Double Olympic taekwondo champion Jade Jones denied ever taking performance enhancing drugs after her failed bid to become the first taekwondo athlete to win three Olympic gold medals in Paris.
Competing in her fourth Games, Jones lost her opening round of 16-match against Miljana Reljikj of North Macedonia.
In a close contest, both fighters were tied 1-1 at the end of the deciding third round and Reljiki was awarded the win on superiority. The Macedonian took it 2-1.
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However, her failed attempt at Olympic history was overshadowed in the aftermath, with questions lingering over her brief suspension earlier this year for a missed drug test, until it was ruled that she had committed a no-fault doping violation on confidential medical grounds, according to the UK Anti-Doping Agency.
“I can confirm that I’ve never taken drugs. I’ve done hundreds of tests and since [the missed test] I’ve done 13 more tests, more than ever,” Jones said. “I’m obviously not on drugs, I just lost.”
Jones competed in Paris after she was cleared of any wrongdoing by the British anti-doping agency following a failure to submit herself to a drug test last December.
During the incident in a Manchester hotel room, a testing official arrived to collect a sample but Jones was undergoing dehydration training before a weigh-in and hadn’t eaten or drank fluids in days.
She signed a document saying she would be unable to take the test for those reasons, before providing a clean sample to a different tester 12 hours later. But a refused test is treated as a failed one, and Jones said she was not aware of the rules.
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“I didn’t know what I was signing,” she said. “The drug test has come on dehydration day. You’re losing the weight and you haven’t eaten or drank for a few days.
“I said straight away: ‘Let’s go [to a dehydration bath at her home], I have to lose the weight’. And then basically she didn’t know if she could come or not.
“There was a lot of stress and I was waiting. I needed to dehydrate. I become stressed, I wasn’t in the right mind. I thought you could miss three [before being investigated].”
She added: “I’m just so grateful, blessed that they looked into it, that I was cleared, I was in no fault,” she said. “It was a big story. It wasn’t one thing. I am grateful that they didn’t tarnish it.”
The UK anti-doping body (UKAD) reached a no-fault ruling after documentation from a psychiatrist stated she failed to provide a sample because of “her cognitive impairment”.
Details on her condition were redacted in the report from UKAD and Jones said she did not “want to go into that side of it”. She was given reprieve due to “exceptional circumstances” even through refusing to provide a sample can lead to a four-year suspension.
The 31-year-old was the first British athlete to become an Olympic taekwondo champion at the 2012 London Olympics. She kept her title four years later in Rio de Janeiro and then suffered an early exit in Tokyo.
“I’m devastated,” she said of her loss in Paris . “I came here to win, I thought I could win, and on the day I didn’t have the balls that it took and that made the difference.
“I’m super proud of having the courage to try to do something that no one’s done. The more you win, the harder it gets, the pressure, the mental side. It’s tough. I came out today and didn’t have the balls to fight free and let my legs go and I’m just gutted that I didn’t show what I am capable of.”
