There’s an obvious point that seemingly no one else wants to say about Shelby Houlihan, the American middle-distance runner who has been suspended for four years. So it’s coming at you right here. Check your privilege, white people.
The running sites and even the mainstream press are full of stories that center on the facts of the case and the do-you-believe her or do-you-not. That’s not the issue.
All journalists — at least the decent or better ones — are trained to be skeptical, and after listening for more than 20 years now to athlete after athlete cry, sometimes literally, about circumstance and unfairness, please. Houlihan’s expressions of how much she loves running, how she didn’t get due process, all of that — that’s all noise.
Here’s why this case has struck a chord:
Shelby Houlihan and Jenny Simpson at the women’s 1500 at the Doha 2019 world championships // Getty Images
The running community in the United States tends to be white and middle- to upper-class. Shelby Houlihan fits that demographic precisely. The point is that seemingly no one in that circle thinks — or wants to think — that the nice, white distance runner would ever cheat. Never, ever.
The Black sprinter? Of course! The Russian! Sure. The Kenyan? Absolutely.
That is, The Other? Now you’re talking.
In the matter of Shelby Houlihan, the running evangelists have been confronted with reality.
A year after the murder of George Floyd, this is the essence of running privilege taking a hit. And hard. And deservedly.
Lets Run, Track & Field News, Runners World, Women’s Running, Outside and even if not especially the New York Times — all these outlets and others serve a demographic that is primarily if not exclusively white and upscale. Time’s up. This is why the Shelby Houlihan case seems so shattering.
Further, this is what happens when an entire community starts caricaturing running stars, especially middle- and long-distance standouts, in the manner of NBA highlight shows that reduce real human beings to one-dimensional cartoon characters dunking over each other, stripping them of their real names and calling them only, say, Bron or Steph or KD or Greek Freak.
In runner parlance: Galen or Mo or Eliud. Or, more to the point, Shannon, Shalane, Molly, Brenda, Emma, Jenny and more.
In Shelby Houlihan’s case, it’s a step beyond, because her Twitter handle, @shelbo800, had further reduced her to something else in stories and on runner internet boards: Shelbo. Or, as some would have it, ShelBo.
This familiarity breeds a weird intimacy. The running devotees come to think they know — really, know — these athletes because they’re on something of a first-name basis. Which of course is the farthest thing from the truth.
So when the news broke earlier this week, can it be any wonder that this combination of privilege and weird intimacy saw a fascinating — and, one could reasonably argue, entirely unwarranted — turn of support for Houlihan?
Get over it, people.
Where was this support for the sprinter Christian Coleman when he got tagged for whereabouts? He didn’t even test positive and got blasted in the media.
For Justin Gatlin, who for years has endured the most vicious personal attacks?
The Athletics Integrity Unit and the Court of Arbitration for Sport said Houlihan cheated.
That she got a hearing and a ruling completely and unequivocally shuts down the absurd assertion — which she leveled in a statement she released on Monday — that her case was dismissed “without proper due process.”
That’s what due process is: a hearing with appropriate notice followed by a ruling. And the possibility of an appeal.
The AIU charged and CAS confirmed that Houlihan had impermissible levels of nandrolone in her system. Nandrolone is an anabolic steroid. Everyone with a basic familiarity about track and field knows about anabolic steroids, how they work and what they do and why.
Except, it turns out, in one of the most seemingly far-fetched or disingenuous turns in many years, neither Houlihan nor her Bowerman Track Club coach, Jerry Schumacher, had ever heard of nandrolone.
This defies credulity.
Nandrolone is regularly in the news. People around the world get busted for it on a recurring basis. Moreover, it’s an athlete’s job to be aware of what goes in her or his body and what might be impermissible; by extension, that means it’s a coach’s responsibility, too. Houlihan has been on the circuit for years. Schumacher is a veteran coach.
At any rate, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency regularly provides a list of no-nos. Nandrolone is not hard to find. Here’s nandrolone, as far back as 2016, in a post that USADA called “screen your dietary supplements.”
Also defying common sense:
“It’s not a substance any runner would take,” Houlihan’s lawyer, Paul Greene, was quoted as saying.
Really? Nandrolone is performance-enhancing. That’s why it’s on the banned list.
