Offal Excuse: US Olympic Contender Blames Positive Steroid Test on Pork Burrito
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Blaming a pork burrito for her failed steroid test won’t stopped US record setting middle distance runner Shelby Houlihan from facing a four-year doping ban.
Houlihan was an Olympic hopeful for this summer’s games in Tokyo, holding the American record for 1,500 and 5,000 meters. But she wrote in an Instagram post Monday that she was banned by the Athletics Integrity Unit after testing positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone, which can be found in pork.
“I feel completely devastated, lost, broken, angry, confused and betrayed by the very sport that I’ve loved and poured myself into just to see how good I was,” the 28-year-old wrote, adding that she has “never taken any performance enhancing substances.”
“We concluded that the most likely explanation was a burrito 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,” Houlihan wrote. “I notified the AIU that I believed this was the source.”
Houlihan said she appealed the ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but was informed Friday that it did not accept her explanation of a tainted pork burrito. Her announcement came days before the start of the US Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Oregon, where the top three competitors for each event will advance to the Tokyo Games.
Houlihan made her first Olympic team in 2016, where she placed 11th at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. The four-year ban will also prevent her from competing in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
