Welp. Looks like avoiding pork is a pretty good idea if you’re an Olympic athlete. Take it from world record holding American distance runner Shelby Houlihan.
The Olympic hopeful said she’s been provisionally banned for four years from track by the Athletics Integrity Unit after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug on Monday. Specifically, she said she tested positive for nandrolone.
Her suspension hasn’t been officially announced by the AIU yet, but if it holds up it comes just a week before Olympic Trials start and nearly a full month before the Olympics.
And it all might be…because of a burrito. At least, that’s what Houlihan says it is. And she has a case.
She posted the news of her positive test on Instagram and explained the situation.
“On January 14th, 2021 I received an e-mailf rom the Athletics Integrity Unit, informing me a drug testing sample that I provided on December 15th, 2020 has returned as an adverse analytical finding for an anabolic steriod called Nandrolone…I have since learned that it has long been understood by [the World Anti-Doping Agency] that eating pork can lead to a false positive for nandrolone, since certain types of pigs produce it naturally in high amounts.”
Wild, right? She wasn’t finished.
“In the following 5 days after being notified, I put together a food log of everything that I consumed the week of that December 15th test. We concluded that the most likely explanation was a burriot purchased and consumed approximately 10 hours before that drug test from an authentic Mexican food truck that serves pig offal near my house in Beaverton, Oregon.”
That’s just WILD. A burrito could cost Houlihan her chance to compete in the Olympics — the biggest stage of her career. That’s unheard of. She continued to explain that she filed an appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Sport, but that it didn’t accept her explanation.
The ban hasn’t been announced still, as of Monday evening, so maybe there’s hope that this can still be investigated and potentially overturned. Either way, this situation is pretty wild.
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