Ea mess – this is the memory of the doping case Shelby Houlihan. The runner, fourth at the 2019 World Championships in Doha over 1500 meters, was found to have nandrolone in a December 2020 sample. She explained the existence of the muscle-building steroid by saying that Mexican food truck staff must have made her a burrito with hormone-packed boar boar innards, even though she ordered one with beef.
This kind of contaminated meat has long since entered the unofficial pinnacle of outlandish excuses. But the judges of the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) in Lausanne could not be convinced. Following her guilty verdict, it would have been expected that Houlihan would not be seen or heard from again until January 2025, when she is on ban.
It turned out differently. Former teammate Gabriela DeBues-Stafford, fifth at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics in the 1500 meters, is saying goodbye to Bowerman Track Club (BTC), a running group owned by sporting goods manufacturer Nike in Oregon because she still hears and sees too much of Houlihan there .
The suspended runner appears to be continuing to train at the same venue as her former team, even if they travel to training camp. And she apparently continues to train with coach Jerry Schumacher. If she were to train with her former team, she would be breaking the rules of her ban. If she lets Schumacher train her in his free time, that seems fine.
Suspended runner Shelby Houlihan appears to be training at the same location as her former team, even when they travel to training camp.
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Bild: picture alliance/AP Images
The problem: Gabriela DeBues-Stafford can’t really differentiate between the two. She therefore suggested that if the suspended runner did not train at a different location, then at least at different times – on different days, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, at alternating times. None of these suggestions followed her club.
They didn’t even want to reveal the basics, according to which the coaches and supervisors try to separate the work with the professionals of the club and the parallel support of the suspended runner. The suspension of the former teammate and its consequences continue to burden her, writes Gabriela DeBues-Stafford on Instagram. “I had to move on for my athletic ability and mental health.”
Against the background that Alberto Salazar’s more than dubious Oregon Project was blown up in 2019, at the same place at home as BTC, also financed by Nike and staffed with much more prominent runners, this farewell is alarming. So far there has been no accusation and no suspicion that Schumacher, like Salazar, who has since been excluded from sport, experimented with performance-enhancing substances or encouraged athletes to manipulate them. But he creates a gray area. That’s not illegal. But intolerable. Gabriela DeBues-Stafford says goodbye before falling into the twilight.
