Shayna Jack should not be ostracised, says Swimming Australia chief

Swimming Australia says athletes under a provisional suspension should be able to be supported by sports governing bodies.

Australian swimmer Shayna Jack, left, and her mother Pauline after a briefing with ASADA officials in Brisbane last year. Picture: AAP

Why is Australian rules star Willie Rioli permitted to train with his West Coast team members while under provisional suspension following a positive drug test, while swimmer Shayna Jack, also facing drug charges, is being treated like a virtual leper?

It’s a question being repeatedly asked by Swimming Australia chief executive Leigh Russell, who believes far more humanity needs to be shown to athletes awaiting the outcome of ASADA’s investigation of their alleged breach.

“There is no one in swimming who thinks that she (Jack) is a doping cheat,” Russell said. “But there is also no one in swimming who wants the rules changed. Because our job is to protect our sport, not just stand for clean sport but act for clean sport.

“The only way we can do that is to have incredibly strict rules but that doesn’t equate to not looking after our athletes in times of need. Yet Swimming Australia is not just there to collect the gold medals from these kids. We are there in all stages of their career, through the ups and the downs, but it doesn’t mean we can’t take a strong stance on drugs.”

Jack and Rioli both recorded adverse results within months of each other last year; Jack tested positive to ligandrol, a non-steroid anabolic agent before the world swimming championships in Gwangju in July, while Rioli was found to have committed two alleged breaches of the anti-doping code in September.

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The difference is, however, that while Rioli has been able to interact with his coach and teammates, Jack has been cut off almost ­entirely from her fellow squad ­members and her coach, Dean Boxall. She is not able to swim in a Swimming Australia-registered pool, nor is Swimming Australia able to give her any financial or legal assistance.

“I find it staggering that we can have different rules for different sports,” Russell told The Australian. “What’s good for one Australian athlete is surely good for another.

“This is the time when we are so mindful of young people’s mental health, where suicide rates are sky high, where we are all wondering how to care for our young ­people,” she said.

“This is a kid who has trained hard. Swimming is a pretty brutal sport. This is all she has known. And we, under the anti-doping policy, have removed her from her environment, the only environment she has ever known. The other thing is that we teach people the Anzac spirit — look out for your teammates, first and foremost; it’s all about the team. Shayna’s first thoughts were of minimising disruption for her team. They weren’t for herself.

“You can have a hard line but also be human in your approach to your people. We are so quick to point the finger and be outraged and interpret people’s behaviour.”

Russell admitted that nine months into Jack’s provisional suspension and with no end in sight to the ASADA investigation, she is becoming concerned for the young swimmer’s wellbeing.

“(It’s) not great, not great,” she said. “I would have hoped by now that we would have reached a point where it was concluded but having a look at all the other cases around the world, they do take a lot of time.

“ASADA need to be able to do their job and we absolutely cannot interfere in that process. So our job becomes one of offering wellbeing support, but we cannot provide financial support, we cannot provide legal support.

“We are not involved in the investigation so we don’t have a line of sight on information or rationale or anything like that,” she said.

“It is a hard role to play for the federation because essentially we are removed from the process and constrained over what kind of interaction we can have with our athlete until the process is over and complete.

“And part of the challenge is that it takes a lengthy amount of time which actually impacts on mental health.”

The only ones who knew that Jack had returned an adverse finding were senior executives of ASADA, Swimming Australia and FINA and Russell certainly has her suspicions who might have leaked the news to the media.

But when the news finally broke, Swimming Australia was accused — unfairly — of conducting a cover-up, while any privacy Jack might have hoped for while she attempted to process the news went out the window. And that is another concern Russell has.

“One thing that got lost was that the athlete’s right to privacy got severely compromised, which has implications for every other athlete.

“None of my athletes now can have confidence that if something goes wrong for them they will have any reasonable chance of privacy at a time when they are trying to process what is going on.

“How many 20-year-olds have had contact with lawyers in their lives?”