Shelby Houlihan

TBD.

Uh, other quick news, uh, Shelby Houlihan signed with Skechers.

Uh, I was curious if she...

She's been running pretty well.

And, like, Jerry's coached so many people that are s- at such a high level that she...

When he told her that, she was like, "Well, I must be, like, really freaking good," because he's coached, you know, Shelby Houlihan.

He's coach- She- He's coached Evan Jager.

He's coached all these people, Mohamed, you know, medalists at global championship, Colleen Quigley.

So I, I actually thought about, like, inserting this earlier on in the episode when we were talking about, like, M-Mike McKnight and sponsors and, like, doping and stuff, because my content find of the week is not trail running related, but I just thought it was interesting.

Uh, did you see Shelby Houlihan signed a professional contract with a shoe company?

No.

Oh.

So, uh, Joe Montaña [chuckles] um, and they, like, they don't really have, like, that big of, like, a diehard fan base to piss off.

So I thought that was interesting.

But then when I was talking to my wife Maddie about this, she was like, "You know, this is actually really interesting, because didn't they sponsor, like, Kara Goucher towards the tail end of her career when she was, like, really taking a stance against Nike and everything? And, like, they had Meb, like, two of, like, the, the golden people of our sport, and now they go and sign Shelby Houlihan." I was like, I was like, "Oh, you're right.

There is some dynamics there.

Uh, some of the major flaws are the, uh, false positives that cause athletes to have huge destruction to their career and their reputation when the system is testing not perfectly, and things like consuming a tainted supplement or tainted meat at a restaurant can send an athlete to the sidelines for four years.

Hopefully, you watch my detailed interview, two interviews with Olympic runner Shelby Houlihan, who was, uh, suspended for four years from a very questionable, uh, trace amount of an anabolic steroid that was found in one of her doping tests.

Uh, she had no idea how it got into her system.

Her defense was ridiculed widely because she pers- uh, perspectively or proposed that she, uh, ate, uh, some tainted food from a, uh, a food truck, the tainted burrito defense, and that was all she had to explain something that she had no idea, uh, you know, strongly arguing that she was a clean athlete and did not engage in doping.

So yeah, you did.

So w- in this race, which featured, you know, half the field was Ethiopian and then two Australians, the Maureen Koster from the Netherlands, Marta Garcia from Spain, Hannah Nuttall from GB, and then Shelby Houlihan from the United States.

But for the most part, lot of attention on the Ethiopians.

So then now you had some skin in the game.

So I'm super keen to see how she goes.

Also interesting, Shelby Houlihan's in there.

Um, and also Jess-

Don't move on from that one.

That does make a lot of sense.

Um, a name which we both said we were kind of surprised to see, and that was Shelby Houlihan.

Yeah.

Yeah.

By the way, though, if it's slow, could Jessica Hull win?

What if Shelby Houlihan wins it?

I said Jessica Hull deserves it.

I know there's a lot.

If you're not a Shelby Houlihan hater, and if you actually think that she didn't intentionally dope and she sat on all those years and then now she's come back, gotten fourth in the world and still can't get a sponsor, that would be the ultimate person who deserves a win.

But he thinks she cheated.

She's the one person you don't want to see win.

to be determined on that one.

I mean, Shelby Houlihan was fourth in the world last year.

So you don't have to be the best in the world.

There's only three Kenyans.