Surprisingly enough, it's not totally out of the realm of possibility.
“On January 14th, 2021, I received an email from the Athletics Integrity Unit , informing me a drug testing sample that I provided on December 15th, 2020, has returned as an Adverse Analytical Finding for an anabolic steroid called Nandrolone and that I am therefore subject to an immediate Provisional Suspension,” Houlihan explained. “When I got that email, I had to read it over about ten times and google what it was that I had just tested positive for. I had never even heard of nandrolone.
Since then, Houlihan said, she learned that certain pork products can potentially cause a false positive for nandrolone. “I put together a food log of everything that I consumed the week of that December 15th test,” she wrote. “We concluded that the most likely explanation was a burrito purchased and consumed approximately 10 hours before that drug test from an authentic Mexican food truck that serves pig offal near my house in Beaverton, Oregon.
Houlihan, who previously competed in the Rio Olympics in 2016 and was gearing up for a promising showing in Tokyo, has since contacted experts, taken a polygraph test, and had a sample of her hair tested by a toxicologist, she said. The World Anti-Doping Agency “agreed that test proved that there was no build-up of this substance in my body, which there would have been if I were taking it regularly,” Houlihan continued. “Nothing moved the lab from their initial snap decision.
Finally, Houlihan received word last week that the Court of Arbitration did not accept her alternate explanation and instead banned her from the sport for four years, essentially sinking her chances of competing in the Tokyo Olympics this year. “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 said, adding, “I want to be very clear.
But can eating pork actually cause someone to test positive for nandrolone? Unfortunately, there isn't an easy answer. “Nandrolone is not approved for use in any food animal,” Keeve Nachman, Ph.D., an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
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