American love to pile on when athletes from other countries are accused of doping. Especially the Russians.
We can’t have a state-sponsored doping system here. We don’t have a state ministry of sport. But we for sure cheat. We are really, really good cheaters, too. See, for one, Lance Armstrong.
And then when our athletes do absurd things to flaunt the system, we don’t understand why others looking at us from abroad cry hypocrisy and double standards.
Houlihan in happier days // Getty Images
And why the people purportedly in charge of administering the anti-doping system aren’t vigorously taking to the bully pulpit to scream long and loud about fair play — the way they have so often done in recent years, to try to score easy political points, about the Russians. Or could easily do about the Kenyans. Or others.
The seemingly endless saga about American middle-distance standout Shelby Houlihan, banned for four years for the substance nandrolone, took a new and bizarre turn July 16 when she ran, and won, a half-marathon in Okoboji, Iowa.
The loophole here is that the race is unsanctioned.
That is, there are literally thousands of races each year in the United States. USA Track & Field sanctions some considerable number. The rest, like the University of Okoboji Homecoming half-marathon, go unsanctioned. (There is no University of Okoboji. It’s an ongoing mythical creation for those unfamiliar with midwestern lore.)
Houlihan, in arguably one of the dumbest defenses ever offered in the annals of anti-doping, theorized that she ate a tainted burrito. The Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport did not bite. It gave her four years off, starting Jan. 14, 2021.
Let’s be very, very clear. Houlihan’s burrito defense, the arbitration panel said, “presupposes a cascade of factual and scientific improbabilities” rendering “its composite probability … [very] close to zero.”
The World Anti-Doping Code, in section 10.14.1, to cut through the legalese, says the four years off for someone like Houlihan obviously means nationals or worlds but also an event or competition organized by, in this instance, a USATF-affiliated organization.
So let’s unpack.
Race organizers had an Iowa celebrity in town — Houlihan is from Sioux City, Iowa.
She wanted to run? It seems incredulous that, given the publicity around her matter, the good people in Okoboji, Iowa, would not have known about the local girl and her issues.
People, the easy reference is dopingsanctions.com.
Is it a race director’s job to know if someone is under sanction?
Is the answer, we’re not a USATF-sanctioned race?
Is the burden on a race director to tell a local girl made good, no, you can’t race?
“It’s not a sanctioned race; anyone can enter the race,” Blain Andrea, chief executive of the Iowa Great Lakes Area Chamber of Commerce, which organized the race, said in a telephone interview Friday morning.
Did he have qualms about Houlihan’s participation?
“I don’t know how to answer your question,” Andrea said. “I apologize.”
Did he or other organizers have any conversations with Houlihan beforehand? Surely they knew she was serving a four-year doping suspension?
“We did not have a conversation with Shelby, no. She registered like any other participant.”
He went on: “I don’t have the information you’re looking for. It’s not my responsibility to know the rules. We put on a race. People come here and run. You know what I mean?”
So now we have identified a huge, grave loophole in the rules.
One that Shelby Houlihan shamelessly manipulated.
Let’s flip this script.
What if this was a Russian athlete?
Claiming that she had tested positive for a steroid known to enhance performance, one that WADA has linked in a published report to dozens of positives in Kenyan runners, a substance that she said must have gotten into her system because of a tainted burrito?
What would the reaction be in American circles?
You can stop laughing now.
What if a Russian athlete who was serving a four-year ban turned up at a Russian race?
How is it that Houlihan is enabled by our system? Can manipulate our system? Is not being called out by those in authority in our system?
Here we have smiles all around, irrefutable photographic evidence that when it comes to doping cheats in the United States of America, the rules are — what?
And then a keen observer — in doping parlance, a whistleblower, if you will — stepped up and sought to alert the authorities.
Then this happened.
Trying to get Houlihan in trouble? The only person who put Houlihan in any jeopardy was Houlihan herself, by opting to run in the race. And for clarification — Wade’s comments here were to a private Facebook group, according to Kevin Beck, who then posted the screenshot as a Twitter reply to Langley and included it in a Substack column.
As Beck notes in that column, posted Wednesday: “… what I can’t accept is the complete flipping of the script from “dopers should be punished, even if it sucks” to “the punishment for doping sucks too much, so doping suspensions must be overturned in the court of public opinion.”
In a July 3 profile in the Oregonian, the Portland newspaper, Houlihan said she hasn’t had a paycheck in a year. Yet she donated the $500 winner’s check to Dickinson County Trails, an Okoboji-area venue, Andrea said.
Was she simply feeling magnanimous? Or did she have another motive in turning down the money?
No question — see above — Houlihan didn’t mind posing for pictures with a high school girl (who according to her Twitter profile is a basketball standout and runs track and cross-country), and a friend. Do you think these young women knew Houlihan is serving a four-year ban? Did Houlihan remind them? Way to inspire the next generation!
Smiles all around!
This is why all the bleating and screaming about Russian doping can frequently seem like just so much noise. Does anyone here care, really, when it’s Americans at fault?
This is called hypocrisy. This is the most rank of double standards.
Where is the United States Anti-Doping Agency? How is it USADA has not yet found some way to have said something about this? To at least note this loophole and advocate for a way to close it? If not more?
For years, officials at USADA have been screaming about the Russians, about fair play, about leveling the playing field. It’s now nearly two weeks after this half-marathon and … crickets.
USADA’s silence is particularly inexplicable when you see the photo of Houlihan with young people.
USADA’s mission is not just to catch drug cheats — it didn’t in this instance, it was the Athletics Integrity Unit that brought down Houlihan — but to make clear that doping is a public health and ethics issue. Athletes are role models, plain and simple. How does a picture like this advance USADA’s mission? Make clear that doping is not the way to success? Answer: it not only does not, it undercuts the very essence of what USADA is trying to achieve.
What about the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee? Throughout this entire year, its chief executive has been stridently vocal about the Kamila Valieva matter. But this? Crickets.
Where, too, is the New York Times, which — with the help of USADA — helped feed the public outcry against the Russians?
Where are other outlets? Particularly in the running press. Kudos to Beck. And to activists Langley and, as well, Becca Peter on Twitter. Anyone else? Crickets.
What happened in Sochi in 2014 was indefensible. No one is suggesting otherwise.
But when Americans are similarly found at fault, those with a real interest in fair play have an obligation to stand up and say, the authorities found that you broke the rules; now stop trying to play fast and loose with them.