The Battle

World class runner Shelby Houlihan goes on trial and a bad burrito is her smoking gun. Plus, what do you do when you look just like figure skating’s supervillain? STORIES The Burrito Theory World class runner Shelby Houlihan goes on trial and a bad burrito is her smoking gun. Thank you Shelby, for sharing your story with us! Produced by John Fecile, original score by Clay Xavier. Tonya for Hire What if one day you found out you look like one of the most famous people in the country — who everybody hates? Lynn Harris http://www.lynnharris.net/ is an author, commentator, award-winning journalist and mostly-retired comedian. She has a business, Gold Comedy http://goldcomedyforgirls.com/, that teaches comedy to teenage girls. You can find her performing on stage as Tonya Harding here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnpqog3hbNE Produced by Liz Mak, original score by Leon Morimoto. Season 16 - Episode 30 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

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• 1:21Speaker 01

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• 2:16Glynn Washington?

  So yesterday morning, I'm waking up, sleep still in my eye, and I smell first. I sense someone in my bedroom, someone I don't know. Who are you? A man stepped from the shadows and tells me I am under arrest. Arrest? For what? It's not our job to tell you that. This is gonna be your job to catch these hands. Show me the warrant. Why can't you just accept your position? Y'all are making a mistake. There is no mistake. Our authorities do not have to search for guilt. They are drawn to guilt. This is the law.

• 3:01Glynn Washington?

  And that I do have to accept because deep down, the truth is, I know I'm guilty. I just don't know of what.

• 3:28Glynn Washington?

  Now, Snappers, you may know this invented story from the trial by Franz Kafka, but today on Snap, we've got some very real stories of people fighting for their lives, for their dignity, for how they're seen, and even how they see themselves. A land where everyone is guilty until proven innocent.

• 3:53Glynn Washington?

  Today from KQED, Snap Judgment proudly presents The Battle. My name is Clinton Washington. You have the right to remain silent. Or at least you used to, when you're listening to Snap Judgment.

• 4:36Glynn Washington?

  Now, for our first story, we ask the question, can what's inside a burrito tell you about what's inside a person? The story of a world-class athlete in a world of trouble from producer John Facile. Snap, judge me.

• 4:57Speaker 02

  What's your biggest goal?

• 4:59Speaker 03

  That's a great question.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  What was it before all this?

• 5:03Speaker 03

  I think it's still the same. Ultimately, I want to just get the most out of myself and see what I'm capable of.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  The clock is ticking down. And we turn our attention to two individual track finals now, both involving world-class women.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  The 2019, the World Athletics Championships in Doha. Shelby Houlihan, brown hair, tattoos, reps the US in the Women's 1500.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  2019 was probably my first time where I lined up at a world stage and was like, I belong here. I'm gonna walk away with a medal.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Shelby had an Olympics under her belt, and she holds a couple of American track records. But now, at age 27, she's entering her prime.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  The final of the Women's 1500 meters begins. So much intrigue with this one.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  And Shelby runs the 1500 in 3 minutes and 54 seconds, faster than any American woman in history.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  But look at this acceleration from Sifan Hassan.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  And it just ain't enough. Sifan Hassan, an Ethiopian-Dutch runner, finishes with the gold, three seconds ahead of her.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  Mind blowing.

• 6:25Speaker 04

  She tore a world-class field to pieces.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Shelby doesn't even make bronze.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  Fourth place.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  What are the emotions? How are you feeling?

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Honestly, very disappointed.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Afterwards, she's interviewed by reporters, one of whom makes a point of asking about her shoes.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  You didn't wear your Nike prototype shoes. Why?

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Um, I like...

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Just before the race, Shelby's coach had pleaded with her to wear "super shoes", a new type of carbon-plated track shoe that all the other runners were using and breaking records with.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Honestly, I don't know. I've never worn them.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  And after the race, her coach tries again.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  He was just like, "What if that was the difference between you getting fourth place in Doha and you meddling?" And I'm like, "That's exactly why I don't want to wear them, because I don't want it to be the shoes that I wore."

• 7:17Speaker 03

  For me, my own personal morals, that crosses my line. I don't agree with it. I think it's pretty black and white. I don't really think there is a gray area. If you're trying to gain an advantage when you don't naturally have one, to me, that's an intention to cheat.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Can you tell me about when you got the email, where it happened, what was going on?

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, so...

