Shelby Houlihan is now a free woman.
Whether justice was served, or an injustice committed, the ankle shackles are now off.
Some of you have no clue what slavery was like, and to talk about Shelby as if she were just released from a plantation shows how utterly clueless and insensitive you are. Shelby has been free her entire life.
Your assumption is incorrect. She did not dope prior to the positive test. She holds an American record and a world record. She also held another American record which has since been beaten.
Some of you have no clue what slavery was like, and to talk about Shelby as if she were just released from a plantation shows how utterly clueless and insensitive you are. Shelby has been free her entire life.
Emancipation has meant "release from restriction" long before it was applied to slavery. Agree, obviously, that even if Shelby was innocent she has experienced nothing like slavery.
You might have missed "the ankle shackles are now off" part of OP's post.
Emancipation has meant "release from restriction" long before it was applied to slavery. Agree, obviously, that even if Shelby was innocent she has experienced nothing like slavery.
You might have missed "the ankle shackles are now off" part of OP's post.
If that's not reference to slavery, what is it?
Do they not use shackles to restrain prisoners (serving their time as punishment) anymore?
I posted elsewhere in the thread, but AFAIK, as a person of Latino descent who lived in Beaverton, there aren’t any food trucks in the area that serve pork offal, let alone Mexicans who eat pork offal. Everything is beef offal.
Great. So the doper ran and won two races during her "ban", and kept training with her team fully during her provisional suspension and then coincidentally regularly for at least another half year with the same team. Cool story.
The calendar just turned to Monday, January 13th, 2025.
Shelby Houlihan is now a free woman.
Whether justice was served, or an injustice committed, the ankle shackles are now off.
Some of you have no clue what slavery was like, and to talk about Shelby as if she were just released from a plantation shows how utterly clueless and insensitive you are. Shelby has been free her entire life.
Reflecting on what I have learned (or really confirmed what I already knew) in the 4 years of Shelby's ban:
US Running Media is outrageously biased, and I'll say it, racist: It was pretty jaw dropping and obvious, it still delivered a shock. How could so many lack so much self awareness? Lauren Fleshman had previously called for lifetime bans of dopers, and made snide remarks about how all medalists are just from "two countries" (Kenya and Ethiopia). But when Shelby was banned, she jumped to call it a tragedy and never retracted. Erin Strout prattled on about Shelby's character, rather than illustrating the facts of the case, and even Malcolm Gladwell claimed Shelby would be "too smart" to take nandrolone, even though he doesn't know her at all.
To be clear, Whiteness isn't a get out of jail free card. We don't give Russian runners the same rope, for example. And if Galen Rupp was ever popped, I doubt he'd be treated the same, but whiteness is a factor. Along with being western, American and approachable. The US media will do anything to protect their own, abandoning the most basic journalistic principals to clear the path to see their favorites succeed. They don't care about antidoping, they care about their favorites medaling. Even the Brojos and Gault abandoned their principals to make the most nonsensical arguments defending her. And that's a shame.
Running fans were way smarter than I thought: Contrarily this was a pleasant surprise. Running fans, who on this website are always branded as racist j*rks were very consistent on this issue, seeing this case for what it was from the get go. Read the initial threads and you'll immediately see posters calling this out, focusing on the case itself, her shady progression, and seeing no lee-way. Fans did not buy into the press conference, they were not manipulated or pulled by biases. Even from the beginning. That was refreshing.
The contrasting views between the media and the fans caused a lot more pain for Shelby: There's a reason why a Shelby thread will go crazy on here. There's a reason why so much vitriol exists. The more she lies, and the more the media offers her platforms to lie without pushback, the harder it is for her. Because ultimately people don't like being lied to. The media did her no favors by trying to provide weak cover for her. They only made it worse.
The US Distance Running Community is probably guiltier than we thought: The silence spoke volumes, and only a few ever spoke up in a meaningful way. At this point, I really believe that grey area doping is prevalent and the pervasive thought is that as long as it's not EPO or HGH you're not "really" cheating. Seeing the collapse of BTC was illuminating too. What happened to Karissa Schweizer? She ran 14:26 in 2020, but the next year she never came close to that...
USADA Covers for US Athletes: It seems apparent that USADA is not really super interested in catching dopers...