Canadian star swimmer Oleksiak notified of anti-doping rules violation

TORONTO – Swim star Penny Oleksiak of Toronto has been notified of an apparent anti-doping rule violation by the International Testing Agency.

According to the ITA, Oleksiak committed three whereabouts failures within a 12-month period between October 2024 and June 2025.

She has been made aware of the case and has accepted a voluntary provisional suspension pending the resolution of the matter.

She has the right to provide her explanations for each of the three whereabouts failures.

Given that the case is underway, there will be no further comments from the ITA, World Aquatics or Oleksiak during the ongoing proceedings.

That implies that the third missed test came after Oleksiak qualified for the Canadian team at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.

In a now-deleted Instagram post, Oleksiak announced two weeks ago that she was withdrawing from the World Championship team and accepting a voluntary provisional suspension. Any eventual sanction would be reduced by the amount of time she was suspended under the voluntary provisional suspension.

In the post, Oleksiak asserted “I am and always have been a clean athlete” and that the case “does not involve any banned substance; it’s about whether I updated my information correctly.”

Swimming Canada echoed the sentiment and said “We support her decision and believe she is a clean athlete who made an administrative mistake.”

A Whereabouts Case is an Anti-Doping rule violation that can affect athlete 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.

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.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2025.