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“I feel completely devastated, lost, broken, angry, confused and betrayed,” said middle distance runner Shelby Houlihan, announcing her ban from international competition for four years. Andy Lyons / Getty Images hide caption
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“I feel completely devastated, lost, broken, angry, confused and betrayed,” said middle distance runner Shelby Houlihan, announcing her ban from international competition for four years.
Andy Lyons / Getty Images
Shelby Houlihan, the middle distance runner who currently holds two US records, says she was banned from the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for the steroid nandrolone. Houlihan says she’s clean and attributes the test result to a pork burrito she bought from a food truck.
Anti-doping officials disagree with the rider. They handed Houlihan a four-year suspension, just before the U.S. Olympic trials for the track team began in Eugene, Ore., This weekend.
“I feel completely devastated, lost, broken, angry, confused and betrayed by the very sport that I loved and invested in just to see how good I was,” Houlihan said in a commentary. announcement on his Instagram feed.
Houlihan, 28, is now banned from this year’s Summer Olympics as well as the Paris Olympics in 2024. She has pledged to fight the ban, which would sideline her for what could be the first years of his career.
“I will continue to fight to prove my innocence,” Houlihan said in a touching virtual press conference. “I absolutely respect and wholeheartedly support the fight to catch athletes who disrespect sport by cheating and doping. But I’m not one of them.”
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What Experts Are Doing With The Pork-Steroid Link
Houlihan received a provisional suspension in January, when the Athletics Integrity Unit informed her that a test sample from December 15, 2020 had returned positive for nandrolone. Since then, she said, she has tried to establish her innocence in various ways, including a food diary she compiled after learning of the test result. IAU was established in 2017 to independently oversee anti-doping efforts in international athletics.
After examining what she ate, Houlihan said: “We concluded that the most likely explanation was a burrito bought and eaten about 10 hours before this drug test at an authentic Mexican food truck that serves pork offal near my home in Beaverton, Oregon. “
Houlihan now points to studies which show that nandrolone is naturally present in some pigs.
Experts who spoke with NPR say a link is possible, but is not so clear.
Dr Keeve Nachman, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says the steroid is unlikely to be found in pork.
“Nandrolone is not approved for use in food animals,” Nachman said, noting that it is illegal to use steroid hormones in pig production. “We use them in cattle and sheep, and that’s it.”
“The only way it would be there is if it happened naturally,” he said. “And I don’t know if it is.”
Although Nachman is not an expert on anabolic steroids, he is an authority on drugs used in animal production, particularly for pork, chicken and other meats.
Dr Heather Fowler, who heads the Producers and Public Health Division of the National Pork Board, said that while uncasted boars have been linked to nandrolone test results in the past, the meat of these animals is not represents only a fraction of the market.
“Some research suggests that hormones naturally present in the meat and organs of intact male pigs (wild boars) may impact nandrolone test results,” Fowler said, “but the vast majority of pork consumed in the United States United does not come from boars. “
Referring to this same research, Nachman noted that most male piglets raised in the United States are barrow-castrated males.
“Uncastrated pigs have less taste,” he said.
Houlihan says testing process was flawed
Houlihan and coaches at his track club in Oregon say they had never heard of nandrolone until they learned of a positive result on an out-of-competition test in January. They say Houlihan is being punished due to a faulty testing process.
“I want to be very clear. I’ve never taken any performance enhancing drugs. And that includes what I’m accused of,” she said.
Houlihan said she passed a polygraph test and performed a hair sample analysis which she said found no steroid buildup in her body. She did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Jerry Schumacher, the coach of the Bowerman Track Club where Houlihan trains, says she is the victim of a broken system.
“Throughout this process, we were convinced that truth will lead to justice,” said Schumacher. “What I learned instead is that anti-doping authorities agree to convict innocent athletes as long as nine out of ten convictions are legitimate.”
Schumacher says Houlihan’s case resembles those of other American track stars such as Aje Wilson and Jarrion Lawson, both of whom were banned due to failed doping tests but were subsequently cleared after authorities determined that they had eaten rotten beef.
Houlihan says no follow-up testing was done to determine if his initial result was due to an abnormality.
“While my levels are consistent with those in study subjects who were tested 10 hours after eating this source and WADA technical guidelines require the laboratory to consider this when testing for nandrolone, the laboratory never considered this possibility, “said Houlihan, referring to the World Anti-Doping Agency.
A promising career is derailed
Houlihan learned on June 11 that the Court of Arbitration for Sport had rejected his explanation, resulting in a four-year suspension. The court confirmed on Tuesday that it had found her guilty, following an online hearing on June 4.
The court said its panel of judges “unanimously determined that Shelby Houlihan had not, on a balance of probabilities, established the source of the banned substance.”
He also said that a majority of his panel agreed that Houlihan had failed to prove his claim that the process of testing his sample was mismanaged.
Houlihan was hoping to return to the Olympics, having competed in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 after a decorated career at Arizona State University. In recent years, she has set US records in the 1,500 and 5,000 meters, and she seemed to be gaining momentum to fight for a medal this summer. But now his dream of going to the Tokyo Olympics is all but over.
The runner says she plans to appeal the court ruling.
“I believe in sports and push your body to the limit just to see where the line is,” she said. “I’m not interested in cheating. I don’t do this for rewards, money or for people to know my name. I do it because I love it. I have so much fun doing it and it’s always the best part of my day. “
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