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Team Canada is under the microscope again.
Canadian pole vaulter and Olympic bronze medalist Alysha Newman has been suspended from her sport for 20 months after failing drug tests, although athletics investigators accepted she had ended her career as a pole vaulter. Newman won bronze for Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Most recently, he competed in a pair of Diamond League meets in May 2025 in Qatar and Morocco.
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Team Canada’s Alysha Newman 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 rules violations in curling and competition rigging in skeleton. Canadian curlers were accused of “double tapping” stones at the Milan Cortina Olympics, while the skeleton team was found to have rigged a race in Lake Placid to protect Olympic qualification points, causing a stir.
The Athletics Integrity Unit said Newman was unavailable for an unannounced doping test in February of last year and twice more in August. Three alleged “spot” failures in 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 “had to leave immediately to participate in the filming of a television program.”
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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 provide 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 that she decided to end her career.
This, the AIU said, “is a sufficiently unique/exceptional factor that can be considered when assessing his level of culpability in the matter.”
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Flag bearers Charles Hamelin and Marie-Philip Poulin carry Team Canada’s flag during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games 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 took bronze at the Pan American Games.
