U.S. runner banned four years after positive test

U.S. champion distance runner Shelby Houlihan said on Monday that she has been banned four years for testing positive for an anabolic steroid, a result she says came from eating a burrito.

The 28-year-old wrote in an Instagram post she was provisionally suspended in January after the Athletics Integrity Unit said a December 2020 test result was positive for nandrolone.

Houlihan, who holds the U.S. record in the 1,500 and 5,000 meters, wrote she has “never taken any performance enhancing substances.” But she concluded the positive test was from eating a burrito in December that contained pig organ meat, which she says is known to have high amounts of nandrolone.

She said the Court of Arbitration last Friday “did not accept my explanation of what had occurred and has subsequently banned me from the sport for four years.”

“I feel completely devastated, lost, broken, angry, confused and betrayed by the very sport that I’ve loved and poured myself into just to see how good I was,” Houlihan wrote.

Houlihan won the 2020 U.S. indoor titles in the 1,500-meter and 3,000-meter races. She finished 11th at the Rio Olympics in the 5,000 meters.

The U.S. track and field Olympic trials start Saturday in Eugene, Oregon.