Swimmers get “reality check’’ after Fraser-Holmes ban

Head coach Jacco Verhaeren admits to unrest in the team after Tom Fraser-Holmes was slapped with a 12-month ban.

Dual Olympian Tom Fraser-Holmes, who has been suspended for missing three drug tests since the Rio Olympics. Photo: Regi Varghese

National head coach Jacco Verhaeren has acknowledged that some leading swimmers are unhappy about the way Swimming Australia treated dual Olympian Tom Fraser-Holmes after he was slapped with a 12-month suspension two weeks ago for missing three drug tests.

Fraser-Holmes was with the national team in Monte Carlo preparing to compete in the Mare Nostrum series when the International Swimming Federation (FINA) anti-doping panel decided on the sanction.

He was immediately separated from the rest of the team because a swimmer under suspension cannot compete or train in an official program or receive funding from his national federation.

That swift action caused some unrest within the national team, which Verhaeren called a team meeting to address. He said some swimmers did express concerns about former team leader Fraser-Holmes’ treatment.

“There definitely were some questions around that,’’ Verhaeren said. “They were asking as good team members who were ­concerned for an athlete in this position. They asked, ‘Is there any way we can support Tommy?’ and that’s a good thing.”

He said the team meeting provided a “reality check” for the team. “It may be that people are not always happy with the answers because it is pretty rough and harsh what happens when you are found guilty ... but it is what it is,” Verhaeren said. “It’s not about being comfortable or happy, it’s about what’s real.’’

Fraser-Holmes’ lawyer Tim Fuller has also complained that the process of separating the swimmer from the team was unnecessarily brutal.

Verhaeren said the “whereabouts’’ system, which requires swimmers to nominate one hour in every day where they will be available for drug-testing, did allow for human error, because an athlete had to miss three tests in a year before action was taken.

Fraser-Holmes is one of three Australian swimmers who are ­facing hearings after missing three tests since the Rio Olympics.

Olympic silver medallist Madeline Groves and openwater swimmer Jarrod Poort are in similar situations. They have yet to face FINA hearings. Groves is also in Europe and has competed in the Mare Nostrum series in the last week. Fuller, who is also representing Groves, has argued to FINA that her third missed test should not be registered because she was where she was supposed to be but the drug-tester failed to find her.

Verhaeren denied that the presence of three cases suggested that Swimming Australia had fallen down in its education of the swimmers about their responsibilities. He described the rash of missed tests as an unfortunate coincidence. He said the swimmers received the appropriate drug-testing education but that filling out the whereabouts information accurately and making sure they were where they were supposed to be for drug-testing was the ­athlete’s responsibility.

He said there was “nothing more’’ that the national federation could do to prevent such incidents.

Fraser-Holmes is planning to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against the FINA decision which will rule him out of a home Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast next April.