Despite incurring a four-year doping ban from track and field, Shelby Houlihan was, well into Thursday, listed as a participant at the Olympic Trials, which begin Friday.
“Given there is an active appeal process, USATF will allow any athletes to continue competing until the process is completed,” a USA Track & Field spokesman said in a statement.
But the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee overruled USATF late Thursday after a statement from the Athletics Integrity Unit, the anti-doping body that had handled Houlihan’s case.
“As a Member Federation of World Athletics, USATF must, in the running of its events, respect and implement decisions of hearing bodies such as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) which are made under the World Athletics Anti-Doping Rules,” the AIU said in a statement.
The USOPC said that it and USATF would follow the rules, according to USA Today. That means no Trials for Houlihan, the American record holder at 1500 and 5000 meters.
The 28-year-old Houlihan and her coaches and lawyer have gone all-out claiming that the amount of steroids in her urine was caused by pig organs from an “authentic Mexican food truck.”
“You can always resolve the outcome later, but you can’t re-run a race,” USATF CEO Max Siegel told the Associated Press in defending Houlihan’s presence at the meet.
That outcome has been resolved by powers above Siegel. Houlihan’s presence at the Trials would have been a logistical nightmare, raising questions about athletes that finished behind her in each round and eventually for a spot on the Olympic team.
Several prominent athletes, including Emma Coburn and other likely track Olympians, signed a letter ripping USATF’s original decision to let Houlihan run. (Molly Seidel, who is already on the Olympic team in the marathon, signed the letter.)
Every Olympic Trials, it seems, American track’s governing body can’t stay out of its own way. Just don’t say a pork burrito started all this. Greene, the lawyer, admitted to LetsRun that Houlihan ordered carne asada the night before her drug test.
