Canadian swimmer and Olympic gold medalist Penny Oleksiak has been banned from competition until 2027 for repeatedly failing to report her whereabouts as required under anti-doping rules, officials announced Tuesday.
The International Testing Agency (ITA) said in a statement that Oleksiak has accepted the penalty for three whereabouts failures within a 12-month period between October 2024 and June 2025.
“The athlete did not contest the (anti-doping rule violation) and agreed with the consequences proposed by the ITA. Accordingly, the case was resolved through an acceptance of consequences,” the agency said.
According to the statement, any competitive results Oleksiak obtained from July 16 onward will be disqualified, “including forfeiture of medals, points and prizes.” Her ban will be lifted on July 14, 2027.
A whereabouts case is an anti-doping rule violation that can affect an athlete’s eligibility even if they have never taken a banned substance. The World Anti-Doping Code defines a whereabouts failure as any combination of three missed tests or filing failures in a 12-month period.
Athletes who are members of the “registered testing pool,” which is the highest tier of athlete testing, are required to report an accurate and up-to-date filing of their whereabouts at all times. This is so they can be drug tested at any time and any place with no advance notice.
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According to World Aquatics, if an athlete in the testing pool submits “late, inaccurate or incomplete whereabouts that lead to (them) being unavailable for testing, (they) may receive a Filing Failure.”
Oleksiak withdrew from the World Aquatics Championships in July and accepted a provisional suspension at the time.
The 25-year-old from Toronto is Canada’s most decorated female Olympian.
She has won seven Olympic medals — one gold, two silver, four bronze — over her career, becoming the first Canadian to win four medals in the same Summer Games at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
More to come…
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