Sometimes, people need to learn to quit while they’re ahead.
After receiving only a warning last year for refusing to submit to a drug test, Austrian Olympian Dinko Jukic has now been hit with a 10-to-12 month suspension by the federation on the accumulation of a long history of disagreement, the Austrian federation announced Wednesday.
The primary offense came in May at the European Championships, when Jukic reportedly insulted three officials of the federation in a disagreement about when he should return back to Austria to continue his training.
The federation waited until after the Olympics to hand out the suspension, allowing Jukic to finish 4th in the 200 fly in the meantime. He has said that if he was suspended over the spat, that he would probably retire from the sport. The federation (OSV) has said that his time off, which outlaws him from both national and international competition, will be at least 10 months, with an additional two possible.
Jukic is a Croatian native who generally specializes in short course swimming, but has won three European long course medals as well. At only 23, another Olympic Games is certainly in the cards for him unless he sticks to his guns about retiring.
