Is Shelby Houlihan dirty?

Everyone who is competing has been cleared to compete. It is a very small percentage who have been found to be cheating. Houlihan is the current American dream runner. Let’s enjoy it and admire her.

OLD SMTC SOB wrote:

Open your eyes, people wrote:

This.

And the sudden jump in performance

It is not unusual for a runner, even an elite or sub elite runner, to toil in relative obscurity and make a breakthrough...elevating themselves to another level entirely. Happened to me on several different occasions, absent any doping and due solely to a huge amount of hard training. Absent of any convincing evidence of doping, I always give the runner the benefit of the doubt. Idle speculation is a fools errand.

"Yup. If letsrun had been around in 1984, these boards would have exploded after this happened at the Olympic trials (excerpt from an article at the time...)

The times were 4 minutes .18 second, an Olympic trials record, for Mrs. Wysocki; 4:00.40 for Miss Decker and 4:04.07 for third-place Diane Richburg of Troy, N.Y. All made the Olympic team.

Mrs. Wysocki's fastest previous 1,500 was 4:12.85 in Friday's semifinals. Before this year, her best was 4:16.0 in 1976.

Mrs. Wysocki is 27 years old, 5 feet 9 inches and 130 pounds."

Shelby must be dirty! How else could she beat Muir, because we all know that she is dirty ( I've heard that she NEVER washes behind her ears!)

Wow that would definetly be alarming! Seems kind of similar to the crazy drop in times of the 1993/1997 Chinese teams.

You know you made it when......

Longdistancerunning wrote:

No one likes to point fingers at Americans for doping and I love Shelby but to me it seems weird that she has dropped 7 seconds in the 1500m in the past couple months with her PR today of 3:57 and doesn’t even look that tired at the end with a lot of room to kick. I don’t want to be rude I just want it to be up for discussion .

I honestly think we're just looking at a female with similar talents to Alan Webb. Who actually waited and developed it over the years. Her racing skills have been more like Robbie Andrews, but she is a webb and Donavan Brazier type talent. I remember seeing her at Drake Relays when she was a high schooler, after two or three events she split 55 in the 4 by 4. I was just thinking "why are people not talking about this girl all the time? she is incredible." She's been injury free, she is intense, she has training partners to pull her to incredible strength, she has raw speed and strength.

This is similar to when Galen went 3:50, except it actually makes sense to her skill set. She correctly honed her speed in college, showed her strength over 5k for a couple years, then dropped a PR in-between the two. If you've coached hs kids you've seen this progression happen in a year, 5 is no biggie.

Why does everyone keep bringing up the fact that she ran 55 for 400m in High School as proof that this talent has been there all along. Christina Aragon ran 55. for the open 400m in high school too, Mary Cain ran 55. as a sophmore/Freshman in High School.

You listed two of the best (potentially) and sort of answered your own question/went against your argument. It's a huge talent to have that ability for not necessarily any training reason.

Imagine the best cross-country dude on your team, maybe that your school or state is ever seen in his first season. You start track and he closes down a workout in 49, 50, or 51... If you don't think he might be one of the best milers around in the near future you're living under a rock.

ummm? wrote:

Why does everyone keep bringing up the fact that she ran 55 for 400m in myHigh School as proof that this talent has been there all along. Christina Aragon ran 55. for the open 400m in high school too, Mary Cain ran 55. as a sophmore/Freshman in High School.

You listed two of the best (potentially) and sort of answered your own question/went against your argument. It's a huge talent to have that ability for not necessarily any training reason.

Imagine the best cross-country dude on your team, maybe that your school or state is ever seen in his first season. You start track and he closes down a workout in 49, 50, or 51... If you don't think he might be one of the best milers around in the near future you're living under a rock.

Spot on answer!

By the way I think and pray she's clean. But hey when I went from 2:11.2 to 1:52.1 (800m) in 8 months I was taking advantage of the top legal supplements, maybe she is too.

Female webb wrote:

ummm? wrote:

Why does everyone keep bringing up the fact that she ran 55 for 400m in myHigh School as proof that this talent has been there all along. Christina Aragon ran 55. for the open 400m in high school too, Mary Cain ran 55. as a sophmore/Freshman in High School.