• 7:47Speaker 02

  January 2021.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  We were at Altitude Camp in Flagstaff, Arizona.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Shelby is with a few of her teammates from the Bowerman Track Club, and they're grabbing brunch after finishing up a workout.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  I got an email on my phone that was saying... It's this confidential, urgent email. And so I opened it, obviously, and reading it.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  This email is from the Athletics Integrity Unit, the anti-doping arm of World Athletics. A urine sample that she'd given one morning in December 2020 hadn't been clean.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  You're immediately suspended from competition.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  Suspended. In the middle of training for the Tokyo Olympics, she'd be unable to run in the Olympic trials, just six months away.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  What the... What the hell?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Shelby was tested regularly. Two or three times a month, the Athletics Integrity Unit would send an official to her home to watch her pee in a cup.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  I was one of the most tested athletes in the US because I was doing very well.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  That's an understatement.

• 8:51Speaker 06

  Second fastest time ever run on American soil.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  She was quite possibly Team USA's best hope at meddling in middle distance running.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  I'm starting to panic. And so I was just like, opening the technical document of what I tested positive for 19 niranda rosterone. Like, what's that?

• 9:14Speaker 02

  19 niranda rosterone is a metabolite of a steroid called nandrolone.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  It helps you build muscle. I think it can help recovery.

• 9:23Speaker 07

  This is me on nandrolone with two 30-ton boulders resting upon my scapula.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Nandrolone is more common in bodybuilding and weightlifting, but plenty of runners have been caught using it.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  We get home. I ended up going to my room and I call my coach Jerry. And I was like, it took me probably five minutes to get it out. Like, something happened.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Shelby's coach connects her to sports lawyer Paul Green. And that afternoon, Shelby and her new lawyer hop on a Zoom call. They have to provide an explanation for how nandrolone ended up in her system, and they only have seven days.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  And he's like, go to your local drugstore and go get a pregnancy test. Nandrolone levels can be high in pregnant women or something like that.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Nandrolone occurs naturally in the human body in very small amounts.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  I go to the local Walgreens, get a pregnancy test, take the pregnancy test. I'm like, OK, I'm not pregnant. That's not what it is.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Shelby sends off a bunch of her daily vitamins for testing. She cuts off some strands of hair, sends those to a lab. Then she and her new lawyer start going through what she ate the day before the test to see if there was anything that could have contaminated her urine.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  I was able to recreate a food log using text messages and iPhone locations.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And right away, they notice something.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  I ate at this food truck the night before the test. I ended up ordering a carne asada burrito, but maybe that's not what it was.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Did it not taste like carne asada?

• 11:03Speaker 03

  I don't know. Like, I was putting salsa in every bite. So like, I guess I wasn't also looking for it to be anything else, you know? Like, I was just eating a burrito.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  One of Shelby's teammates also got a burrito from this truck, but neither of them could finish.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  It was super, super greasy. Like, there's just grease pooling in the bottom of this. And that's why we were like, maybe it was chorizo or something like that, or pig offal or something.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Pig offal, an all-purpose blend of pig organs, often used in chorizo, and it could have been the source of the nandrolone.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  Well, it can be found naturally in pigs, or like uncastrated boars. Another meal made simple with pork. Slice it. And so we were like, OK, that's something. So let's put a pin in that and like, keep looking and see if there's anything else. Pork, the other white meat.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  But there is nothing else. The vitamins come back clean. She's not using any eye drops or skin creams known to contain nandrolone.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Maybe, her lawyer says, the burrito contained pig offal, and that spiked her nandrolone levels.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  So we hired a private investigator to like, try to figure out where this food truck sources their meat. And it ended up, we were able to like, backtrack it to like, a huge processing plant.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Next, the P I. went to the food truck itself.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  He ordered all of the different meats, took them all out of the tortilla, wrapped them up individually, put them in a cooler, and then shipped them to a lab.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Those samples come back negative. But Shelby and her lawyer decide to submit the burrito theory anyway as their official explanation for how nandrolone ended up in her urine.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  This was the only lead that we had, and this is kind of like what we tried to prove.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  And as crazy as it sounds, the burrito theory might be their best shot.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Cases where athletes' urine samples are contaminated by outside sources are really common. And a lot of the time, meat is the culprit.

