Shayna Jack faces four-year ban after positive doping test, ASADA says

The swimmer has been told of her impending ban by Australia’s anti-doping agency.

Shayna Jack will receive the maximum four-year suspension from the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority if she fails to prove her innocence on drug charges — a punishment likely to wipe her out of the 2024 Paris Olympics and end her career before it really gets off the blocks.

Jack has reportedly been formally notified of the possible — and standard — four-year suspension for testing positive to the banned muscle building drug Ligandrol, which is classified as an anabolic agent.

She has to do more, much more, than prove the drug entered her system without her knowledge. If a supplement was contaminated, the onus is on her to detail how it was done, and by whom. Without succeeding on those fronts, she will get the full four years. Pleading ignorance is a world away from pleading innocence.

Jack’s Olympic dream for Tokyo already seems in tatters. The Paris Games begin on July 26, 2024. A maximum ban will strip her of competition until less than a year out from those Games. She would be eligible for the 2024 Olympic trials but starved of elite competition and training between now and then, a comeback would be unlikely if not impossible.

Former ASADA boss Richard Ings said the initial four-year ban is “standard”.

“You’ve got positive A and positive B sample and the process is you get a letter, you will be suspended, then you have right to request a tribunal hearing with the Court Arbitration for Sport,” Ings told The Daily Telegraph.

“I wouldn’t draw any conclusion from the four-year ban, that happens in every matter. The issuing of notification of a four-year ban is standard practice in all these matters.

“For an athlete to receive less than a four-year ban they must provide evidence of mitigating circumstances and a clear explanation of where the prohibited substance came from.”

Jack clocked three personal bests in three events at last month’s trials for the world championships that she never contested. She was sent home before the titles began in Korea, initially citing “personal reasons.”

One website report from the Australian trials last month reported: “Jack had a remarkable Aussie World Trials … putting up personal bests across the sprint events to stake her claim on the women’s 4x200m free and 4x100m free relay. Jack collected a 200m free time of 1:56.37 for bronze in Brisbane, while also nailing a time of 53.18 for 4th in the historic women’s 100m free final that was faster than the Rio Olympic final. Jack also finished 5th in the 50m free at those Trials with a PB of 24.78.”

The 20-year-old Jack admitted in an interview for Kids On The Coast magazine before last year’s Commonwealth Games that representing Australia had been her lifelong dream.

“It’s certainly been a journey, with lots of different highs and lows,” she said. “At one stage my PB didn’t change for four years, which was tough to push through. And life was always a juggle. Both my parents worked, so I had to think about my family and what was convenient for them.

“My two older brothers swam along with me, so we all went to training together at Chandler. However, the one thing I always had in the back of my mind was the goal of making the Commonwealth Games, making the Olympics and being on that Australian team. So, any time I thought ‘I’m done’, or ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ I just kept pushing and thinking of those goals.”

She added: “I was lucky that I had a lot of support. I had sports scientists and my coach, and my family were always there for me whenever I needed anything. But it was difficult going through your teen years and seeing what works and what doesn’t work.

“You’ve got to try and push your body to the limit while it’s trying to make changes and adapt, and it was easy to get caught up in worrying about weight and shape. Thankfully when that did happen, (former coach) Simon (Cusack) got my focus back by explaining what really matters — that as long as you are eating the right things to fuel your body to swim, you’re training as hard as you can, and you’re doing everything out of the pool to make sure you can train well and you’ve got a happy lifestyle, that’s what counts. That’s what I live by now, and in the end, it really worked for me. I became happier and I enjoyed swimming a lot more.”

Swim league bans Jack

Jack has been banned from the rich International Swimming League as she prepares to fight her doping case.

Jack had been included in the Cali Condors team for the ISL’s series starting this October.

But the ISL says Jack has been suspended from the league, pending the outcome of her doping case.

The ISL’s managing director Andrea di Nino says Jack’s selection has been revoked for the meets to be held in Europe and the United States from October.

“No doping control rules violation will be overlooked,” di Nino said in a statement on the ISL’s website.

“This is another case that serves to reiterate our stance on banned substances and breaking doping control rules. No such behaviour will ever be condoned.

“From the outset, the ISL has been an advocate for transparency and clean sport. “Any athletes with doping control or ethical violation records will be considered ineligible with no recourse.”

The ISL has been founded and funded by Ukrainian billionaire and swimming fan Konstantin Grigorishin, who has earmarked a $US20 million budget for the initial series, of which $7m will go to swimmers and teams in prize money.

Jack’s manager Philip Stoneman said the swimmer wouldn’t contest the presence of the banned drug in her system.

“I don’t think this is a question of Shayna denying there is something in her body,” Stoneman said on Monday.

“What she is doing is fighting her innocence because it shouldn’t be in there and she doesn’t know how it got in there.”

Additional reporting: AAP