(Reuters) -Penny Oleksiak, Canada’s most decorated female Olympian, has accepted a two-year suspension for a breach of the anti-doping code by committing three whereabouts failures over a 12-month span, the Athletics Integrity Unit said on Tuesday.
The 2016 Olympic 100 metres freestyle champion’s period of ineligibility extends to July 14, 2027 and any competitive results obtained from June 16, 2025 onward are disqualified, including forfeiture of medals, points, and prizes.
Whereabouts protocol requires an athlete to inform anti-doping authorities where they will be for at least one hour every day for unannounced out-of-competition testing, and bans for whereabouts failures can range from one to two years.
In July, Oleksiak pulled out of the World Championships that started later that month because of a probe into an alleged breach of the anti-doping code under the whereabouts rule.
At the time, Swimming Canada released a statement supporting Oleksiak’s move, saying they believed she was a clean athlete who had made an “administrative mistake”.
As well as taking the sprint gold at Rio as a 16-year-old in 2016, Oleksiak has won six other Olympic medals and nine at three World Championships.
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in TorontoEditing by Christian Radnedge)
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