As reported back in May of this year, 3 Australian Olympians were named as having missed 3 drug tests over a 12-month period, violating doping control testing protocols. The athletes included silver medalist in the women’s 200m butterfly from Rio, Maddie Groves, and fellow Olympic teammates Thomas Fraser-Holmes and open water swimmer Jarrod Poort.
We’ve since reported how Fraser-Holmes was handed a 12-month ban by swimming governing body, FINA, and was also cut-off both financially and training-wise from the Australian National Team. The swimmer is in the process of appealing his ban, but in the meantime has produced a personal video on his social media account stating that he indeed ‘messed up’ with regards to the testing whereabouts information.
With Groves and Poort, however, Swimming Australia confirmed to SwimSwam this week that they ‘have had no further updates on these cases yet.’
We are still waiting on Swimming Australia to provide information defining the difference between the cases and why Groves and Poort are taking so much longer.
We do know that at the time the missed tests became known Groves’ lawyer said that the doping control attempts to locate her ‘fell well short of guidelines.’ Lawyer Tim Fuller stated at the time, “we’re confident we can prove the testing authority were not compliant with WADA’s international testing procedures.”
Perhaps we’ll see Groves at the commonwealth game.?
Probably was her intention ,,, but she’ll need to be cleared of this first.
Out of interest, are they provisionally suspended or allowed to compete as normal while this is being investigated?
Not suspended; Groves competed at some Euro meets prior to Worlds but had made herself unavailable for Worlds earlier in the year. Poort was not selected for Worlds.