There were days Shayna Jack couldn’t get out of bed. Swimming – her main purpose in life – had been taken away, and many in Australia believed her to be a drug cheat. She tried not to read what was being said and written, but a brief look at Instagram revealed some pretty horrible stuff that further twisted the already-tangled mess inside her head.
When the 25-year-old reflects now on the dark thoughts that eclipsed the two years between 2019 and 2021, she can do so in the knowledge she is out the other side. But even on a Sunday in mid-2024, when Jack’s ordeal is behind her and she will soon board a plane to Paris with the Dolphins, the subject is still enough to draw tears. There have been a lot of those this week.
Because of all the feelgood stories of the Australian swimming trials, it is difficult to go past that of the young woman who went “through hell”, almost ended it all, and then emerged an Olympian. In 2019, days before the start of the world championships, Jack tested positive for a small amount of the banned substance Ligandrol. She was 20 years old and on the verge of qualifying for a maiden Olympics in Tokyo, only to be suspended and prohibited from doing so.
She was also 20 years old and ill-equipped to deal with the volume and manner of public scrutiny her case received. Jack has firmly stated her innocence at every juncture over the five years since, and in 2021 the Court of Arbitration for Sport found she did not intentionally ingest the “pha.