• 13:19Speaker 03

  I'm trying to trust this process. I'm trying to trust, like, I didn't do anything, they're gonna see that. They'll, obviously, like, they're not gonna ban an innocent athlete. But I'm also like, what if they do? That can't happen. Like, there's just, that can't be what my career is.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Either the Athletics Integrity Unit accepts the burrito theory, or Shelby loses everything. Her reputation, her friends. She's been with her team for almost six years. And you were living with your teammates?

• 13:56Speaker 03

  I was living with, like, a few of them, yeah. I ended up not telling most of my team. I was trying to, kind of, keep it under wraps, because I didn't want the whole world to find out. I ended up telling the people that I was living with what was going on, because I was obviously in emotional wreck. I was, like, crying all the time. During that time, I got so frickin' fit, like, I was throwing myself into running, like, to an unhealthy extent. Like, my foot, my planter was about to tear in half. Like, I had, basically, a stress reaction in my foot. Like, I was just, I, I, it was my only way to cope with what was happening.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  So I was just like, I can't stop, because then it'll all be too much.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Months pass, February, March, with no word from the Athletics Integrity Unit on whether or not they'll accept the burrito theory. And Shelby's running out of time. So in April, with the Olympic trials less than two months away, she and her lawyer decide to do something drastic. They appeal directly to a higher authority, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, to force a high-stakes showdown with World Athletics.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  We just, like, felt confident that we could win. We needed to just get this over with, get through this process, and be able to win, and so I can race at the trials. Like, that was really where our minds were at.

• 15:39Glynn Washington?

  When Snap returns, the burrito theory faces the ultimate test. Stay tuned.

• 15:56Speaker 08

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• 16:38Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the battle episode of the Olympics are on the line for runner Shelby Houlihan, and everything's riding on the contents of a burrito.

• 16:51Glynn Washington?

  Snap Judgment.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  June 4, 2021. Shelby hops on a Zoom call at 6 a.m. to face the court of arbitration for sport.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Oh, just like I wanted to throw up.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Like, I was so nervous. Such an important day of my life, and it's just like, it's in the hands of someone else.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Three someone elses, the three arbitrators of the court. They will hear the evidence and decide whether or not her ban is upheld. Also on the call, Shelby's legal team, lawyers from World Athletics, and a handful of scientists from Europe, Canada, and the U.S., called by both sides as expert witnesses.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  I was shaking. Like, I was terrified.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Shelby unmutes herself and explains, again, the burrito theory. How she ordered carne asada, how it was so greasy she couldn't finish, how it could have been pork. She tells the court that she's a clean athlete, that she even thinks cheaters should face jail time.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  I don't know what you need to hear. Like, I'm just trying to, like, show you who I am and like, that I wouldn't do something like this. And I hope that you believe me.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Her lawyer submits statements from her coaches and teammates, all vouching for her character. He submits the results of a lie detector test.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Passed with a 99.98%.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  And the results of her hair test.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  Hair sample's 100% clean.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  If Shelby had been injecting nandrolone, the most effective way of using it, and if she'd been doing that repeatedly over time, that test would have shown a buildup of the drug in her hair.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  From that, we were able to get them to concede that, okay, there's no way that this could have been an injection.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  The positive test was just a one-time result. One dirty test among dozens of clean ones she'd given over the years. And the level of nandrolone in Shelby's urine was small enough, her lawyer argues, with the help of scientists he's called his expert witnesses, that it could have been caused by pork.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  The lawyers from World Athletics, though, they have a different take.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Their expert witness, Dr. Christiane Iote, ran the lab in Canada that had tested Shelby's urine in the first place.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  And they chose her as an expert, like, a lead scientist in the case. Which, in my mind, is a huge conflict of interest. Like, she's not going to go and speak against her results. She's also been known, or been proven to have provided false testimony in another athlete's case.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  In 2019, in a similar case, Dr. Iote's testimony was found to be inaccurate. And that athlete's ban was overturned, in part, because of it.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  I don't think that she should have been handling that case. I don't think she should. I wish they would have had more experts.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Dr. Iote tells the Court of Arbitration for Sport that the level of nandrolone in Shelby's urine could not have been caused by pork. Instead, it was more in line with what you'd see if she'd been taking small amounts of natriolone orally, microdosing, basically, an increasingly popular way to cheat. After Iote, the only other expert called by World Athletics is John McGlon, a professor of animal science from Texas Tech, and he takes on the question of what was in the burrito. If what was inside the burrito was, in fact, pork, and that pork had enough naturally

