Jack has been to hell and back. Now, finally, she will be an Olympian

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 “pharmacologically irrelevant” amount of Ligandrol and halved the standard four-year suspension. WADA and Sports Integrity Australia subsequently appealed the leniency of the two-year ban, which was dismissed by the CAS.

Jack at her Brisbane home in December 2019, in the thick of her doping saga.

But the depths of her mental deterioration throughout the 24-month period scared her so much she sought help from a psychiatrist, and now she hopes to advocate for others who need mental health support.

“I’ve gone through my mental health challenges and it was a learning curve,” Jack said. “It was something that I had to continuously work at. I used to see a psychiatrist when I really was at my lowest and really needed that top-quality professional help to actually understand what I was going through and why.

“But now I regularly see a psychologist just to make sure I’m staying on top of myself. And I also actually [write a] journal. I love to reflect. I love to make sure that I am looking at myself and being proud of who I am. When I look at myself in the mirror, I’ve been through a lot and I know that so many people in life go through different challenges and no matter what, it’s a challenge and we have to get up each day and keep pushing ourselves to try and get the best out [of ourselves].

“I had days when I didn’t want to get out of bed, and I had my beautiful Great Dane Hugo. He was a reason that I got out of bed and I would be proud of myself just for that. I had a reason to get up and it might not be the biggest feat, but on that day it was everything, because I achieved getting out of bed. So for me, I continue to try and better myself and educate people around just being your true self, and that it’s OK to not be OK.

“I kept trying to be this person that was always happy and always strong, and I thought ‘no, I don’t have to always be strong. I can be completely authentic and honest, and show that emotion’. I was going through hell at times. I felt alone.

‘That’s all anyone’s asking for when they’re struggling. It’s not necessarily about fixing the problem, it’s just about being there.’

Shayna Jack

“But then I would have my partner, my dogs, my family, my friends, and they couldn’t take away my pain. They’d basically sit there and say, ‘we wish we could help, in a sense of taking this pain off you and taking that hurt from you. But all we can do is sit here and be there for you’. And that’s all anyone’s asking for when they’re struggling. It’s not necessarily about fixing the problem, it’s just about being there.”

One person who was there through it all was Dean Boxall. On Friday night, after finally securing an individual Games debut via qualification for the 100m freestyle, Jack made a beeline to embrace her coach.

“I’m going to cry if I talk about him,” she said. “Dean is family to me, after everything that we’ve been through. That man is the person who would answer my call at 2am when I was crying and didn’t know what to do. When I didn’t have a reason to get up each day, he was the man who said ‘Shayna, get your ass off the couch and get to the pool. Go just get in the water. Remember why you swim. Remember why you love it’.

“And he was the man who, when I first came back, walked onto pool deck with me that morning I could return to the pool. It was in May 2021, and he waited for me outside and then walked in with me, head held high, and said: ‘Let’s do this. Let’s go prove to them that they were wrong, they made a mistake, and that you’re stronger than ever because of it’.”

Shayna Jack after placing second in the 100m freestyle final to confirm she will contest the individual event in Paris.

Jack, who has also qualified for the 50m freestyle and as part of the 4x200m relay team, hadn’t realised the extent of her public support until she found herself “completely overwhelmed” by the crowd at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre.

It came in the same week Jack learned that three of the 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive to the banned substance trimetazidine before the Tokyo Olympics – but were allowed to compete because the samples were deemed to be “contaminated” and only found in small traces – had also avoided punishment despite testing positive to clenbuterol several years earlier.

It raised questions about double standards by world anti-doping agencies, particularly considering the details of Jack’s case.

“It’s definitely something that I felt when it came out,” she said. “But I really wanted to focus on myself. I’ve had enough drama that has pulled me back in the past, and I really didn’t want to let this affect my performance and my goals going forward.

”A lot of people have reached out on my behalf in regards to how they feel, and I do feel for them as well – and I feel for myself. But this is my Olympic dream, and I’m not going to let anything stop me from achieving those goals. I will be confronting it after Olympics and I’ll be definitely looking more into it and actually discussing it further.”