U.S. record setting middle distance runner Shelby Houlihan is facing a four-year anti-doping suspension due to a failed steroid test due to her offal-ly good Mexican food truck pork burrito, according to Mediaite.com.
Houlihan reported Monday that she was recently banned by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after testing positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone, which can be found in pork organ meat, according to her Instagram page.
An Olympic hopeful for this summer’s games in Tokyo, Houlihan currently holds the American record for 1,500 and 5,000 meters.
Houlihan’s argument has support in the medical field.
According to a study published in the “National Library of Medicine” examining the consequence of boar edible tissue consumption on urinary profiles of nandrolone metabolites it is possible that her test was a false positive.
“We have thus proved that eating tissues of non-castrated male pork (in which 17beta-nandrolone is present) might induce some false accusations of the abuse of nandrolone in antidoping.”
While allegedly not having a clue what the substance found in her body was, she looked to what she had consumed to find a possible source of the contaminant.
“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.”
Still, she is heartbroken over the finding.
“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.”
She said she then appealed the ban to the Court of Arbitration which told her Friday that her appeal had been denied.
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.
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