Shayna Jack counts the cost of bittersweet victory

In the wake of the finding that she did not take a performance-enhancing drug deliberately, Shayna Jack has been left to count the crippling cost of proving herself innocent.

Australian swimmer Shayna Jack can resume her swimming career in July

In the wake of the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s finding that she did not take a performance-enhancing drug deliberately, Australian swimmer Shayna Jack has been left to count the crippling cost of proving herself innocent.

The CAS tribunal on Monday released its findings into Jack’s positive drug for the banned anabolic agent Ligandrol, noting that “on the balance of probabilities”, she did not intentionally ingest the drug and that she had discharged her onus of proving her violation was not deliberate.

As a result, the four-year ban imposed on Jack shortly after she was sent home in disgrace from a pre-world championship training camp in Japan in July 2019 was cut in half. It is still possible that the World Anti-Doping Agency could launch an appeal – it has three weeks to do so – but all indications are that the worst is over for the 22-year-old sprinter.

Allowing for time already spent on suspension, she can return to competition on July 12 next year.

Shayna Jack faces the media last August after an ASADA hearing in Brisbane

A sense of injustice has fuelled her determined fight to clear her name – “there is a bit of mongrel in her … she has determinations and guts,” said her lawyer Tim Fuller – but now comes the inevitable denouement in which she counts the huge emotional and financial cost of battling the system.

“Shayna has spent an unbelievable amount of money on her defence, to the point of it crippling her,” said her coach Dean Boxall. “It is bittersweet. But she can walk tall today. She can go to the shops and everyone knows she has been vindicated.”

According to Fuller, one report established that the amount of Ligandrol in her system was so small as to be “pharmaceutically irrelevant” but because she was not able to demonstrate conclusively how the anabolic agent came to be there, a ban was inevitable – albeit a reduced one.

Still, with the CAS deciding her doping was unintentional, her lawyer now hopes to appeal to SA to allow Jack to resume training immediately with Boxall’s squad. At present, she is banned from all accredited training venues until July.

“We have to examine whether SA would need to get authority or permission from CAS but our understanding is that SA could relax the terms of her ban, because it is their anti-doping policy,” Fuller said. “It could be under certain conditions. There is no problem with that. But that is what we will be exploring.”

Shayna Jack wants to get back in the pool as soon as she can

SA chief executive Leigh Russell told The Australian she was uncertain whether such a relaxation could be granted. “I don’t know, but if a request is made we will look into it,” Russell said.

Neither Boxall nor Australian head coach Rohan Taylor had any objections to Jack returning to training ahead of schedule – as long as all the relevant bodies give their permission.

“It would just get her back into the realm of the swimming world again,” said Boxall. “It would be a way of finding normality again.”

Taylor is convinced she can again become a valuable member of the Australian team.

“She is 22, turning 23. The older they are, the more they can tap into the (training) history they have,” he said. “So I am confident that by Paris (the 2024 Olympics) she will be in a position to perform at her best or even better.”

Not everyone agreed with the red carpet being rolled out for Jack, with Richard Ings, the CEO of the ASADA from 2005-10, taking to social media to complaining about the sympathetic coverage she was receiving.

“I never expected her case to be one of deliberate ingestion,” Ings tweeted. “But she did have a PED in her body and a two-year ban seems appropriate.”

It was Ings who viciously attacked Russell for staying silent when Jack first tested positive, though he later apologised to her when he realised she was required to maintain the strictest confidence. And he now looks to have overstepped the line again, criticising an athlete for having a substance in her body that even he acknowledges she did not put there deliberately.

Boxall took a dim view of all those taking a black and white view of a situation where the penalty doesn’t always fit the crime.

“For anyone who thinks that what Shayna has gone through is justified after realising that she did not take the drug deliberately is despicable,” he said.