Instead of becoming the best middle-distance runner in U.S. history, Shelby Houlihan is losing the prime of her career to an offense she says she didn’t commit.
MILFORD, Iowa — Had her life unfolded as planned, Shelby Houlihan would have been in St. Moritz, Switzerland, with her running club earlier this month, preparing for the track and field world championships, which begin Saturday in Budapest. She possibly would own an Olympic medal, and her mind would be filled with visions of a Paris 2024 podium.
“I think about it every day,” Houlihan said this month, walking along Lake Okoboji. “Maybe I shouldn’t, but it’s hard not to. I feel like it would be so much of an easier process to accept if I had cheated. Then it’s like, ‘I f----- up. These are the consequences of my actions. I made a mistake, and I deserve everything I’m going through.’ But it’s been so much harder to get to that point of accepting it when I’m like, ‘I don’t deserve this.’ It’s been really tricky to navigate that.
The harshest suspensions for first-time offenders last four years, a time frame designed to excise one Olympics. A timing fluke means Houlihan will miss two: Her test occurred as the pandemic pushed the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to 2021. Houlihan competed at her first and only Olympics in 2016 at 23. At the next Olympics for which she will be eligible, the 2028 Los Angeles Games, she will be 35.
After a morning workout, she drove with teammates Karissa Schweizer and Matthew Centrowitz to pick up brunch. As they waited for their food, Houlihan’s phone buzzed with an email marked URGENT and CONFIDENTIAL. “I was like, ‘What the f--- is this?’ ” Houlihan said. She read it again and again, barely making sense of technical phrases and words she didn’t recognize. Her face turned stricken.
Schumaker never doubted Houlihan’s innocence. He and her teammates had lived around her for years, “spending every waking moment with someone,” Cranny said. At the 2019 world championships, Schumaker implored Houlihan to wear Nikes with a carbon plate in the sole, permitted technology that had“I was like: ‘Listen, every one of your competitors is wearing these shoes. They’re not illegal,’ ” Schumaker said. “She goes: ‘I don’t need them.
As Houlihan waited for a hearing, she continued training. Only a few teammates knew. As she always had when her life became tumultuous, she used running as a refuge. By late spring, she was as fit as she had ever been.Months passed. Greene said the AIU “slow-walked,” delaying a hearing as the U.S. trials approached. To expedite the process so Houlihan could run at the trials, she bypassed an AIU hearing and appealed straight to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Greene’s argument hinged on the AIU’s original classification of her test. The lab considered the result an adverse analytical finding, which meant it believed the underlying markers of her test suggested intentional doping.
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