After being unfairly labelled a drug cheat, after missing an Olympics through a two-year ban, after clawing her way back into the Australian team, Shayna Jack is sitting on the pool deck, nursing a broken hand.
There’s five weeks to go until her big comeback, the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham — and doctors tell her recovery will take at least eight weeks.
"I was told there's no way I'm going back," Jack tells Australian Story. "And I said, 'Watch me'."
This is the essence of Jack, says her coach, Dean Boxall. Resilient, determined, defiant. "I would love to bottle that up," he says. "If I could bottle that and just get someone to sip it, mate, you will go full steam ahead."
A day after surgery, Jack was back in the pool. And when the Commonwealth Games began, Jack was there. She stood on the podium three times: a gold in the 100-metre freestyle relay, silver in the 100 freestyle and bronze in the 50 metres.
"This is how tough she is, mate," says Boxall. "She's full of resilience. She's full of stories like this. This has to be spoken about.
"It hasn't been portrayed yet as one of the greatest comeback stories, but I think it will be," he says.
The way Jack broke her hand was freaky. As she was warming up for a race, her fingers became entangled in another swimmer's togs as they went into a turn, wrenching Jack's fingers in the opposite direction.
The way Jack came to have a minute, non-performance enhancing amount of a banned drug in her system is a mystery. She may have come into contact with it on a flight, at the baggage claim, touching gym equipment, or even in the public toilets where she gave her routine sample to officials. She insists she did not take it.
But it's the way she has persevered, fighting to clear her name, fighting to stay fit, fighting to make the Olympic team in Paris this year and taking home two gold relay medals — despite being struck with a virus — that defines Jack. The fighter.
"Not only did I defy the odds and come back, I did exactly what I said I was going to do," says Jack. "I came back with fight and said, 'Watch me go to the Olympics'. And that's exactly what I did."
'Completely stripped me of my humanity'
Jack was only 20 when her world imploded. In 2019 the rising star tested positive for a minute amount of the muscle growth agent Ligandrol and was vilified as a drug cheat.
After a torturous legal process she was cleared of intentional doping — but still received a mandatory two-year sanction.
"The way they went about it completely stripped me of my humanity," Jack tells Australian Story.
"No matter what I said or did or how much I proved, no matter how much money I threw at testing, [anti-doping organisations] just wanted to prove that I was a drug cheat. It's been three years and I still struggle with it."
Boxall, who never doubted Jack, says it's "crazy" how easily an innocent athlete can be caught up in the anti-doping system.
"If you do take drugs and you're caught to be cheating, you should be banned for life," he says. "But there [are] instances where it's got nothing to do with cheating — like touching a weight, you can be contaminated with your hands. It's just crazy."
He says Jack was "shown a lot of injustice from multiple people and multiple areas".
She was "hammered" on social media about being a drug cheat, even receiving a message telling her to kill herself.
"I thought she might not even be [in] this world at one stage," he says. "It was absolutely criminal, what happened to her. And no one's accountable," he says.
It outrages him still that Jack was instructed not to talk with him or her teammates about swimming.
"Do you honestly think at that point that we're talking about swimming, you clowns?
"We're talking about a girl. We're talking about her mental health. We're talking about trying to repair her."
Jack almost gave up when, despite convincing the Court of Arbitration for Sport that her doping had been unintentional, Sports Integrity Australia (SIA) and the World Anti-Doping Authority (WADA) appealed the length of the two-year ban.
Says Jack: "I handed the phone to my partner Joel and said, 'I'm done. I can't afford this. I can't handle this anymore'."
But the public rallied behind the swimmer, crowdfunding more than $50,000, and her legal team worked mostly pro bono and Jack dug deep. "That's actually what gave me that fight to finish," she says.
After fronting three more arbitrators, the court dismissed the appeal and Jack was cleared of intentional doping in September 2021.
WADA and SIA deny their legal action against Jack was “unjust”.
In a statement, a spokesperson for WADA said the global system “protects clean sport and the athletes who practise it”.
“It strikes a just balance between upholding the principles of fair sport while providing ample opportunity for those who have been accused of wrongdoing to defend themselves and demonstrate their innocence,” it said.??