What also begs credibility is the burrito defense. To be honest, the way Houlihan phrased it also suggests subtle — maybe overt — racism at work.
In her statement, Houlihan said she believed the source of the nandrolone was a burrito purchased from an “authentic Mexican food truck that serves pig offal” near her Beaverton, Oregon, house.
Why the use of the word “authentic”? What’s that there for? When she was at the counter, did she feel the need to check citizenship papers, too? Does “authentic” insinuate that a burrito truck run by a red, white and blue third-generation Texan serving Nebraska corn-fed beef and pork would by definition be “cleaner”?
Then it turns out that, in fact, according to Lets Run, quoting her lawyer, Greene, she had bought and eaten a carne asada — a steak — burrito. So to make this defense work, the pork had to have gotten into the steak burrito.
Oh, OK.
That same Lets Run column was headlined: “Shelby Houlihan’s Suspension is a Track & Field Tragedy.”
This is the essence of the privilege problem. This is the farthest thing from a “tragedy.” We’re in the middle of a pandemic in which COVID-19 deaths in the United States have now topped 600,000. Here, no one died. No one got maimed. No children were hurt. Those are legitimate “tragedies.”
At a news conference earlier this week, the Houlihan team tried to deploy three different types of obfuscation, all at the same time:
1. Shelby Houlihan is a good person. She loves Harry Potter! She is simply not capable of cheating.
2. This case is like or not like a lot of other cases.
3. Down with WADA!
All three amount to the same thing: deflection. Anyone who has been around the anti-doping scene for any length of time recognizes them for what they are — attempts to veer from the facts, which are not in Houlihan’s favor.
Deflection, for the uninitiated, is a favorite tactic of the accused. Again, after 23 years of writing at length about the anti-doping landscape, history has shown that those who are accused will say and do almost anything to avoid confession — until each and every option has run out.
Let’s consider Marion Jones:
From Marion Jones’ autobiography, Life in the Fast Lane — as if saying it in big red letters would somehow make it more true
Jones confessed to doping only when the feds finally got her on check-kiting and had no option but to say, yes, she had been doping.
Let’s consider, too, Tyler Hamilton. Confronted with an accusation he had doped, he suggested a “vanishing twin” theory. Turned out he had been doping.
How about Floyd Landis? He wrote an entire book saying he had not cheated. Who had been cheating? Floyd Landis, who said so in 2010.
Schumacher, in his statement, went to lengths to suggest that Houlihan got screwed because she got prosecuted by the AIU and judged by CAS rather than having the affair handled by USADA.
To the contrary.
Houlihan got what she deserved, nothing more, nothing less. A standard first-time ban is four years.
And if you’re paying attention, you might note that the authorities outside the United States are vigorously not happy with USADA’s attempt to rewire the doping system in favor of American interests; too, with the idea that American athletes deserve special treatment; and, finally, with USADA boss Travis Tygart’s outspokenness on that and other matters, particularly his transparent manipulation of the New York Times and other outlets.
The rules, as Shelby Houlihan and her circle now understand quite clearly, apply to everyone. Including white, female American middle-distance runners.
Which is fascinating.
In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Sally Jenkins ripped the Houlihan decision, calling it a “choleric and vengeful inquisition.” She also ripped WADA, asserting that there is a “growing mountain of evidence that WADA is quite often, if not constantly, wrong.”
This is rich, coming from Lance Armstrong’s biographer. This is perhaps the very definition of chutzpah.
A reminder of this paragraph from Jenkins’ column when, in December 2012, she wrote about Armstrong in the wake of his doping revelations:
“Maybe I’m not angry at Lance because for two decades now I’ve had serious questions about the wisdom and fairness of the ‘anti-doping’ effort, which consists of criminalizing and demonizing athletes for what boils down to using medications without a prescription, as if they are heroin dealers.”
Sally Jenkins is an incredibly talented columnist. But it’s useful to keep in mind where she’s coming from. It’s also useful to note that the paragraph immediately above is, in fact, hyperbole. When Jenkins wrote this nine years ago, fact: sports doping in the United States was not a criminal matter. It remains to be seen how the ill-considered Rodchenkov Act, signed into law by last December by President Trump, will play out.
Did Jenkins consider for even a moment that there might be something, um, unusual, about a woman who broke out a 14:23 5k, which Houlihan did last July — and wasn’t wearing super shoes?
