Penny Oleksiak, the most decorated Canadian Olympian in history, has accepted a two-year period of ineligibility for whereabouts failures, the International Testing Agency (ITA) announced Tuesday.
Oleksiak, 25, withdrew from the 2025 World Championships in early July due to an ongoing whereabouts case, and then a few weeks later, the ITA confirmed Oleksiak was serving a voluntary provisional suspension for missing three Whereabouts filings in a 12-month period.
On Tuesday, the ITA reported that Oleksiak agreed to the consequences of three Whereabouts failures, which is a two-year competition beginning on July 15, when she initially agreed to the voluntary provisional suspension. Her suspension will conclude on July 14, 2027, which will be three months too late to vie for a spot on Canada’s 2027 World Championship team.
The ITA also said all of her results from June 16, 2025, onward will be disqualified—presumably when her third Whereabouts failure occurred—though she has not competed since the 2025 Canadian Swimming Trials in Victoria, which wrapped up on June 12.
At that competition, Oleksiak earned a berth on Canada’s 2025 World Championship roster after winning the women’s 50 free (24.70) and 100 free (54.03) before withdrawing three weeks later.
If she had competed at Worlds, in addition to any individual swims, all results from relays she competed on would’ve seen their results stripped, given the ITA’s announcement on Tuesday.
When she withdrew from Worlds, Oleksiak said the matter “does not involve any banned substance” and added, “I am and always have been a clean athlete and will be making no further comment at this time.”
At the time, Swimming Canada CEO Suzanne Paulins said Oleksiak failed to keep her information up to date with World Aquatics and called the situation 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.”
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.
Previously based at the High Performance Centre – Ontario in Toronto, Oleksiak moved her training home to Los Angeles in the fall of 2023, and qualified for her third Olympic team last summer, though serving as a relay-only swimmer.
Back at the 2016 Olympics, Oleksiak was the upset gold medalist in the women’s 100 freestyle, tying American Simone Manuel for the title at the age of 16, setting the World Junior Record of 52.70 in the process (which still stands today).
Oleksiak also won silver in the 100 fly, and added a pair of bronze medals on the Canadian women’s relays.
At the Tokyo Olympics five years later, she won individual bronze in the women’s 200 free and added a silver in the women’s 4×100 free and a bronze in the women’s 4×100 medley, giving her seven career Olympic medals, the most by a Canadian ever.
Oleksiak also owns nine World Aquatics Championships (LC) medals and seven from the Short Course World Championships, including a pair of relay golds from the 2016 edition on home soil in Windsor. Most recently, she won three relay medals at the 2024 SC Worlds in Budapest.
Maybe SwimCanada can hire her as Manager Of Whereabouts?
I mean, Keith Richards lectures on the perils of drug usage now.
Bye cheater and prepare yourself to change that Instagram Bio in 32 months time…
McIntosh is set to become Canada’s most decorated olympian and she doesn’t need relays to do that, nor does she miss doping tests.
No shade to Penny (I can’t decide how I feel about this story), but I do always think that when I see someone has “WR Holder / most decorated X” in their bio. Don’t you worry that you’ll have to change it?!?!
I get what you’re saying but records are made to be broken and ‘best X’ should be understood as ‘best X so far’. If I was “most decorated X” in anything you can bet I would say that in my bio.
Plus all she’ll need to do is slap a “formerly” on there and all good!
do you have any evidence to back up you claim ? pretty harsh from a “swim fanatic “” curious, what’s your opinion on the 22 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance a few years ago but no sanctions whatsoever ?
Ruslan Gaziev and Penny on a SS Podcast ASAP please
Another victim of the A+B=C equation.
Actions+Behaviours=Consequences
Victim?
Sarcasm intended….
She’s done
She was done for a while, nor that she cared anyway, and neither should you
I wonder if The Enhanced Games will be her next stop?
It’s interesting reading comments here whenever someone from the “West” commits an anti-doping rules violation.
A plenty of commenters will quickly try to turn the conversation into a “he/she didn’t care” type excuse, but will never call out the athlete as a doper.
However, we see a completely different type of passionate commenters who have more things to say when a similar thing happens to someone from the eastern bloc or an Arab country (like Tunisia in swimming).
Comparing this comment section to the one with Hafnaoui, you can tell the difference. Some were calling for his Fukuoka golds to be given to the silver medalists, I wonder if some Americans will demand a 400 free relay silver from… Read more »
Was this an American site? If yes yeah there’s biases
it sounds like you are saying ‘we are Americans, of course we will be biased against Eastern bloc or Arab countries’ Really poor take.
Why not end the “reporting” requirement and simply have impacted athletes carry an “air tag” or share location via their phone at all times. Seems like in this era of technology, an actual reporting requirement is not necessary and unduly onerous. Keep “reporting” for those who may not want to share location at particular times.
Let’s make the surveillance panopticon work for you!!
Really depends on which you think is more draconian. USADA showing up in the middle of your nephew’s birthday party and demanding you pee in a cup? Or knowing that “8:00 has passed, USADA can’t get me for the rest of the day.”
Most athletes I talk to pick a crack-of-dawn time as the default, or a time when they’re consistently at practice if they have a consistent practice schedule.
It seems to me as though the testing has gotten good enough that like…two slots/week is sufficient. Other than weed, are there drugs that metabolize out of the system fast enough to evade that? The testing is crazy sensitive these days. I guess I don’t know enough about the science… Read more »
It would do readers a service to perhaps actually look up the rules of the RTP and the whereabouts requirements. USA swimming national team services can point you to resources. Or USADA website. WADA has the ADEL learning system for practitioners. Tons of free resource out there to improve the level of public discourse.
Having said that, first, out of competition testing can occur at anytime, not only during the designated hour at a specific location. You DO need to be where you say you are then. Your overnight location is the second big requirement. But you can be tested at any time anywhere.
Second, USADA uses a fairly easy to manage online based system of whereabouts,… Read more »
Testing agencies hire testers (most of whom are independent contractors from near the athlete’s listed location) to meet the athletes at a designated time and place. If I’m randomly drawn or deliberately selected for testing, and my phone says my location at 6pm (12 hours before my window) is LA, but I’m actually about to get on a flight to Tokyo, tracking my phone isn’t going to help the testing agency find and hire someone to test me: they need to know where someone will be at a specific date and time in the future.