Anti-doping authorities 'moving with the times'
Not only did Jack clear her name, her battle helped improve the lot of athletes unwittingly caught in a drug scandal. Her lawyer, Tim Fuller, says, in 2021, the rules were changed to remove the reference to cheating in relation to unintentional doping.?
“One of the things that was contested at [Jack’s] appeal was this issue of whether it’s cheating or not. So, the significance of removing those words was particularly noticeable,” he says.?
Current testing is so sophisticated, says pharmaceutical chemist Nial Wheate of Macquarie University, that the equivalent of one sugar cube dissolved in the water of 45 Olympic swimming pools can be detected, "which means we're now finding fantastically low levels of drugs in athletes' systems".
A growing number of athletes have been caught with non-performance enhancing levels of a banned substance as a result, but Fuller says Jack's case shows "anti-doping authorities are moving with the times".
"If the evidence doesn't stack up, they're often not proceeding with charges. They're offering athletes [reduced] sanctions," he says.
A trepidatious comeback
By the time Jack put the court proceedings behind her, the swimmer had started a criminology degree and applied to join the police. At the time, “swimming was not making me happy” and she considered abandoning her Olympic dream.??
But in May 2022, she woke up in the early winter chill, pulled on her togs, and rejoined her squad.
“I reflected on the fact that so many people had financially supported me to finish my fight, and in a way, I owed it to them as well, to go back to the pool and give it a shot,” she says.?
Boxall was there to meet her. He'd been beside her after the failed drug test two years earlier and now, he was walking her through the entrance of St Peters Swim Club in Brisbane.
"I said, 'This is the start of your journey back'," Boxall recalls. "So, we walked in, very emotional, and the guys clapped her. And that was the start.
"We found our rhythm and we basically just started building those bricks," he says.
"She knew what she needed to do. Going through some sort of physical hardship was easy for her after the mental anguish that she went through."
A broken hand couldn't keep her out of the Commonwealth Games and, mid this year, a bout of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was not going to stop Jack competing in her first Olympic Games.
She powered through the water in the 100m freestyle relay and when teammate Meg Harris touched the wall, Jack had her first Olympic gold medal. Another would follow for her role in the 200m freestyle relay.
As her illness progressed, Boxall suspected Jack’s recovery, sleep and fatigue would be impacted. Her individual swims were not as she'd hoped, finishing fifth in the 100-metre freestyle and eighth in the 50.
"She was sick," he says. "Respiratory virus; eight of our 10 swimmers [in his squad] got it. And it certainly did knock the edge off Shayna. We couldn't use it as an excuse. I didn't want anybody in the media to know. I didn't want anybody to find out because I didn't want the mindset to change."
The below-par swims hurt, but after all she'd experienced in the lead up to her first Olympics, Jack emerged triumphant. "I'm not proud of the results but I am proud of the way I handled myself and the process that I went through to get there," Jack says.
"Not a lot of people get to ever make an Olympic team or come away with a medal, let alone a gold one. So, for me, it truly was always about enjoying the journey and having no regrets.
"Because life is short ... things can be taken in a split second.
"Every time I stood behind those blocks, I knew that I'd fought for that position to be there in the first place.
'Who I am, not what I do': Life outside the pool
If there's a silver lining in the saga, it's that it helped Jack expand her identity beyond swimming. She's newly engaged to her stalwart partner, Joel, and no longer views the sport as her "be all and end all".
"Now, I look at myself again as who I am, not what I do," she says.
She's keen to use her criminology training and bitter experience to help others. "I can basically write a whole book to help athletes prove they are innocent. I would be selfish if I didn't use my case to ensure something changes for the next generation," Jack says.
For now, though, it's too soon to say if Jack will be on the blocks when Los Angeles hosts the Olympics in 2028.
Boxall wants her there. "I hope her candle has still got a flame on it, and there's a lot of wax still left on it," he says.
Jack is very clear on one thing: if she ever stops racing again, it will be on her terms.
"No one's going to tell me I'm not competing. Never again."
Watch Shayna Jack: Comeback on Australian Story via ABC iview and YouTube.
[Zendesk]
