By Madeline Folsom on SwimSwam
Canadian Olympic star Penny Oleksiak denied drug use and said her whereabouts failure was a “genuine mistake”, while she confirmed her plans to continue training through her two-year suspension in an interview with CBC.
In July, Oleksiak withdrew from the 2025 World Championships due to an ongoing Whereabouts case, though no suspension had been formally handed down. A few weeks later, the International Testing Agency confirmed that she was serving a voluntary provisional 12-month suspension.
In November, the ITA announced that Oleksiak had accepted a two-year suspension, beginning from July 15, 2025, which was when she began serving her provisional suspension, and ending July 14, 2027.
On Tuesday, CBC posted an exclusive interview with Oleksiak where she discussed the whole process, and confirmed her plans to train for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Oleksiak has maintained since the beginning that she has never used any performance-enhancing drugs, writing in her original Instagram post “I am and always have been a clean athlete.”
In the CBC interview, she stated, “It’s never been me to do performance-enhancing drugs or even think about doing performance-enhancing drugs.”
She took accountability for the Whereabouts violations, saying, “I did do something wrong at the end of the day, and it’s something that I do have regret around.” She went on to say it was just a mistake and she wasn’t attempting to dodge testing officials. “It’s just genuine mistakes is really all I can chalk it up to. It is frustrating knowing that I have that responsibility and that I wasn’t able to pull it to the standards that I normally would.”
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.”
Registered Testing Pool athletes are also subject to Missed Tests, which is when they are not available for a drug test during a 60-minute time slot. Any combination of three Filing Failures or Missed Tests within 12 months could result in a two-year ban.
Oleksiak said that she was regularly drug tested at meets and at home, and she was unsure if she had two Whereabouts strikes when her 3rd missed test occurred. “After I had missed my second test, I hadn’t been given a concrete answer on if it was a missed test of not until after I had missed my third one.”
According to the Aquatics Integrity Unit, run by World Aquatics, Oleksiak was tested at least three times between the Olympics and the end of 2024, twice by World Aquatics and once by another agency. In 2024 as a whole, she received at least eight drug tests, five from World Aquatics and three from other sources.
Her three missed tests happened between October 2024 and June 2025, with the third test coming just days after the 2025 Canadian World Team Trials.
She discussed brief situations surrounding her missed tests, saying the second test happened when she went to practice in the morning instead of the afternoon like normal, and her hour check-in happened while she was there.
The third missed test happened after the Canadian Swimming Trials. Oleksiak said she flew to Montreal for the weekend after she was done competing, her last day of competition was June 10th.
“I was called up to do some stuff for work. I have made a really big point to try and make money outside of just my swimming career and support my swimming career, and it’s something I kind of have to do to be able to support what I want to do. I was out doing some work obligations and woke up one morning a few days after my birthday [June 13th] and I had a missed call and I knew right away what it was,” she said.
Oleksiak went on to talk about criticism she has faced regarding her social media, which shows her at different functions, charity events and on vacations with people claiming she doesn’t take swimming seriously. She said “I’m constantly working out. I’m constantly swimming.”
She moved her training base to Los Angeles in September of 2023, and while she considered retirement when the suspension was announced, she decided to continue training, even though it would be challenging.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy path forward, but that’s also something I’ve kind of been used to. My whole career is not taking the easy path…All I can do is just get stronger, get faster, and that’s all I’m really striving towards at this point.”
Due to rules around training during a suspension, Oleksiak is not allowed to swim with a national team, club team, or a coach, and her training must be done at public pools rather than private or club facilities.
She said “It’s pretty difficult. I think you don’t know about it until it happens to you, and you don’t really realize the repercussions of it until it happens to you. I’m not allowed to have a coach. I’m not allowed to train with my teammates…I am now just kind of isolated.”
She is currently going to public pools during open swim times, and training alone.
Oleksiak’s goal is the 2028 Olympics, and she said “I can only anticipate and expect good things to come from L.A., and I’m just so excited. I think the peak of Canadian swimming is going to be L.A. 2028. We have so much talent coming up and such an exciting team and I just can’t wait to be a part of it.”
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