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Sport Integrity Australia appeals reduction to Shayna Jack drugs ban
The Shayna Jack drugs saga is not over, with Australia's anti-doping watchdog revealing on Monday night it would appeal the downgrading of her ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The Australian swimmer last month had her provisional four-year suspension cut in half after a hearing before the CAS, which found she did not deliberately ingest the banned substance Ligandrol. She tested positive during a training camp in North Queensland before last year's world championships in South Korea.
Shayna Jack was likely to have retired from the pool if the original four-year sanction had stood.Credit: Paul Harris
The decision meant the 22-year-old could return to the sport next July, although she would still miss the Australian team trials for the rescheduled Olympic Games in Tokyo.
However, the lodging of an appeal by Sport Integrity Australia within the 21-day period has again thrown Jack's swimming future into jeopardy.
In a statement, SIA chief executive David Sharpe said the decision to appeal was "based on the need for clarity in the application of key anti-doping legal principles".
"Sport Integrity Australia will always act to ensure a level playing field for athletes," Sharpe said. "In order to protect athletes and sporting competitions we must have clarity and consistency in the application of the World Anti-Doping Code."
The development is not only an emotional nightmare for Jack, who last month expressed "gratitude that my career as a swimmer will resume next year", it is also a major financial setback. She has already spent $150,000 defending herself.
The Queenslander outlined the toll her fight to clear her name had taken during the CAS hearing.
"Every day I am scared," she said in documents of the case released after the decision. “The positive finding ‘killed’ me. I want to make people proud of me. The opinion of my parents, the public and teammates is 100 per cent important to me.”
Alan Sullivan, QC, who oversaw the CAS hearing, had found Jack to be an impressive and credible witness and while there had been no definitive conclusion as to how the substance had made its way into her system he determined she had unknowingly ingested it.
With SIA now appealing in a crushing blow to the swimmer, the matter will go to a special CAS appeals tribunal, which will effectively reconsider the ruling of one of its own arbitrators.
Jack was likely to have retired from the pool if the original four-year sanction had stood. Unfortunately for her, that reality is now a possibility again.