'Crushed me': Shayna Jack opens up on 'anger and hate', launches blistering attack on WADA

GOLD COAST: Shayna Jack has given a raw insight into her journey back from hell, revealing how the "anger and hate" that fuelled her before and during the Paris 2024 Olympics had made way for a "lighter" version of herself.

Pressed on the feelings that swirled inside her during her Olympic campaign, including her feelings about the handling of the China doping scandal that erupted three months out from the Paris Games, she proceeded to deliver a blistering attack on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

Jack, who in March relocated from Brisbane to Perth to be with her fiancé, Kookaburras hockey player Joel Rintala, spoke pool-side with reporters on Tuesday night after winning the women's 50-metre freestyle final at the Australian Open.

READ MORE: Bol's advice for 'little brother' Gout as hype train gains steam

READ MORE: 'Leave them alone': Hird fires up as star's wife deletes post

READ MORE: Substitute saves Arsenal from Champions League disaster

"After Paris it was really difficult to actually come back onto the pool deck and find a purpose to be here," Jack said.

"And I decided I just want to show up and be me, and that's exactly what I've been doing the whole time, and it's exactly what I'm going to keep doing all the way through to the Commonwealth Games [in Glasgow this year].

"I'm extremely proud of the way I've changed my perspective of the sport. It's been a really difficult, long journey to get to that.

"In the lead-up to Paris it was fuelled on anger and hate, and it was hard to do it that way. It's not me.

"I'm quite a bubbly, happy-going person, so to fuel myself to be better and stronger and faster and more competitive, I had to be a kind of different person.

"Now I'm lighter. I'm back. I have that weight off my shoulders."

Between 2019 and 2021, Jack served a two-year suspension for testing positive to the substance Ligandrol, which is banned by WADA.

The Queenslander has always insisted she did not knowingly ingest the drug.

The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA), now known as Sport Integrity Australia (SIA), imposed a four-year ban, but the sprinter took the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and the top court in global sport halved it, having determined she had not knowingly ingested the drug.

ASADA and WADA appealed the CAS decision but the challenge was dismissed.

Jack feels it was grossly unjust that she was made to serve a two-year suspension despite CAS' determination that she had not intended to ingest Ligandrol.

Those feelings only intensified when it emerged in April 2024 that WADA had not appealed a ruling by the China Anti-Doping Agency (CHINADA) to clear 23 swimmers who had tested positive to a banned substance in 2021 — a decision WADA came to on the basis that the Chinese swimmers had Trimetazidine in their systems because of contamination, rather than intentional doping.

Watch the 2026 Australian Open Swimming Championships live and free on Nine and 9Now.

WADA copped heat worldwide for not taking the matter to CAS and for its role in covering up the saga, which remained a secret for three years and only became public via media reports.

Because of how the scandal played out, the Chinese swimmers with a banned substance in their systems were allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympics at the same time that Jack was in exile and, in the eye of the public, trying to piece back together her broken career and life.

"When I come to the end of my career I'll be completely open with everything that I faced and talk more about that. Obviously I will write a book, so I'm very excited about that," Jack said.

"For me, I just didn't want to be that person. And as much as I had every right to be angry and hateful towards what I went through, and [not only] the system's injustice towards me, but ... an injustice towards every single person in sport when there's no consistency and transparency throughout that organisation, for me it was having to go through a big process of letting it go or putting it aside so that I can do what I do best, which is race [and] which is hopefully inspire people.

"I'm not going to let anyone who tried to tear me down continue to make me feel like I'm any less than inspirational."

Until that point in the pool-side chat with Jack, which lasted 10 minutes, the Olympic relay gold medallist had not directly referred to the China doping scandal of 2024.

It was put to Jack that she was undoubtedly talking about that controversy, and that the scandal had very clearly grinded her gears.

"I think it grinded a lot of gears," she said.

Jack, 27, then teed off.

"I think the whole China situation ... called into question a lot of integrity behind those organisations, and also a lot of athletes are asking for more transparency and more consistency. That's all we ever asked for," she said.

"I did my time. Whether people believe I'm innocent or not, in the end I did time, and I believe that if you go through a system like that, you should be doing your time as well.

"If you're going to put me through it, every single person should be put through it as well — facing an actual court case.

"There was no court case [in the China saga], there was no process, and I think that's what disappointed a lot of athletes.

"I was really proud that a lot of athletes did come out and fight for me.

"I had a goal, which was [reaching the] Olympics, and I had to try and put that behind me and put it aside and focus on my Olympics.

"It crushed me, because I just felt like the system not only failed me personally, but failed every athlete."