Matildas veteran Aivi Luik speaks out after being slapped with shock doping ban
Luik withdrew herself from Olympic selection due to a football ban for a doping offence.
Matildas veteran Aivi Luik has opened up on being charged with a doping offence earlier this year as she vowed to continue to fight to clear her name. Luik was slapped with a three-month football ban for taking a painkiller that contained a banned substance.
Luik was engulfed in a secret legal fight this year while trying to make Tony Gustavsson's Matildas squad for the Paris Olympics. But after being unable to clear her name in time, she withdrew herself from contention. At the time it was understood Luik wasn't available for selection due to a hamstring injury but it was actually because she was fighting the doping charge.
The Italian anti-doping agency contacted Luik in April alerting her to the charge for a doping breach. The charges date back to 2022 when the defender was playing for Italian side Pomigliano.
She was sent to a specialist after suffering from a back injury and was given an approved painkiller that contained a banned substance by the World Anti-Doping Code for use in competition - meaning Luik was not allowed to have it on the day she was due to play.
It has been reported that her club applied for the wrong kind of exemption certificate and she was stood down by the club for the final games of the season after the application was knocked back. News outlet Nado Italia claimed that if Luik had been tested on that day for a banned substance she would have failed.
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Luik took the case to the Italian anti-doping tribunal but was unsuccessful and she is now weighing up an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport as she claims she did nothing wrong. “I still can’t believe I’m in the middle of this and I truly believe a mistake has been made,” Luik wrote.
“I hope to be able to continue the fight to appeal this ruling and prove my innocence. Either way, although this has been the most difficult time in my career, I’m grateful for the chance to tell my story as it stands right now and for all the support I’ve received.”
Aivi Luik explains decision to pull out of Olympics
Luik debuted for the Matildas in 2010 and she has earned 42 caps. Luik was part of the Matildas' incredible 2023 World Cup run but the doping fight has halted her international career.
Despite being in contention for selection at the Paris Games, Luik said she didn't want the distraction of the doping case hanging over her or her teammates' heads. “I just knew that first of all, as much as I tried, I wouldn’t be able to train at my best and be 100 per cent, which is what is needed from every single athlete in the team,” Luik told the Sports Ambassadors podcast. “More so than that, I was terrified at the thought of this affecting the team, because we had a really great chance going into that tournament to do well and medal finally.
“I was just so scared of the thought that maybe something like this comes out during the Olympic tournament and what that would do for the girls and the team in general ... just how it would take the focus off them and probably negatively affect their performance. There was no way I could do that ... I don’t know whether I would have made (the squad) or not, but I think the hardest thing to take was just the fact that the chance was kind of robbed in that way.”
Recalling the treatment that caused the entire ordeal, Luik said she even double-checked with the doctor that the injection was okay for her to have. “I asked the doctor — ‘I’m an athlete, I have to abide by anti-doping rules, are you sure that this is okay?’ And he said ‘Yes, yes, it’s fine’,” she said.
“I want to stress how hard the situation was, in the fact that the communication was really difficult, because they didn’t really speak English, obviously I didn’t speak Italian, and but what he did say was cortisone. And so in my head, I’m like, oh, cortisone. You know, athletes, we get them all the time, especially footballers, two or three days, you’re out, and that’s it.”
The problems arose when Pomigliano asked her to sign a document - known as a Therapeutic Use Exemption - to submit to anti-doping officials. Luik, an unused substitute, said she soon learned the application had been denied.
After being sidelined for the rest of the season, she departed the club and joined Sweden’s BK Hacken where her career continued without any issues until the Italian anti-doping agency handed down punishment this year. Luik claims she was never tested and protested her innocence, but was still banned for three months.
