Canadian Olympic bronze medalist Alysha Newman banned after missed drug tests

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Team Canada is under the microscope again.

Canadian Olympic bronze medalist pole vaulter Alysha Newman has been banned from her sport for 20 months after missed drug tests, though track and field investigators accepted she had ended her career as a pole vaulter. Newman won bronze for Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

She more recently competed at a pair of Diamond League meetings in May 2025 in Qatar and Morocco.

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Alysha Newman holding Canadian flag celebrating pole vault bronze medal at Stade de France

Newman is the latest Team Canada figure to incite controversy after incidents during and around the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Two controversies surrounding Canadian winter sports teams in early 2026 involve allegations of rule violations in curling and competition manipulation in skeleton. Canadian curlers were accused of “double-touching” stones at the Milan Cortina Olympics, while the skeleton team was found to have manipulated a Lake Placid race to protect Olympic qualification points, causing major uproar.

The Athletics Integrity Unit said Newman was unavailable for an unannounced doping control in February last year and twice more in August. Three so-called “whereabouts” failures in a 12-month period can be prosecuted as an anti-doping rules violation.

At the third incident, the AIU said in its published verdict the athlete told a sample collection official “she had to leave immediately to participate in the filming of a television game show.”

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The global anti-doping system requires athletes to specify a one-hour period each day when they will be available to give a sample for testing.

Newman’s suspension expires in August 2027 and was less than the standard two years for whereabouts cases because the AIU accepted she decided to end her career.

This, the AIU said, “is a sufficiently unique/exceptional factor that may be considered in assessing her level of fault in the matter.”

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Flag bearers Charles Hamelin and Marie-Philip Poulin carry Team Canada's flag at Beijing National Stadium

Newman also competed in two world championships finals, was a gold and bronze medalist at the Commonwealth Games and took bronze at a Pan American Games.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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