Shocking news in the running world, American record holder in the 1500m and 5000m, Shelby Houlihan has been banned for four years following a positive test for nandrolone. Nandrolone is an anabolic steroid banned by the Athletics Integrity Unit. However, Houlihan is claiming there is more to the story than just a simple doping allegation.
According to her, the positive result is a false positive. During her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Houlihan insisted that the test was a result of eating tainted pork meat. In male hog meat, boars can have levels of nandrolone in their organs, which is present in offal. She claims to have eaten the burrito at a local authentic Mexican food truck in Beaverton, OR.
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While it is certainly possible this is true, nandrolone is usually found in boars who have not been castrated. In large-scale meat production, from cattle to hogs, the males are castrated very early on to prevent the meat from getting musky or “tainted”. It is not common to raise intact males for meat, but it does happen.
Houlihan made an appeal which was denied. The four-year ban is going to be hard on the 28-year old distance runner. She had quite the window to medal in the 1500m at the Tokyo Olympics if she made Team USA. Now, she will wait in limbo. According to her, after speaking with anti-doping experts, these test results should have been an atypical finding and been followed up in a different manner. Instead, it was listed as an adverse analytical finding, which results in a ban without much further digging.
Houlihan insists that she has never taken any performance-enhancing drugs knowingly, including nandrolone. Christian Coleman recently got his ban reduced.
