Five Years Later, Gabby Thomas Finally Breaks Silence on Her Track & Field Suspension: ”Never Committed”

In May 2020, Gabby Thomas was provisionally suspended for allegedly missing three anti-doping tests in a year. By July, she had the suspension lifted after submitting evidence, like phone tracking data and witness testimony, proving one test couldn’t be validated. By 2024, she’d even won 3 gold medals at the 2024 Olympics. But all her achievements– instead of quieting down the rumors seemed to amplify them more. Now, nearly five years later, she’s finally telling her side of the story.

“I was never banned, I never committed any type of anti-doping violation,” Gabby Thomas clarified in a recent TikTok, addressing long-standing rumors. Speaking directly to young athletes, she broke down how the system works: once you hit a certain speed in track and field, you’re enrolled in anti-doping testing—it doesn’t matter if you’re a pro, in college, or just fast for fun. Two organizations oversee this process: USADA and World Athletics, with the latter having stricter requirements. And it’s not just drug tests. “You actually have to upload your whereabouts into an app every single day,” said the 3x Olympic gold medalist, explaining that athletes must log where they sleep, eat, train, and study, from 5 AM to 11 PM, and update immediately if plans change. The point? Surprise testing; examiners can show up anywhere, anytime. Thomas herself has been approached by USADA officials at “pickleball, rooftop bars, town lake, you name it.” So what went wrong with her early on? She simply didn’t understand the system at first.

Talking of her junior year, she said, “I got an email saying that I needed to put my whereabouts in, and I had no idea what that email was. I didn’t have an agent. I asked my coach and my teammates, but they did not know what it was because we’re not involved in the professional tracking field. So I thought it was a scam.” But she eventually started entering her Harvard dorm and practice schedule into the app, even though going pro had never crossed her mind. From junior to senior year, a tester named Danielle showed up now and then. She’d take the test and move on with her day. Then she recounted how she’d missed the three in a row:

Number 1. “One time it was about 8 p.m., 8:30 p.m., something like that. I went to go see a movie with my friends. Danielle showed up at my Harvard dorm and sat there, and then called me and let me know that she was waiting to drug test me. I said, Okay, I’m coming and left the movie theater, went to the Harvard dorm to go take the drug test, and she was gone,” Gabby shared. The Olympian argued that Danielle told her that she couldn’t wait more than ten minutes for a test, but the rules actually allow testers to wait up to an hour at the designated spot. Gabby Thomas was marked for a missed test, and she did not realize its severity. “I just had one missed test and I didn’t really care,” she said.

Number 2. Thomas said, “The next time she came to test me, I was staying in my Harvard dorm again, and I went to get food with my friends on campus at this Thai restaurant, and Danielle came to test me. This time, she did not give me a phone call. She just waited at the door.” She explained that the tester saw her Instagram story, tagging a Thai restaurant nearby, but instead of going there to test her, she screenshotted it and marked it as a missed test. The US athlete said, “So a few weeks later, I get notified that’s my second missed test…I’m thinking, oh, I missed a test. Dang it, I’ll get the next one, but I definitely was not thinking, oh, they’re about to ban me.”

Number 3. “Third missed test was, I was actually at Yale at my boyfriend’s dorm. The tester comes really early in the morning. So I’m asleep, and because it’s a dorm, they can’t come up…he was downstairs at the first initial door, knocking. Obviously, I can’t hear him. Nobody can hear him. So he just calls it a missed test and that’s it,” the track and field athlete said. “I’ll be tested again later,” she thought. But it does make one wonder why she never disputed any of these instances. Further down her TikTok video, she clarified that, too.

In her defense, she didn’t grasp how serious anti-doping was or the drug history in track. At the time, she was focused on graduating, her senior trip, and starting her master’s, not her career. Without an agent, she brushed it off, thinking nothing bad would happen. Looking back, she realizes she was young, felt invincible, and now sees it was naïve to think everything would just work out… only to receive a suspension in the mail.

“So I get an email. They notify me. They say you have three missed tests. Oh, you’re going to be provisionally suspended.” Her reaction? “No, I don’t. And so I had to get a lawyer and everything.” Talking about how close the process was, she said that she had to go through each test one by one to prove she didn’t deserve the missed tests.

Thomas continued, “So I just did the first one. The first one was clearly the doping control officer’s fault because I was at the movie theater, and I came back to take the test, and she left. She broke the rules. And after that, we just left it at that. I was like, OK, that’s one missed test.” She did hire her lawyer for the other two because, as she said, lawyers are expensive.

“Phone tracking data and multiple witnesses will conclusively show that I was at the exact location I established in my whereabouts and that the doping control officer simply failed to locate me and failed to follow proper protocol,” stated Thomas while making a strong case for her defense.

Looking back now, as Gabby Thomas takes a strong step against doping

Gabby said in the video that critics made her feel “guilty until proven innocent.” Once the first missed test was cleared, she moved on, just happy to compete. At the time, she hadn’t even made a U.S. team, so no one really noticed. People only bring it up now because she has a gold medal, she said, before adding, “I’ve never skipped a drug test. I have not missed a drug test in six years since I have left Cambridge and moved to Texas. I have not missed a single drug test. It doesn’t matter where I am, what city I’m in. If I’m out at a club, it doesn’t matter. I’ve never missed one.” Today, with a better grasp of the sport’s history, she takes anti-doping seriously. “I definitely regret how I treated the whole whereabouts anti-doping process. And I learned a lot from that. I do think it’s really unfortunate that my mistakes have to be public, so you live and you learn.” 

That lesson has turned her into one of the sport’s loudest voices for clean competition. She acknowledges the system’s flaws but defends its purpose, crediting new educational seminars and weekly reminders for making it easier to comply. And she’s not shy about calling out violators. Recently, she posted a blunt message on Instagram: “Doping coaches should be banned for life from coaching in the sport. Whether you were banned while competing as an athlete or caught distributing as a coach (for some, both). Idc idc idc.” Her warning extended to athletes as well: “If you train under a coach who is known for doping (once, twice, or even three times for some) you are complicit. That’s my stance.” From brushing off whereabouts rules to leading the fight against doping, Gabby Thomas has come full circle.