• 20:42Speaker 02

  occurring natriolone to raise Shelby's levels, then the meat would have had to come from an uncastrated boar. Uncastrated boars are rare in the US food supply because their testicles make their meat taste bad. It's called boar taint. Yuck. And this animal scientist, McGlon, places the likelihood of Shelby eating uncastrated boar meat at, quote, "far less than 1 in 10,000." After about eight hours, the hearing ended, and Shelby went on a run.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  And I remember, like, getting a few miles into it and just stopping and crying. I was just, like, sobbing because it was just, like, really overwhelming.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  The court of arbitration in sport began to deliberate. If they accept the burrito theory, they could just clear her totally. That happens. And actually, right around the same time, 23 Chinese swimmers tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, and no action was taken against them, none. But even if they accept the burrito theory, they could still find fault and ban her for two years. She'd miss the Olympics.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  I had just done a workout and I was cooling down by myself, just like had headphones in, was listening to music, feeling like, okay, I feel really fit and ready. Sat down on the turf and was kind of packing up my stuff. And then Jerry came over to me.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Her coach, Jerry Schumacher. It's been a week since the hearing.

• 22:27Speaker 03

  And he kneeled down and he looked at me and he goes, Shelby, they banned you for four years.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Four years, one of the harshest punishments for a first time offender.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  In their decision, the court made clear they were not buying the burrito theory. They didn't think it explained how natriolone ended up in her urine. Shelby couldn't prove that it was unintentional. And therefore, they believed it was intentional, that Shelby was doping.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  And I like, just sat there looking at him, waiting for him to say like, just kidding. And then when he didn't, I was like, are you, are you serious? I don't know what to do. Like, what am I supposed to do?

• 23:22Speaker 02

  You had an opportunity that your lawyer presented to you. Tell me what that was.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, so if I admitted guilt, if I admitted that I cheated, I would get a three year ban instead of a four year ban.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  And if Shelby's ban was three years instead of four, she'd still be able to run in the Paris Olympics in 2024, when she'd be 30, still in the window of her athletic prime.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  That was just never on the table for me, honestly. I shot that down immediately. I was like, I'm not going to admit to something that I know I didn't do.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  Since I started running when I was five years old, I've had dreams of running professionally, setting records, winning an Olympic gold medal.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Three days later, Shelby held a press conference.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  We've heard this story before, right? I have never used steroids. Athletes get caught.

• 24:47Speaker 09

  There exists no one who can truthfully testify that I have ever used performance-enhancing drugs.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  They deny it tearfully sometimes.

• 24:56Glynn Washington?

  I have never in my life, nor would I ever do anything.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Using the same excuses as Shelby.

• 25:02Speaker 10

  He's blaming it on the steak. The champion Spanish cyclist.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  People are capable of astonishing lies.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  From the beginning, people didn't want Lance Armstrong for a number of reasons either. Why would anybody believe in athlete with a positive test when they say they're not doping?

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and that's totally fair, too. Like, and that's frustrating on my end personally because I'm like, screw those people for not taking any accountability because not only all the repercussions for how you cheated and how that's affected people, but it's also now affecting people, athletes that are going through this process that are telling the truth. And now I have no credibility because you lied. You know, so it's like, that's hard. That's really frustrating. I think it's also a dangerous road to blindly trust the anti-doping organizations.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Well, you know, you could find somebody to say the exact opposite if we continue to blindly trust athletes and blindly mistrust authority, these authorities, how would it ever improve?

• 26:10Speaker 03

  I don't think you should blindly trust anything. Don't blindly trust me.

• 26:17Glynn Washington?

  After a confusing back and forth, we have it confirmed now Shelby Houlihan will not be allowed to race at the US Olympic track and field trials.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  After Shelby's ban was announced, 31 athletes signed an open letter demanding that her name be removed from the roster for the Olympic trials. She wasn't allowed to train with her team anymore, but her coach Jerry kept working with her on the side until one of her teammates called them out on Instagram and quit.

• 26:45Speaker 11

  Let's start tonight with an update on a story I know you've just been on the edge of your seats waiting for, the latest on what we're calling Burrito Gate.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  We've got an update for you now on Burrito Gate. It didn't take long for Shelby's story to become clickbait.

• 27:00Speaker 07

  It begs the question, what would a vegan blame for a failed test?

• 27:04Speaker 12

  I can just see it now, people are gonna get jacked eating tacos.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  I was scared to leave my house because it felt like everyone knew.

