‘I have nothing else to lose’: Suspension over _ for now _ Jessica Hardy returns to the pool

Hardy returns to competition following suspension

FEDERAL WAY, Wash. — Jessica Hardy sat up straight on a wooden chair in the lobby of suburban hotel, one mile away from where she will resume her once-skyrocketing swimming career.

She is a year away from a shocking heartbreak she likens to having a terminal illness.

Her shoulders, the engines that propelled her to set a world record in the 100 breaststroke and win four NCAA championships, shrug.

“I’m not in race shape at all, so I’m a little bit nervous — I’m really nervous for this week,” she said with a small chuckle Tuesday during a half-hour interview with The Associated Press, a day before was set to return to competition in the U.S. Open championships.

“If I don’t do well, it’s OK, I really don’t have pressure on myself, because I have nothing else to lose.”

Hardy will swim in the 100 freestyle on Wednesday. It was the event after which she tested positive last July for a banned supplement in a disputed drug test at the 2008 Olympic trials, weeks before she was to swim in her first games in Beijing.

She will also swim in the 100 breaststroke on Friday and the 50 free on Saturday.

She doesn’t care about times, not with all she’s been through — and has yet to go through — just to get back in the pool.

“I’m confident … hopefully,” she said with a nervous laugh.

The 22-year-old Hardy said she has matured and become more focused while out of competition. She says losing her childhood dream of competing in the Olympics caused her to lose most of her carefree nature. She also lost tens of thousands of dollars, depleting her savings, to get a two-year suspension reduced to one year by an arbitration panel in May.

To make the Olympics, she had stopped her pursuit of a degree at California for a year and, she says, lost all semblance of a social life to train all day, every day.

During that year, she mixed into water a powdered supplement called Arginine Extreme made by Advocare International, a Carrollton, Texas-based company that endorsed her. Many of her teammates on the national team were drinking it, she said. She said she constantly quizzed them about the supplement and what it contained, fearful it might cause a positive drug test, and she was assured it was legal.

“Swimmers basically get lucky to not test positive,” she said. “I just did it because I was thinking if I was sacrificing my life, why not do everything I can — within the rules, obviously.”

Hardy was tested three times during the 2008 trials in Omaha, Neb. The results were negative for samples taken on July 1, after she won the 100 breaststroke, and on July 6, after she finished second in the 50 free.

But Hardy’s “A” and backup “B” samples both came back positive for a low level of clenbuterol, a prohibited anabolic agent, from the test on July 4 when she finished fourth in the 100 free.

“I started crying, hysterically, and didn’t stop for 48 hours,” she said. “It was almost like a terminal illness, except I could still go on in the future. It’s not as severe permanently like that, but it felt like that at the time.

“Totally heartbreaking.”

She withdrew from the U.S. Olympic team last August, ending an experience she says was “better than winning the lottery” before it really began.

In May, the American Arbitration Association found the failed test was caused by a contaminated nutritional supplement and requested that Hardy not lose her eligibility for the 2012 London Olympics.

Hardy says she paid for “numerous” independent tests of the original products, which were still in the boxes as she received them. The tests were difficult and expensive because the supplement was in powder form.

“We found that more than one of the products was contaminated,” she said.

The arbitrators ruled that under the circumstances, the swimmer should receive the shortest possible suspension allowed under the rules.

The World Anti-Doping Agency and swimming’s governing body, FINA, objected. They have appealed to the Court for Arbitration of Sport, and they want her ineligible for the 2012 Olympics, based on International Olympic Committee rules that athletes are barred from the next games if they incur a doping ban of at least six months.

The arbitrators said such a result would be “grossly disproportionate.”

Hardy hopes to have a decision from the CAS by the end of the year. Until then, she is hoping to compete in World Cup meets this fall while taking another semester off from school. She has two semesters to go to graduate, and would like to earn a degree next year.

She’s been training three days a week with a postgraduate club team at her hometown Long Beach State University while going back to school. Hardy has no idea if she is as fast in the water than she was when she was suspended.

“I’m better than I was last year, training-wise,” she said, citing a more relaxed approach and a more balanced life while banned. “But I haven’t raced in a year, and it’s a completely different sport almost, racing.

“I am just hoping here to do my best, get back into it, and feel comfortable and confident. And feel the love for the sport that I really haven’t felt in a year.”

She felt love last weekend, when the supposed Olympian had to swim in a Junior Olympics meet with preteen racers in Mission Viejo, Calif., just to qualify for the U.S. Open.

“It was humbling. Those little kids were so excited,” she said. “I mean, my family was there, and they were saying girls were going up to their moms crying because they swam in my lane. It was really cool to see that, because I had been kind of afraid to get back to a swim meet. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be publicly received.

“To have that, from people who don’t know me? It meant a lot to me. They probably didn’t even know that I cared. But I do.”

As for supplements, she won’t even take Gatorade. She bulling through a cold she currently has, afraid to take Advil.

“Tums,” she said. “I don’t take much more than that. The risk is not worth it to me. I’m a talented swimmer. I don’t need anything else to do well.”