Shayna Jack makes remarkable swimming comeback from darkest depths

Shayna Jack’s remarkable comeback from her darkest moments on the Australian sporting scrap heap has been simply extraordinary.

Shayna Jack is back where she belongs.

Shayna Jack has tasted the lowest of the lows but the Aussie star’s comeback to top-level swimming was nothing short of remarkable at the Australian National Championships.

The 23-year-old’s world was turned upside down on the eve of the 2019 World Championships when it was revealed she had tested positive to anabolic agent Ligandrol.

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Jack was abruptly sent home from the training camp in Japan and was subsequently hit with a four-year ban.

It was the start of years in limbo for Jack, who maintained her innocence and had the suspension cut in half by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in November 2020.

However, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) appealed the leniency of the two-year ban a month later before it was finally quashed in September last year, allowing Jack to continue her swimming career.

During her time away from the pool, Jack went through some incredibly dark times.

The lengthy suspension meant there was plenty of attention at the Australian Championships on how Jack would perform after so long out of the sport.

And she answered those questions perfectly, finishing second in the 100m freestyle and first in the 50m freestyle with the fastest time in the world so far this year.

If Jack swum her Australian Swimming Championships time of 24.14 in the Olympic 50m freestyle final in Tokyo, she would have won bronze.

Her time of 52.60 in the 100m would also have placed her fifth if she had swum it in the Olympic final. She was behind only Mollie O’Callaghan, who claimed the fastest time in the world this year.

The transformation in Jack from someone contemplating whether she still wanted to live, to a member of the Aussie swim team again, was simply extraordinary.

Shayna Jack won the 50m freestyle Australian title. Photo by Brenton Edwards / AFP

The result sees Jack qualify for both the World Championships and the Commonwealth Games teams in both events and she fought back tears after realising she would once again represent Australia.

“I’m overwhelmed with emotion to be back on the team,” Jack said after qualifying via the 100m freestyle result.

“Not very many people know what I actually really went through – you know the depths of it and to be back and wearing those colours again means more than anything to me.

“My goal was to love swimming and fall in love with it again and I have and I’m really, really proud to be back.

“There’s a lot of times I thought I might not get to this point – not just obviously because of the whole case and everything like that – but I struggled, I kind of lost touch with why I love swimming and why I did swim.

“It’s still a journey, I’m still learning and doing things and working with psychologists with all those things and that’s been really, really beneficial with my comeback.”

‘I just did not want to be here’: Jack’s darkest times

Shayna Jack has bounced back. Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Although it’s unimaginable for many Australians to understand just exactly what Jack had to go through during her ban, the swimmer has been open and honest about her struggles.

In March 2021, Jack took part in the ABC’s Australian Story, revealing there were only trace amounts of Ligandrol present in the test, and claimed that if cases like hers continued to be treated in this way, organisations would have “blood on their hands”.

Aussie swimming champion Cate Campbell also revealed Jack had opened up on her darkest thoughts.

“I’ve been very upset by this whole thing by how Shayna has been treated,” Campbell said at the time. “She said, ‘Cate, I’m so lucky that I’m not the type of person who particularly cares what people say about me, because if I did, I wouldn’t be alive right now’.”

Throughout it all, Jack continued to maintain her innocence about how Ligandrol got into her system.

US Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart, the man credited with bringing down disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, also said Jack’s case was very different.

“What struck me about the Jack case, no performance benefit, no intent, not even reckless, did everything she could to abide by the rules,” Tygart said. “But yet she’s branded a drug cheat and given a two-year suspension and lucky not to get a four-year. That’s just an inherently unjust system.”

Last November, Jack told Qweekend Magazinethat being forced to train by herself made her feel ”like trash”.

“It made me feel shunned by my sport, and it made me feel like nothing. Like a worthless person,” she said.

“I tried not to read the papers when I got home but I did open my Instagram and the very first message I saw under my photo was a message calling me a drug cheat, and that I should kill myself.”

Shayna Jack lived through a nightmare. Photo: AAP Image/Darren England

She revealed the entire ordeal took an enormous emotional toll.

“I don’t want to hide anything and I guess I want people to understand that I did the right thing by getting help when I did, in case someone reads this and is thinking that maybe they might not want to be around anymore, because ... I didn’t,” she said.

“So I no longer wanted to be around, because I didn’t see a purpose in my life anymore. I’d spent my whole life thinking swimming was the best sport in the world, the most amazing sport, that it would do everything to support me, but I was very wrong.

“In no circumstances did I feel my sport had protected me in any way or helped me, and it got to the point where I just did not want to be here.

“And then I looked at myself and I thought about my parents and everything they’d done to support me, and I looked at (her partner) Joel and my friends, and I thought, ‘No, I cannot do that’.

“And I also thought this is not who I am. I am not somebody who gives up, so I need to get help. I went to my doctor and I said, ‘I’m not sleeping, I’m not eating, I’m having very dark thoughts’.”

Shayna Jack is back. Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Speaking to The Project after her 100m result in Adelaide, Jack added she had considered giving swimming away and had started working for Queensland Police.

But time heals all wounds and Jack’s incredible comeback continues to inspire.

With the World Championships set for Budapest from June 17 to July 3, followed by the Commonwealth Games starting in Birmingham in late July, and the Paris 2024 Olympics not too far away, Jack is targeting individual medals at each of the events.

“Coming back we didn’t know what kind of athlete I was, and I definitely came back stronger and fitter,” she said.