• 27:12Speaker 13

  She's likely a drug user, a drug cheat. I personally believe that she did it. She knows she did it. She knows she got busted. She still won't come back.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  So I got a lot of like messages. I had one person write me a handwritten letter to tell me how horrible of a person I was.

• 27:28Speaker 09

  If this was an athlete from Russia or from Kenya, I'd be like, yeah, right. Came from a burrito.

• 27:32Speaker 14

  I can only conclude that she's guilty. And that's a terrible realization as a fan because she is.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  I get, there'd be a lot of positive comments too. Like, I don't want to like dismiss that.

• 27:41Speaker 15

  I am a Shelby Houlihan fan. Love that girl. I do not think she would be doing stuff illegally like this.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  One running website even sold t-shirts to support Shelby. The shirts had a picture of her burrito on the front and the words Burrito Track Club.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  That's funny. I never knew that they sold t-shirts. I didn't know that people bought them. I didn't know that they were gonna give me part of the proceeds. I just got a check and I was like, thank you.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Shelby says she spent $250,000 on her defense and she estimates that between salary and winnings, the ban has cost her something like $1.8 million. She left Oregon and moved back in with her parents in Iowa where she took up odd jobs: DoorDash, Instacart, cat sitting.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  I really, like, I genuinely just like, didn't know how to move forward. It felt, it just felt like a pit of darkness.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Did you take a break from running?

• 28:44Speaker 03

  I took three weeks off and then decided to run again. It was just like, I just like running. I don't know. And it's kind of like my outlet. So I took three weeks off, decided, you know what? Like, screw them. They can't take running away from me. They can take away my career, but they can't take away that I love this sport and I love to run, so I'm going to keep running.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Shelby continued training with the help of her sister, who's a collegiate track coach. She was banned from officially sanctioned competition, but in Iowa, she ran a few local races just for fun. And then in 2023, two years into her ban, she got an opportunity.

• 29:25Speaker 12

  Runners, set, shoot!

• 29:31Speaker 02

  An invitation to the World Beer Mile, a race held in Chicago, where for every lap, you have to chug a beer.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Chug a beer, run a lap. Chug a beer, run a lap. So you're chugging four beers, running four laps. And you're just trying to see how fast you can do that in.

• 29:46Speaker 12

  Today, we again combine ale, our constant companion in spirit, with our drive to bend the rules of the physical world.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  It's a popular event, and serious professional athletes show up to compete. National news outlets cover it.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  I decided to do it because it sounded fun. I just really wanted running to be fun. I thought it would be a good step for me personally. Like, just kind of dip my toe in, I guess, back into the running community. And it is just a step to start overcoming some of that anxiety.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  We are picking up Shelby from O'Hare.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  That year, the organizers made a film about the Beer Mile, in which they interviewed Shelby.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  Evidently, like, some of the women in the women's championship race weren't comfortable with me racing against them. And yeah, I was definitely hurt. A week before, I got a call and they were like, "So, we talked to the women that are in the race, and there are some, like, some don't care that you're in. They're like excited, and there's others that like, don't want you in the race."

• 31:00Speaker 02

  The organizers offered Shelby the chance to run in the men's B heat, what they called the Elites and Legends Race. Legends meant old guys. Basically, it'd be Shelby and a bunch of old guys.

• 31:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, to like, kind of be delivered that news, that close to it, was just like, really frustrating. You invited me, like, this, you know, like, why wasn't this, like, solved or handled beforehand, not like, a week before? And I don't want to, like, make anyone else uncomfortable, but I still want to, like, stand up for myself here.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  Can you tell me about, maybe, your feelings about Shelby Houlihan and her competing?

• 31:44Speaker 16

  Yeah, it's a little conflicting. I mean, it's tough, because...

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Beer Mile world record holder Corey Bellmore, just before race day.

• 31:53Speaker 16

  I don't want to say too much, but, yeah. I got a big supporter of clean, clean sport and, yeah, not a big fan of Dover, so that's all I have to say.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  It was hard, but I also was kind of reminding myself, like, when I can race again and the band is up, like, I might be in those positions where there's going to be people that don't want me in the race, and I just need to, like, be OK with that and, like, still know that I deserve to be there.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Shelby wouldn't be able to qualify for a medal, but any record she got would be hers.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  I was like, I think I could break the women's record. Like, I think I could do that.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  The women's record for the Beer Mile stood at 6 minutes and 16 seconds.

