For stretches of her four long years in running purgatory, the poster child for a drug-fighting system in sports that nobody truly understands was as likely to be seen driving her 1971 Volkswagen minibus across the country as working out on the track.
The US’ reigning 5,000m champion, Shelby Houlihan, used what is now known, infamously, as her “Burrito Ban” to scratch some things off her bucket list. She bought the burgundy bus — sight unseen — and logged an estimated 9,656km on a tour of the US.
“I thought, I didn’t have running to hold me back,” Houlihan said. “I’ve got to go do some fun things.”
Photo: AP
Now that her ban is expired, “fun” means rediscovering the purpose for all those kilometers she has piled up — not in the minibus, but over four years of running just to run.
Houlihan was entered in the 5,000m at the World Athletics Championships in Japan National Stadium, the place she was denied a chance to compete four years ago in the wake of a polarizing doping ban that took away not one, but two Olympics.
She last night qualified for the 5,000m final to be held tomorrow night. It is her first major outdoor track meet since she finished fourth in the 1,500m in Doha at the 2019 worlds.
Photo: Shelby Houlihan via AP
“Most people believe your prime is like 27 to 30 or 31, and those are the years that I missed,” said the 32-year-old Iowa native who lives out of a camper with her boyfriend, two dogs and a cat in Flagstaff, Arizona.
“I can’t do anything to get those back,” she said. “Part of me wonders what I could’ve done, but that’s a rabbit hole I don’t need to go down.”
She said she “blindly believed” in the global anti-doping system because, as she put it, “I knew I didn’t cheat.”
Then, it turned drastically and dramatically against her.
Four years after she made news of the ban public on the eve of the 2021 Olympic trials, there remain some who saw Houlihan improve drastically in the late 2010s and never believed her alibi for testing positive for a performance enhancer: that she ingested it by eating a drug-tainted pork burrito bought from a food truck.
Among those who did were the US Anti-Doping Agency, which tested her 53 times between 2017 and 2021 without turning up a positive.
“I don’t take supplements anymore. I drink Pedialyte and that’s about it,” she said. “The meat I eat, I freeze it just in case I get tested, and if I do get tested, that meat will sit in the freezer until I hear it’s a clean test. It’s not the way I like to live, but it’s the way I have to at this point.”
Additional reporting by staff writer
‘DEVASTATED’: Argentina’s win was a reversal of their 28-24 defeat last week, with Australian forward Fraser McReight adding that ‘we did the same thing last week’ Argentina flyhalf Santiago Carreras punished an undisciplined Australia with 23 points off the tee as the Pumas held on grimly for a 28-26 win in Sydney yesterday to breathe new life into their Rugby Championship campaign. A try-fest beckoned in afternoon sunshine at Sydney Football Stadium, but Argentina needed only one through captain Julian Montoya, with Carreras doing the damage with seven penalties and a conversion in front of a sell-out crowd. A week after letting a 14-point lead slip in a 28-24 defeat to Australia in Townsville, Argentina saw most of a 21-point advantage erased in the final quarter as the
Captain Vijay Kumar led the way yesterday as the Hsinchu Titans claimed the Taiwan Premier League title at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山), beating PCCT by 27 runs. The weather was a topic again, but not the rain that played a role in previous matches in the often-delayed tournament. Kumar, who made 80 not out from 63 deliveries, and teammate Vishwajit Kumar (58 from 43) rescued the Titans from a precarious state at the end of the power play in the T20 match. The visitors were put in to bat and struggled to 26-3 as PCCT
China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper on Monday published an essay about Chinese basketball it said was written by LeBron James, but a representative for the NBA star said on Thursday that the article was based on a series of interviews. The paper, better known as the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, had said James authored the essay, “Basketball is a Bridge that Connects Us,” a tribute to Chinese players and fans of the sport written in the first person. “LeBron James Pens an Article in the People’s Daily,” read a post published on the newspaper’s official WeChat account. On Thursday, a representative
San Francisco Giants pitcher Teng Kai-wei impressed against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday despite an 8-1 loss in the opener of the team’s nine-game road trip. Teng, the only Taiwanese pitcher active in MLB, struck out five while allowing two hits and one walk over four innings at Chase Field to finish with a no decision, as the teams were tied 1-1 when he finished his outing. He surrendered the lone run of his outing in the bottom of the first, which began with a walk, a hit-by-pitch and two strikeouts. Diamondbacks leadoff hitter Geraldo Perdomo advanced to third on
RSS