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The anti-doping saga that engulfed Australian swimmer Shayna Jack is over at last, with the Court of Arbitration for Sport dismissing an appeal against her reduced ban and ensuring she can now return to the sport.
Jack was banned for four years after testing positive in 2019 to the banned SARM (selective androgen receptor modulator) ligandrol before the FINA World Championships in South Korea. That was halved when she appealed to CAS last December, only for Sport Integrity Australia (SIA) and the World Anti-Doping Authority to challenge the leniency.
Shayna Jack is free to return to competitive swimming after the ruling.Credit:Paul Harris
That appeal has now been dismissed meaning Jack, the 22-year-old freestyle sprinter, can focus on making the team for next year’s World Championships and Commonwealth Games. She had always proclaimed her innocence and the legal proceedings have cost her in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Jack is overjoyed with the news. She has been back in training with coach Dean Boxall for a number of months and a reinstatement of the original four-year ban would have been a crushing blow likely to have ended her career.
On her Instagram page, Jack said the “nightmare was finally over” and she would cherish the decision, thanking those around her who had been with her from the start.
“After a 2 year and 3 month battle, I have finally received my final decision that my appeal case has been dismissed by the Court of Arbitration. I am now free to do what I love with no restrictions and am so overwhelmed with joy. I am now going to take some time to myself to cherish this moment and reflect on what I have endured. The nightmare is finally over,” she wrote.
After her original appeal, a CAS arbitrator ruled that Jack did not intentionally ingest the substance and that she was a convincing and honest witness who had gone to every length available to prove her innocence. She had been tested regularly before her positive test and after and never returned a violation.
Jack’s positive test was one of the most highly publicised doping cases in Australian history. It came just days after Mack Horton had made a public stand against banned Chinese star Sun Yang by refusing to share a podium with him at the World Championships.