Australian Olympians Madeline Groves and Thomas Fraser-Holmes have hired attorney Tim Fuller to dispute that each has missed three out-of-competition anti-doping tests. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Fuller believes the case against Groves should be tossed.
Per the report in the Herald, drug testers came to the dorm in San Diego where Groves was staying at a training camp in March but could not find anyone at the front desk of the building. Groves claims that she had no missed calls on her phone, and no one knocked on her door during the one hour she had blocked off for testers to find her.
Fuller told the Herald that he plans to dispute all three “strikes” against both swimmers, but he feels particularly strongly that the case against Groves will be dropped, hopefully before she has to go to a hearing.
“We’re confident we can prove the testing authority were not compliant with WADA’s international testing procedures,” Fuller said, according to the Herald. “They called her coach in Australia and there’s no missed calls on her phone. They alleged they called the number. I can get hold of her every time. She was in the location she said she would be at. Maddie’s case is very strong.”
Fuller went on to explain that both Groves and Fraser-Holmes were tested quickly after their missed tests, and those tests came back clean. If his appeals fail, he will pursue reducing any suspension to one year since the issues were technical in nature and not actual anti-doping violations.
Fraser-Holmes admitted last week that he forgot about his scheduled window for a test while spending time at his mother’s house. Open water Olympian Jarrod Poort has also reportedly missed three tests, but he has not yet commented on his situation, and Fraser is not currently representing him.
Read more from the Sydney Morning Herald here.
As predicted, they are seeking to employ the “Armistead Defence”; that employed last year by leading GBR cyclist Lizzie Armistead of seeking to have at least one of these missed tests “invalidated” due to procedural failures on the part of the testers.
They MAY, indeed, be able to prove so however, I DO feel that both Groves & TFH would be better served employing a legal counsel who is far less of a media hound than Mr Fuller. He and they are NOT obligated to make any statement to the media and need not do so and in his desire to play this out in the media; he has already shot a hole in Groves’ defence with regards to the missed test in the USA.
At that time, she was NOT training with her AUS coach or even in AUS so therefore he would not be in a position of having direct knowledge of her wherabouts or current routine but rather be the business of her US coach at the time. In other words, she was negligent in NOT updating her details to mirror her current training circumstances. Not a hanging offence in itself but carelessness can have consequences.
Sorry but unless they can prove clear procedural failures on the part of the testers; there shouldn’t be any ‘get out of jail free’ cards handed out