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
NO HARD FEELINGS: Taiwan’s Lin Hsiang-ti and Indonesia’s Dhinda Amartya Pratiwi embraced after fighting to a tense and rare 30-29 final game in their Uber Cup match The Taiwanese men’s team on Wednesday fought back from the brink of elimination to defeat Denmark in Group C and advance to the quarter-finals of the Thomas Cup, while the women’s team were to face South Korea after press time last night in the Uber Cup quarter-finals in Horsens, Denmark. In the first match, Taiwan’s top shuttler Chou Tien-chen faced a familiar opponent in world No. 3 Anders Antonsen. It was their 16th head-to-head matchup, with the Dane taking his fourth victory in a row against former world No. 2 Chou, winning 21-14, 13-21, 21-15 in 1 hour, 22 minutes. The
Marta Kostyuk’s maiden WTA 1000 title in Madrid came on Saturday thanks to her power, poise and a pair of unexpected lucky shorts. The world No. 23 beat eighth-ranked Mirra Andreeva 6-3, 7-5 in under 90 minutes to secure the most prestigious trophy of her career, her third professional singles title and second in less than a month after Rouen. Yet as the 23-year-old Ukrainian posed for photographs at the Caja Magica, it was not just the silverware that caught the eye. Held alongside her team and her two dogs, Kostyuk showed off a piece of black men’s underwear, prompting
Throwing more than US$5 billion at a divisive new tour and walking away after five seasons does not look like good business, but LIV Golf was not all bad news for Saudi Arabia. Oil-funded LIV, which poached top stars and sent golf’s establishment into a tailspin, helped push the conservative kingdom into global view — one of its key aims, experts said. The exit, confirmed on Thursday after weeks of speculation, does not signal a flight of Saudi money from sport, even after the Middle East war that sparked Iranian attacks around the Gulf, they said. “Saudi Arabia is not
Anastasia Potapova on Wednesday turned tennis heartbreak into history by becoming the first lucky loser to reach a WTA 1000 semi-final with her thrilling 6-1, 6-7 (4/7), 6-3 victory over Karolina Pliskova at the Madrid Open, as Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei exited in the women’s doubles quarter-finals. The Russian-born Austrian, who lost in qualifying last week, has capitalized on her unexpected main draw entry and stunned former world No. 1 Pliskova in a roller-coaster clash despite squandering three match points. Potapova’s run has included impressive victories over former French Open champion Jelena Ostapenko and world No. 2 Elena Rybakina. Asked if she had thought
RSS