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Team Canada is once again under scrutiny.
Canadian Olympic bronze medalist Alysha Newman has been banned from her sport for 20 months after missing doping tests, despite track and field investigators acknowledging she ended her pole vaulting career. Newman won bronze for Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
She more recently participated in two Diamond League meetings in May 2025 in Qatar and Morocco.
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Alysha Newman of Team Canada celebrates her bronze medal and poses with the Canadian flag during the women’s pole vault final at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Stade de France on August 7, 2024. (Daniela Porcelli/Eurasia Sport Images/Getty Images)
Newman is the latest Team Canada figure to spark 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 accused of manipulating a Lake Placid race to protect Olympic qualifying points, causing a major outcry.
The Athletics Integrity Unit said Newman was unavailable for an unannounced doping test in February last year and twice in August. Three so-called “whereabouts” violations within a 12-month period can be prosecuted as an anti-doping rule violation.
In the third incident, the AIU said in its published verdict that the athlete told a sample collection official “that she needed to leave immediately to participate in the filming of a game show.”
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The global anti-doping system requires athletes to specify a one-hour period each day during which they will be available to give a sample for testing purposes.
Newman’s suspension expires in August 2027 and was less than the standard two years for whereabouts cases, as the AIU accepted she had decided to end her career.
According to the AIU, “this is a sufficiently unique/exceptional factor which can be taken into account in assessing the level of his fault in this matter”.
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Flag bearers Charles Hamelin and Marie-Philip Poulin carry the Team Canada flag during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics at the Beijing National Stadium on February 4, 2022. (Elsa/Getty Images)
Newman also competed in two world championship finals, was a gold and bronze medalist at the Commonwealth Games, and won bronze at the Pan American Games.