USADA maybe was interested. It tested Houlihan 16 times in 2020. Amid the pandemic. Already this year, USADA’s stats show, it had tested her nine times.
Let’s move on to compare and contrast, because some of the most outspoken critics of the anti-doping system in recent years, in fact, have been white, female middle-distance American runners. Which of course plays into this week’s reaction as well.
Emma Coburn won a bronze medal for the United States at the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the 2016 Rio Games. Here she was last December, in the New York Times, blasting the Russians:
“The issue is that a country was caught red-handed engaging in state-sponsored systematic doping, tampering and cover-ups and had minimal punishment. This decision reflects the fact that at the highest level clean sport is not respected or protected. That is the fundamental problem.”
What has Coburn said this week about Houlihan? It’s always possible I’ve missed something. But seems like — crickets.
Jenny Simpson, among her other accomplishments, is the Rio 1500 bronze medalist. Here she was in 2015 ahead of the world championships that summer in Beijing:
“… My job today as an athlete is to train and to be prepared to the best of my ability and I certainly support and encourage the governing bodies that [are] in charge of regulating athletes to really step it up and help catch people.
“So I am here to race and to beat everyone on the track and to encourage the effort to really clean things up.”
What has Simpson said this week about Houlihan? Again, maybe there’s something out there that hasn’t turned up. Otherwise — crickets.
Simpson and Coburn, among others, are part of what’s called the Clean Sport Collective. Athletes who join take a pledge to “stay clean” and, if they are found to test positive, to donate $25,000 to a partner charity. The collective noted in a Twitter post that Houlihan had not — repeat, not — signed the pledge.
Kara Goucher was coached by Schumacher from 2011-13. She is the silver medalist in the women’s 10k at the London 2017 world championships. Here she is in a 2019 Q&A with USADA:
“Honestly, in the community that I’m in, we love the testing. We don’t think it’s a problem. I had an app on my phone that reminded me, every day, this is where you’re going to be. I think for us it’s not a big deal. We are happy to be tested. We don’t think it’s invading in your privacy at all. The community that I’m in, we’re all for it and we welcome more testing even!
“For us, we are pumped when USADA shows up. A lot of us will tweet about it. We’re excited and happy. For us, it’s a happy thing when it happens.”
What has Goucher said this week about Houlihan? One more time: maybe I’ve missed remarks other than questions at the news conference but otherwise — crickets. Perhaps because she is NBC’s distance analyst at the forthcoming Olympics? (Disclosures: 1. I don’t know Kara Goucher. 2. I have worked for or with NBC at the Games since 2003 and am due to do so again in Tokyo.)
Finally, there is Shalane Flanagan, silver medalist in the women’s 10k at the Beijing 2008 Games, winner of the 2017 New York Marathon, now a Bowerman Track Club coach.
She had a lot to say this week when Shelby Houlihan got busted: “I have experienced plenty of heartache in my own career. I have lost out on medals and dreams to those who cheat but I would rather lose all my medals and wins to dopers than to witness one innocent athlete to be robbed … if this is where the sport I love is headed, then I don’t know if I can continue to be part of it.”
Fascinating, because this was Flanagan, in a 2019 video produced for USADA:
“Let’s say someone is working at a bank and they embezzle a bunch of money. The bank says, hey, you embezzled a bunch of money, so we’re going to fire you. You can’t work here anymore. But in, like, five years you can come back. We’re not going to get the money from you. You can keep the money. So you get, like, a five-year vacation. To me, these athletes need to give back the money that they stole from the other athletes and I believe that all the accolades should be erased from that day forward. They should not have any accolades to go with that.
“I’m also not opposed to — it’s a big crime. There needs to be something really at stake. I’m not opposed to athletes going to jail for cheating, to be honest. You’re stealing dreams and money and opportunities from people. You need to deter these athletes. There’s not enough to deter them, unfortunately.”
Ask Shelby Houlihan if that’s so. And all the white people in their tree-lined suburbs who are considering whether to buy the consumer version of the super shoes ($180 to $275 retail, typically), who until Monday were rooting for their Shelbo and now can’t conceive of such a thing, who are devastated, really.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is why the standard first-time ban is four years.