• 32:44Speaker 12

  Friends and family, please welcome to the start line these glorious competitors of today's Legends and Elite section.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Shelby toed the line that day, standing shoulder to shoulder with men decades older than her. Guys who were going after the seniors' record in the beer mile. There's so many question marks in that starting line for me that I don't even know where to begin.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Before the race, someone was yelling at me like, "How's that burrito?" Or like, I don't know, it's something about a burrito. Like going into that, before that happened, like I was afraid, like, would I be able to still like, perform and like be myself? And when he shouted it, I just was like, I don't care at all. Like, I zoned it out. I was like, "You sound like an idiot right now." Like, whatever. Chug!

• 33:31Speaker 15

  All right, we didn't have the quote away there, but there we are out on this. You're gonna see some of the best chuggers in the world here.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  The race begins with all the runners slow walking as they chug their first bottle. Shelby had been practicing her chugging for weeks.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  I think one of the best tips that I got was like, if you can't drink your beer in one go, and you have to like stop and take a breath, like, don't bring it back down and then bring it back up. Like, just keep holding it up and breathe. Because if you bring it down and bring it back up, it's gonna like fizz more, or like, get more bubbly.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  She calmly, smoothly, in one motion, throws back her first beer and downs it. She then hands her empty Budweiser bottle to an official, who confirms its emptiness. All this takes about 15 seconds, but when she starts running, she's near the rear of the pack.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  You spend the first 100 meters kind of burping it up, and then like, the next 200, run really fast, and then like the last 50, slow down, so you can like, get your heart rate back down.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Puking, which happens a lot in this race, results in a penalty lap, so Shelby needs to be careful.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  It was definitely like, trying to gauge how hard I should push, and like where that line was. And then, the last 400, just tried to rip it.

• 34:47Speaker 15

  Cut, John Markle's still on the track, the old godfather right there. Not in form, and that he's been in the past, he has knee surgery, and you got Jim Philenson coming in. I think that's gonna be the now standing seniors' record. Oh, wow. And Shelby Houland is just completely screaming down that stretch right there. Let's see what time she pulls in.

• 35:10Speaker 12

  Today, for the first time in world history, six minutes has been broken by a female contestant. Not only is that a world record...

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Shelby runs the beer mile in 5 minutes and 43 seconds. The organizers hand her a sign that says "world record." As they take her photo, she's beaming.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  I've been doing this by myself, like, the last three weeks, just like trying to practice. This is so much more fun. It's like, like, the crowd was amazing, like, the energy and the atmosphere of the, of the place was awesome. Um, I would 100% do this again. This was such a fun time. Yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 06

  Here's Shelby Houlihan, the American record holder in the 1500, who last month finished serving a four-year ban for testing positive.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  Shelby's ban ended in early 2025, and she's returned to competitive racing.

• 36:06Speaker 12

  And at the line, it's gonna be Houlihan for silver and home.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  In March, she won silver in the 3,000 meters at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in China with no team, no coach, and no sponsors. She wears the super shoes now, just like everyone else, and she's passed every drug test.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  I, I don't take any vitamins anymore or anything. Like, I'm, I don't really trust anything. Even I'm like eating meat for dinner sometimes and just like, I'll cut a chunk out and freeze it in case I get tested.

• 36:44Speaker 17

  Shelby, uh, we can call it surprise, but I think you were ready for this race.

• 36:50Speaker 03

  I was definitely ready for it. I had a lot of time to prepare.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Well, you've definitely served your time, and you're back. So, I'm really rooting for you and, um, wishing you the best.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I appreciate it. It's, that's like the other thing where I'm like, unfortunately, I did serve four years. So, it's like, if you don't believe me, I did the time at least. You know?

• 37:32Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Shelby for sharing your story with The Snap. That original score was by Clay Xavier and was produced by John Vasile.

• 37:52Glynn Washington?

  Now, after the break, what if one day you discover you're the spitting image of the most famous person in the country who everyone hates?

• 38:04Glynn Washington?

  Stay tuned.

• 38:25Glynn Washington?

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment. My name is Ken Washington. Okay, so you have a look. You see yourself in the mirror and you think, "That's me, that's what I look like." Friends and family, they think the same thing. "That's her, alright." Well, what if you look the same as you always have? But the world gives you a totally different response?

• 39:04Speaker 18

  I think I saw it on television. That was back when we all watched the news at like 6. I think they actually broke into whatever else was going on to, you know, say, "That's just in."

