It’s August, so why bring up the springtime Jewish holiday of Passover, the story of the telling of the Exodus? And what would Passover in any way have to do with yet another column about Shelby Houlihan?
Because one of the key words in the telling of the story is, in Hebrew, the word dayenu! – enough! You pronounce it like this: die-yay-nu! Emphasis on the yay, y’all.
The Washington Post devoted more than 4,000 words to a sob story posted Friday about Houlihan, about how her running career is in “purgatory” because she got tagged for doping and then claimed, absurdly, that it was because of a tainted burrito. That ridiculous defense got rejected but she keeps insisting on playing the victim, telling the Post, “I feel embarrassed, and I’m feeling ashamed, and all of these different emotions for having to serve a ban, even though I didn’t do anything. So that’s been really hard to navigate and work through.”
Shelby Houlihan out for a run in the Iowa cornfields // Photo by Jay Pickthorn for The Washington Post via Getty Images
So hard that, she told the newspaper, she’s in Budapest, site of the 2023 world championships. What a coincidence. But she’s going to stay away from the stadium. “I’m going to go explore Budapest,” she said.
The very next line in this story: “Most days, she finds peace.”
Does this sound like someone who is finding peace?
Shelby Houlihan needs to go away. Leave Budapest. Go back to Iowa. When her ban is over, she is 100% entitled to come back to the track and field scene. Until then, enough with the local half-marathons and beer miles and WaPo features.
Some 25 years of dealing with doping cases have made me a realist about these kinds of things.
From Marion Jones’ 2004 autobiography, Life in the Fast Lane. Three years later, she admitted in federal court to doping
What’s particularly disturbing about the Houlihan matter is her insistence on blaming the anti-doping system.
The system worked exactly as it is supposed to. She got every bit of process she was due. And it found against her. She simply doesn’t want to accept the result.
At this point, credit to her lawyer, Paul Greene, who is one of the best in the business. In the Post article, he – as he is supposed to do – is still advocating zealously for his client, saying for publication, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years. And I think Shelby’s case is one of the most unjust ones that I have seen or been part of.”
Reality is otherwise.
The Post report would have you believe that the summer 2021 decision from the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration is “laden with dense, remarkably technical science.”
It’s not that complicated.
Houlihan’s sample came back positive for nandrolone.
Nandrolone is a banned substance.
Why? It’s a synthetic version of testosterone.
To look for it, scientists can use a device that’s called a carbon isotope test. It produces a “signature” that is expressed in nanograms per milliliter. Whatever. No one needs to have acid flashbacks about high school chemistry.
The important thing is the number before all that scientific gibberish.
In Houlihan’s case, the number is minus-23.
The carbon isotope signature for the largely corn-based diet of commercial pigs in the United States is minus-19. In scientific terms, the difference of four is a lot. Like, a lot. So much as to make her burrito defense, like, dumb, as the CAS panel found.
Beyond which, the head of the Montreal lab, Christine Ayotte, testified – this is all right there, at paragraph 116, in plain, simple English, hardly dense – that Houlihan’s test results “were not unusual or special, and were like many other [adverse findings] … in the past years, both in terms of the amount of [nandrolone] and the carbon isotopic signature.”
Ayotte, the CAS panel went on to explain, that “oral precursors” of nandrolone – that is, something you swallow – “such as ‘19‐nor DHEA’ and ‘nor‐Andro’ can be purchased from the internet, including from Amazon.”
She also testified that, in 2016, when she tested a product called “Nor-Andro Max” that on the label contained 19-norAndro, what do you think the number came back at? Well, lookee here: minus-23.77, with a variation of 0.13.
Wow. Houlihan’s number is minus-23. What a coincidence.
Again, from paragraph 116, Ayotte: Houlihan’s result is “consistent with the consumption of a norsteroid oral supplement that has the same carbon isotopic signature as was reported in [her] samples.”
Plain English: it’s like someone taking Nor-Andro Max, or a supplement like it, in a shake or a drink, to try to get bigger and stronger.
It’s Greene’s job to try to undercut Ayotte’s credibility. The CAS panel wasn’t having it.
Paragraph 119: “In addition, the Panel also finds Prof. Ayotte’s evidence convincing according to which her later analysis of [Houlihan’s] prior test results indicated that [Houlihan’s] usual carbon isotope signature was of roughly -19%. This further backs the Panel’s conclusions.”
Notably, the Post did not address this fascinating discrepancy. Nor has Houlihan ever sought to illuminate us about how that might be.
Nor has her then-coach, Jerry Schumacher, explained the unexplainable – how he had never, ever heard of nandrolone.
In all those 4,000-plus words, the Post glossed over the egregious fact that Houlihan’s coach – a guy whose job it is to beat the Kenyans – purportedly did not know about one of the been-around-forever doping substances. Is that even remotely credible?
Like blaming a failed test on a burrito?
Please. Dayenu!