A shattered Thomas Fraser-Holmes will plead his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport as he tries to salvage an appearance at the Commonwealth Games next April after being ousted from swimming for 12 months.
The dual-Olympian and Commonwealth Games gold medallist was hit with a 12-month ban on Wednesday night when he fronted a FINA doping panel after missing three drug tests in the space of a year.
![Australian swimmer Thomas Fraser-Holmes, pictured in Rio last year.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170611140410im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/l/j/y/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwmy6j.png/1496926429128.jpg)
His third strike was the most costly 10 minutes of his career, when he missed FINA testing agents after a dinner at his mother's house on the Gold Coast. He was notified of the breach weeks later by email.
The 25-year-old was with the Dolphins in Europe for a training camp and a series of races ahead of the FINA World Championships in Hungary but will now be sent home by Swimming Australia.
Athletes use the Whereabouts app to provide testers with an hourly window each day where they are available to provide doping samples. Fraser-Holmes missed the previous two appointments after the Rio Olympics, during which time he was searching for a new coach.
His lawyer, Tim Fuller, said Fraser-Holmes had told the tribunal that he had returned more than 200 clean tests throughout his career and had tried to update his Whereabouts the moment he realised he had missed his scheduled window.
It would fall on deaf ears as the FINA panel came back with a 12-month ban, dated from Thursday rather than backdated to the missed test.
Fuller said Fraser-Holmes, 25, has never had anything to hide during his career and his suspension was on account of a technical breach, not a doping violation.
"He's incredibly disappointed by the ruling from the FINA doping panel, particularly in light of the fact that he's never cheated. He's provided more than 200 cleans tests," Fuller said.
"He gave testimony at the hearing that he's been tested 200 times, has never been in breach and never returned a positive test. He knows there are competitors out there that have cheated the system."
Fuller will now take the case to the CAS, which has historically backed the findings of governing bodies but does have the power to water down or backdate the suspension, which could bring the Commonwealth Games back into play.
There is the feeling that FINA have made a strong example of Fraser-Holmes after indicating after the Rio Games that they would be intensifying testing via the Whereabouts system, with Australian aquatic athletes squarely in their crosshairs.
In the lead-up to the Rio Games, Australian aquatic athletes were tested 117 times by FINA, while in the same period Chinese athletes were on the end of 210 tests. Russia was hit with 276 tests, a figure that would hardly surprise given the doping revelations across multiple sports ahead of the Olympics.
Since the flame went out in Brazil, Australian swimmers have been tested at a higher rate for six of the following eight months compared to China, while Russia remains one of the most-scrutinised nations.
Since January this year, Australian swimmers have been the subject of 82 tests, compared to 55 by China. In April alone, Australians were tested 23 times, China 12 and Russia 31.
Australian swimmers have been on notice yet still managed to miss tests. Open water swimmer Jarrod Poort and Olympic butterfly silver medallist Madeline Groves are also set to fight against possible bans for missing tests.
Poort has yet to go public with his reasoning while Groves has vowed to fight the allegations, saying she was at the scheduled time and place for what amounted to a third strike but FINA testers failed to locate her at her US university.
Swimming Australia was waiting for an official FINA statement on the Fraser-Holmes suspension before making comment. Groves was also in Europe with the swimming team and will remain there until her case becomes clearer.
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