Long-Awaited Report Details Judgment Against Houlihan, But Did CAS Panel Get It Right?

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

The Court of Arbitration for Sport released 44 pages Wednesday, finally, to explain how and why it came to its conclusion that Shelby Houlihan should be banned from track and field for four years for eating a burrito. 

The Panel that oversaw the decision clearly did not buy Houlihan's story that she accidentally ate something she was not expecting or intending the night before she submitted to a out-of-competition test last December, 10 days after her final race of 2020. 

What's most clear of all is that professional athletes are guilty as charged unless they can prove their innocence. They sign up for that, I guess.

For Houlihan, who could have won an Olympic medal this summer, that sucks. 

She was shocked to learn this January in a letter from the Athletics Integrity Unit that her sample had turned up trace amounts of nandrolone, a steroid and a banned substance. 

And so she pieced together the logical explanation that the night before her test she ate a burrito — probably not the one she ordered — and there was something weird about it so she didn't eat all of it. (Her story is corroborated by the people she was with that night, including Nike Bowerman Track Club teammates Courtney Frerichs and Matthew Centrowitz). 

As it turns out, nandrolone does in fact exist in certain uncastrated boars. Side note: The word "boar" appears 97 times in the document. We also learned the world "cryptorchid." (22 times) 

Everything you could possibily want to know about boars, the processing of U.S. pork, and what's inside the guts of pigs — is in the report. 

The report laboriously weighs the possibilities against the probabilities of the case and concludes "that the Athlete has not satisfied her burden of proof on the balance of probabilities that the ADRV (anti-doping rule violation) was unintentional, and the ADRV must be deemed to be intentional."

The levels of nandrolone in her system were unlikely to have come from such a meal. That's what the panel concluded. Expert witness Professor John McGlone from Texas Tech University said there was only a 1 in 10,000 chance that this particular meat would be found in the U.S. supply chain. Open and shut case, right? 

Did anyone test one of the burritos? Could the meat in the burrito have come from outside the usual supply chain? 

Whether the nandrolone came from the burrito or something else — medicine, supplement, something else — the fact is, it was there. And that's on Houlihan. 

But it's also really hard to believe that she cheats, and that should be the central issue. Nobody is arguing that it was a false positive. Somehow, it got into her system and her explanation isn't holding enough water. 

The panel flatly rejected two polygraph tests that Houlihan took in order to fight for her credibility. 

Dr. Jack Fritz asked Houlihan, while she was hooked up to a machine that measured her "thoracic and abdominal respiration, skin conductance and relative blood pressure" — and the doctor conluded there was a 0.2 percent chance she was lying. 

Question: “Did you at any time knowingly ingest nandrolone?”

 Answer: “No.”

The low probability that Houlihan is lying about this was summarily dismissed. The panel report essentially threw out the polygraph tests because it thought the questions weren't specific enough. 

Even so, the report states: "although the Athlete was a credible witness and has brought compelling character witness evidence in support of her defense, she has failed to establish the source of the 19-NA detected in her urine sample to the applicable standard of proof, and did not bring forward sufficient objective evidence that would warrant the application of Rule 10.2.1 a. of the WA ADR."

What else could she have done? The problem arises when you are accused of doing something a month ago and then have to scramble to retrace all of your steps in order to prove innocence. 

It has to be incredibly unnerving for any professional track and field athlete who lives under the microscope of the doping agencies to know that something could trigger a positive test and your legitimate best argument gets shot down because a paneled group of two law professors from Denmark and Switzerland, and an attorney from Canada, can effectively end your running career after conceding that your explanation is possible, but not probable. Is there any room for an actual athlete, present or former, to be included. To have a jury with at least one peer?

Houlihan didn't do enough to prove her innocence. And it's really difficult to tell whether she is really just incredibly unlucky in this — to have eaten from a food truck the night before a drug test. She has never tested positive for anything else before or since. 

Remember, this woman broke the American record in the 5,000 meters at an invitation-only intrasquad meet at Jesuit High last summer when the world was still waiting on a vaccine. Everyone who was there that night, including yours truly, was screened at the entrance.

Houlihan refused to wear Nike's super spikes because she didn't want anyone to doubt her ability. 

Where is the probability that this person cheats? 

Unfortunately for her, CAS doesn't have show anything of the sort. Because it can't and doesn't bear the burden of proof. 

And speaking of bad luck (or good), how fortunate must Frerichs feel about all of this? They picked up identical burritos and took them back to her apartment to watch The Bachelorette, along with Frerichs' sister. 

Presumably, Frerichs did not get tested early the next morning. 

Houlihan landed a four-year ban, wiping out two Olympic Games and next year's World Championships in Eugene. Frerichs went to Tokyo and secured a silver medal at the Olympic Games, then later smashed the U.S. record in the women's 3,000-meter steeplechase at the Prefontaine Classic. 

That contrast is stunning.  

In a year where millions of people have been pushed to the brink by forces outside their control, Houlihan seems to have been one more caught up in a scenario she didn't deserve. 

The Court of Arbitration for Sport didn't deal with this matter with any type of grace, or leniency, for the times we are still living through. They don't operate with benefits of the doubt. Cheaters are out there, and when the explanation is too far-fetched, bingo! 

For Houlihan to have taken, intentionally, the substance found in her system, in December, it would have served no practical purpose. 

What is the probability that Houlihan is foolish enough to knowingly take nandrolone, devious enough to hide it from her teammates and coaches, and smart enough to beat two lie detector tests? 

It doesn't add up. 

I have to say, I was conflicted by the hastily assembled Zoom invite to a press conference in mid-June where Houlihan and coaches Jerry Schumacher and Shalane Flanagan expressed their outrage and sadness over a situation that had been brewing for six months out of the public's eye. 

You had to wonder if Nike and the Bowerman Track Club's frantic effort to save face was a one-sided public relations ploy. You never heard of nandrolone before? 

After today, scanning those 44 pages of the CAS's side, I understand it better. 

Reputations are at stake, not to mention Houlihan's livelihood, legacy and future. 

The scales of justice at CAS — possibility versus probability — appear irrevocably out of alignment. There has to be a better way of determining guilt or the severity of the punishment is way out of proportion. 

Forty-four pages in, I'm not convinced Houlihan cheated, not convinced her burrito had anything to do with it, not convinced the process was fair, and not convinced the punishment matches the crime.