• 39:17Speaker 19

  In Detroit today, there's been a violent attack on an American athlete. Nancy Kerrigan, the American figure skater, who was widely considered a favorite to win a medal at the Winter Olympics, was attacked at a practice session.

• 39:28Speaker 18

  Two men wielding some sort of unidentified stick-type object, you know, something, I don't know.

• 39:39Speaker 20

  The story was, these guys, who knew figure skating rival Tonya Harding, had plotted the whole thing. They followed Nancy Kerrigan to Michigan, and then clubbed her, right at the knee, with a metal baton. The idea was to knock her out of the running for the Olympics.

• 39:56Speaker 18

  You know, they were showing that famous, awful clip of Nancy injured on the floor, around, you know, near the rink, and people rushing to her aid, and her crying in pain. It's awful.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  Why? Why?

• 40:12Speaker 18

  In 1994, I was living in Boston. Nancy had grown up, and, well, she's from Stonem, but we all had sort of watched her, watched her rise.

• 40:26Speaker 20

  Nancy was adored, the local kid who was gonna win the gold. But Tanya...

• 40:31Speaker 18

  Tanya's reputation before this happened was that she was a tough, athletic, amazing, amazing skater, who succeeded against all odds. She saved bottle caps to pay for her ice time. She sewed her own costumes. She was like, she was like the good kind of scrappy. It was such a huge scandal. You know, who did it? Why? Who's to blame?

• 41:00Speaker 18

  So after this, Nancy was the golden girl, and Tanya was the white trash. After that news broke, the next time that I left the house, I was walking down the street. I sensed a car slow down next to me. Whoever it was rolled down the window and said, "Hey, Tanya, go home," to me.

• 41:23Speaker 20

  So Lynn is holding out on one piece of information here.

• 41:27Speaker 18

  I was taking private figure skating lessons from a coach at the MIT rink. So I'd often be around Cambridge, carrying my skates. All of a sudden, it was constant. People would stop me on the street. "Hey, you know what you look like?"

• 41:42Speaker 20

  And what they were thinking was that I looked exactly like Tonya Harding. And like, the thing is, I really did.

• 41:50Speaker 18

  I walked into my house one day and there was a message saying, "Lyn, this is so-and-so over at the Boston Globe. I heard you look a lot like Tonya Harding and I'm wondering what that's like for you. Can you please give me a call?"

• 42:05Speaker 20

  Lyn's picture made it on the front page of the Metro section. Then the story got picked up and distributed all over the country.

• 42:13Speaker 18

  So that's when the phone calls almost broke the tiny cassette tape in my answering machine.

• 42:22Speaker 20

  The media was Tonya crazy. One TV station wanted to drive Lyn to Nancy Kerrigan's house and have her stand on the front lawn. She declined. But Lyn did want to be on stage, to act, do comedy, do something. She was only 25 and hadn't really figured out how to make that happen. And then she got a call from the king of daytime TV.

• 42:51Speaker 18

  When Geraldo called to ask me to be on the show, I called my mom and I was like, "Geraldo." And she goes, "Oh, God."

• 43:04Speaker 18

  Geraldo was a kind of a middlebrow investigative reporter.

• 43:14Speaker 20

  He wanted her to play Tonya for their infamous celebrity look-alike contest.

• 43:19Speaker 18

  A limo came to drive us to the studio. We all trickled down to the lobby one by one. So first, the Nancy look-alike, then the guy who looked exactly like Joey Buttafuoco, and then, of course, the Amy Fisher look-alike.

• 43:35Speaker 18

  The folks in the limo definitely asked me, "Wow, so do you mind looking like Tonya?" With, you know, clear disdain. So I was like, "I don't know. What do you think, Joey? You know? Do you mind looking like a dude who had an affair with a 16-year-old? What's your story?"

• 43:53Speaker 20

  Lyn killed the look-alike contest. And then Geraldo asked her to come back to play Tonya in a mock grand jury trial, to basically determine her guilt.

• 44:05Speaker 18

  So, you know, he opened the show, very serious voice and very furrowed brow. You know, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very special Geraldo. We are here to actually consider the evidence with the help of real lawyers. And there is not conjecture here, folks.

