Team GB’s Jade Jones insists she has ‘never taken drugs’ after Olympic taekwondo exit and claims dehydration training stopped her taking an anti-doping test in December

Jade Jones insisted she is not a drugs cheat after the double Olympic champion crashed out in the first round of the taekwondo.

The 31-year-old refused to take an anti-doping test when officials turned up at her hotel in December and has kept her silence since.

‘I’ve never taken drugs,’ she said. ‘I’ve done 100s of tests and since then I’ve done I think 13 more tests.’

Jones broke down in tears when she finally faced the media after her opening-round defeat by Miljana Reljikj.

During the investigation, she claimed she was unable to urinate due to dehydration training and signed paperwork that she was not prepared to take the test.

Jones broke down in tears after she was beaten by North Macedonia’s Miljana Reljikj in Paris

The 31-year-old refused to take an anti-doping test when officials turned up at her hotel in December

However, she passed a test later that day and was cleared by UK anti-doping for a no-fault doping violation due to a ‘loss of cognitive capacity’. 

‘I made a mistake,’ she said. ‘They came on dehydration day, I wasn’t in the right mind, and I was lucky they looked into and it was proven I was innocent.

‘I needed to go and dehydrate and weigh in, I became stressed, I wasn’t in the right mind. I signed a piece of paper but I didn’t know what I was signing.’