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Shelby Houlihan Banned Four Years, Claims Nandrolone Detection Came From Pork in BurritoPublished by
In Bombshell Announcement, Bowerman Track Club Star Shelby Houlihan Reveals She Has Been Banned From Sport Four Years, Calls Situation 'A Nightmare' By Doug Binder and Erik Boal, DyeStat Editors Shelby Houlihan, who rose up the past few years to become one of the United States' most dominant track and field athletes, has been banned from competition for four years by the World Anti-Doping Agency. The news was revealed for the first time on a Zoom call with media organized by the Nike Bowerman Track Club and included Houlihan, coaches Jerry Schumacher and Shalane Flanagan, and Global Sports Advocates lawyer Paul Greene. Houlihan found out in a letter Jan. 14 that she had tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone. She was stunned by the news and constructed a food log that revealed she had consumed a carne asada burrito, purchased at a Beaverton, Ore. food cart, the same establishment that also served pig organ meat, or offal. The drug test that was flagged came from Dec. 15, the morning after she ate the burrito. A hearing with the Court of Arbitration for Sport was conducted in May and Houlihan and her team found out that her argument had been rejected last Friday, June 11. A tearful Houlihan, a favorite to win both the 1,500 and 5,000 at the upcoming U.S. Olympic Team Trials, and also the American record holder in both events, said that she had never knowingly taken a performance enhancing drug and that she had passed a polygraph and even had her hair tested to help try and prove her innocence. "I feel completely devastated, lost, broken, angry, confused and betrayed by the very sport that I've loved and poured myself into, just to see how good I was," Houlihan said. Houlihan said she will continue to fight for her reputation and her career. "Nothing moved the lab from their original snap decision," she said. "Instead they simply concluded that I was a cheater, and that the steroid was ingested orally, but not regularly. I feel my explanation fits the facts much better because it's true. I also believe it was dismissed without proper due process." Houlihan's coaches also delivered statements professing her integrity and outrage over the heavy-handedness of the anti-doping system that they say is wrongfully punishing clean athletes as well as cheaters. "What we are witnessing is a great tragedy in the history of American distance running," said Schumacher, whose BTC group includes some of the most successful Nike-sponsored distance runners in the U.S.
"No clean athlete should ever have to go through what Shelby is going through."
Houlihan ran an American record 14:23.92 at the Bowerman Intrasquad II meet last summer. VIDEO Four days before she says she ate the burrito, she competed at the Sound Running Track Meet in California and won the 5,000 there in 15:02.55 to obtain the Olympic Games standard. Greene, who succesfully defended Jarrion Lawson when he claimed a positive test for the anabolic steriod trenbolone came from a tainted beef from a Japanese steakhouse, said that Houlihan's case should have been thrown out. Greene showed documents that backed up his claim that the level of nandrolone in Houlihan's system was 5 nanograms per mL and could be explained by the the substance naturally occuring in the pork that she ate in the burrito. Greene said nandrolone can be found in boars, or wild pigs, which make up a small portion of the pork food supply in the U.S. The prospects going forward for Houlihan are unclear, but she is likely out of the Olympic Trials, and therefore, the Olympic Games in Tokyo, where she was a legitimate medal contender. "I don't know where I'm going from here," she said. "I don't trust it anymore. So as much as I want to come back, I don't know if I could." Schumacher cited examples of Lawson, Ajee' Wilson and Brenda Martinez as examples where "clean" athletes had faced unnecessary damage to their reputations and careers for ingesting food that contained trace amounts of banned substances unwittingly. In all three cases, the United States Anti-Doping Agency determined that the explanations were valid and the athletes' punishments were lifted. In Houlihan's case, it was WADA that ultimately decided her fate and did not show her any flexibility, Greene said. Houlihan confided in a few of her teammates when she got the letter on Jan. 14, but the majority of the athletes on the BTC team did not find out about the news until last Friday. "I've got a team of athletes that are afraid to be tested. Who wants to be tested by WADA now?" Schumacher said.
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