• 44:25Speaker 18

  And there were two lawyers that I remember. One of them was the lady in the turban with a big jewel in the front. And she was very dramatic and it felt like she had walked out of a movie from some other time. Why would they do such a thing? She's got every motive in the world to destroy her rival. Of course she's got motive, she wants to win the gold. The guy who played my lawyer was Joey Buttafuoco's actual lawyer. It was the weirdest thing. It was so weird. And I was wearing my ice skates. I was wearing my skates in the courtroom. And I remember so clearly looking around the room, thinking to myself,

• 45:09Speaker 18

  "Jesus, where do they get these people?"

• 45:12Speaker 20

  And then came the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, the showdown everyone was waiting for, Nancy versus Tanya.

• 45:21Speaker 18

  And you see Nancy and Tanya skate out onto the ice

• 45:27Speaker 18

  with, you know, just feet between them as they skate in their circles, warming up. And it is just the coldest, tensest thing you have ever seen. Tanya's Olympic showing was pretty much a disaster.

• 45:47Speaker 18

  She singled her triples.

• 45:53Speaker 18

  And she puts her skate up on the boards and she's pointing to her boot. And she's pointing to her coach and she's kind of pointing back and forth and clearly upset.

• 46:02Speaker 20

  She'd had a malfunction with the laces on her skate.

• 46:06Speaker 18

  She is just crying from all the stress and the whole goddamn world is making fun of her. Can you imagine? Man, even all the times that I felt like what I was doing was harmless, there's a little voice in my head going, "I'm so sorry, Tanya, Tanya, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry."

• 46:23Speaker 20

  Nancy Kerrigan didn't get gold, but she did get silver. And that pretty much cemented her place as America's sweetheart. Tanya lost. She ended eighth. And that was pretty much the end of Tanya.

• 46:37Speaker 18

  I remember thinking, this has been fun and I hope Tanya forgives me, but I can't coast on this forever.

• 46:44Speaker 20

  The spotlight might have felt good for a minute, but she decided it was time to really give it a go, to finally move to New York and take a crack at the comedy world. And she told herself she'd do it on her own, without Tanya.

• 47:00Speaker 18

  So, once I moved to Brooklyn, I dyed my hair like a really beautiful, rich chestnut brown. And was making my own way, until one day when my roommate's friend burst in, waving a copy of Backstage Magazine.

• 47:22Speaker 18

  He plops it down on the coffee table and he jams his finger at this thing that he circled. And it says something like, "The Musical Inquirer, a downtown musical in search of new Tonya Harding." And we all look up and I'm like, oh no. What I lacked in incredible talent, I made up for in looking exactly like Tanya. Being super Tanya was my asset. And, you know, it's like, this is what you do. This is what you do. You audition, you get roles, you do it. And so I auditioned, got the part, trudged shamefully back to the hair salon.

• 48:06Speaker 18

  I was like, remember that beautiful brown hair dye that you put in? You know, I said, pointing to my beautiful brown head. They're like, yeah. I'm like, you gotta take it out.

• 48:27Glynn Washington?

  Big thanks to Lynn Harris for her story. Lynn is an author, a commentator, an award-winning journalist, and a mostly-retired comedian. She also has a new business, teaching comedy to teenage girls. To learn more and watch her perform and sing as Tonya Harding, check out our website, snapjudgment.org. The original score and sound design by the amazing Leon Morimoto. That story was produced by Liz Mack.

• 49:06Glynn Washington?

  It's that time, Snap-ers, and if you missed even a moment, know that an entire world of Snap storytelling awaits. In fact, we recently dropped a brand-new series, diving into the world of incarcerated women firefighters battling the flames in California, hosted by Snap's own Anna Sussman. It's called Fire Escape, on podcast platforms everywhere right now. KQD in San Francisco, Snap Judgment's Orbiting Hall of Justice. No Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written positions and on Team Snap. The union-represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the

• 49:47Glynn Washington?

  National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Local 51.

• 49:59Glynn Washington?

  Snap is brought to you by the team that fights the authority, except, of course, for the uber-producer, Mr. Mark Ristich, who fights the authority. The authority always wins.

• 50:15Glynn Washington?

  Now, there's Nancy Lopez, Pat Massey Miller, Anna Sussman, Renzo Goria, John Casil, Shannon Shealy, Taylor Decot, Flo Wiley, Bo Walsh, Marissa Dodge, David Exame, and Regina Mediacco.

• 50:34Glynn Washington?

  And this is not the news, no way is this the news. In fact, it could just be some down-on-his-luck Philadelphia drifter who gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the heavyweight title. And he would still, STILL, not be as far away from the news as this is. But this is PRX.