You listed two of the best (potentially) and sort of answered your own question/went against your argument. It's a huge talent to have that ability for not necessarily any training reason.

Imagine the best cross-country dude on your team, maybe that your school or state is ever seen in his first season. You start track and he closes down a workout in 49, 50, or 51... If you don't think he might be one of the best milers around in the near future you're living under a rock.

Im saying that its not that crazy for a talented highschooler to run 55s for the 400m (especially 800m specialist). Brenda Martinez has hit 55s in workouts before and weve never seen her on par with Shelby. I dont think 55s is a determinant of true talent.

I personally think Shelby is clean and is now coming into her own because of training. I think her 5k strength is a bigger factor when it comes to her lethal kick. (hence why we dont see Brenda kicking like she is, no 5k strength).

Her last few races have been tactically perfect. Watch the races and focus on some of the other runners. She is talented but she is smarter than the other runners.....and she is clean. Schweizer is another Iowa girl who has made even larger improvements than Houlihan but nobody has accused her of anything. Lisa Kohl holds the NCAA record in the 10k but she was unheard of during high school years in Iowa. It must be an Iowa thing that causes large improvements in the 20s.

Former Iowa Great wrote:

Her last few races have been tactically perfect. Watch the races and focus on some of the other runners. She is talented but she is smarter than the other runners.....and she is clean. Schweizer is another Iowa girl who has made even larger improvements than Houlihan but nobody has accused her of anything. Lisa Kohl holds the NCAA record in the 10k but she was unheard of during high school years in Iowa. It must be an Iowa thing that causes large improvements in the 20s.

Yes, Schweizer made a great improvement in her times, but that is completely different, as she is still not on a world class, top of the elite level yet. If Schweizer went from a 14:45 to a 14:20(which is about the equivalent of improving from 4:04 to 3:57), people would question her as that is going from being behind the elites to in front of them. That is what Shelby did. If she showed more steady progression than it would make more sense, but she went from indoor where she didn't earn a single medal at the world class level and from her last outdoor season where she didn't even come in top 10 for most of her world class races, to comfortable and easily sprinting across a world class field right after doubling and winning both at USATF and her victory at pre Fontaine classic also against world class athletes. To me that progression seems too quick regardless of if you are the hardest working athlete. Also, to people to say that it was the training that basically changed the entire way she looked, it seems weird that even as an olympic athlete, she apparently didn't work hard enough to have the big muscles she has now. I don't think any coach would overlook strength.

Evan was on wada’s likely doping list.

We're on the same page, except we're talking on the internet. I totally agree with what you mentioned about training and 5k strength/ability being what has taken her to 3:57, but I only partially agree with you saying that 55 second speed is insignificant. Its just a great indicator of potential within someone who has that kind of 5K ability. If that 55 continues to drop and goes to 53, which I'm sure it did for her, she only has to run within 10 seconds of her Max quarter speed per lap. there is just less work and aerobic development needed in my opinion to get an athlete there then if they can't break 60 from the start. I'm just less surprised that someone with speed can get to 357 then someone without speed. To add further to the point she can run 72 seconds per lap for the 5K, if she never had that natural speed she'd be going a lot closer to her Max even in the 5K...

Don't be a dope wrote:

The times were 4 minutes .18 second, an Olympic trials record, for Mrs. Wysocki;

Wysocki's fastest previous 1,500 was 4:12.85 in Friday's semifinals. Before that year, her best was 4:16.0 in 1976. Wysocki was 27 years old

Wysocki's dad and at least one of her brothers were doctors.

Clean until dirty wrote:

Everyone who is competing has been cleared to compete. It is a very small percentage who have been found to be cheating. Houlihan is the current American dream runner. Let’s enjoy it and admire her.

What bothers me is she does look different. Her neck and arms are bigger. Then look at Hassan. Hassan has soft features and looks like a runner. Houlihan looks like a body builder now. She comes down the home straight like a running back. She makes Daphne Schippers look like a petite flower. I can't think of any other female runner whose appearance changed so dramatically.

Shelby's appearance has NOT changed that dramatically. I was commenting to someone at the Fifth Avenue Mile in NYC last September that it was amazing that the women's 1500 and mile had so many different body types that excelled, and that "Shelby Houlihan looks like has could beat me up." I meant that as a compliment. Not much has changed since September.