Can we all just please stop engaging with rekrunner? This horse has been beaten to death and back. The doping apologists clearly get pleasure out of repeating the same tired old lies and misleading statements. Please just ignore their posts. Better yet, block them and you won’t ever see their posts again
Needs someone to have actually read the rules.
To point out what the rules say is not an apology for doping.
Yes she was banned for rule violations that don't require the athlete knowing she ingested it.
Given 121,000,000 pigs slaughtered per year in the US, even a 1 in a million chance is just a question of time. When that time comes, the probability then becomes 100% for that unlucky athlete.
Given all the truths that have come out, and the concessions from the anti-doping experts, the odds increased signficantly during the pandemic due to supply chain issues and delays, e.g. shortages in corn leading to increased soy diets, shortages of butchers leading to older pigs, shortages in USDA inspectors during high demand, likely to avoid sniff testing during an airborne pandemic, leading to more intact pigs passing inspection. One truth that hasn't come out, potentially significant in Oregon, is the number of "medically castrated" pigs passing USDA inspection weeks after the validity of their last injection, due to vaccine supply issues.
I haven't yet seen the odds that an athlete knowingly ingests a particular drug item having enough of an exact banned substance.....and just happens to get tested. Laughable.
There is some common belief that the population odds would need to rise above 50% likelihood for a single athlete to probably be innocent. This incorporates several fallacies that few can see.
I'm sure she knew how she ingested it but it wasn't necessary for the antidoping authorities to show how she did it - or to prove her innocence for her. If she couldn't demonstrate accidental cause she was guilty. As it should be.
The process that "convicted" her was not designed to find the truth, but to make convictions easier, by defining rule violations as possible without knowing use, and by permitting the anti-doping bodies to benefit from a set of presumptions. In Houlihan's case, the source was never established with enough certainty, and there was never any evidence or proof of intent.
Presumptions that cannot be rebutted are a poor substitute for the truth. But they are good enough under the WADA Code to railroad athletes to 4-year bans without having to determine the truth.
The source is irrelevant. The rules don't care. What is relevant is that the drug was in her system. She couldn't prove accidental contamination. No one would ever be convicted of a doping offence if the authorities had to prove where the drug came from or how it got into the athlete's system. But that would suit you.
The rules should be to stop cheating by testing intent.