The 21-year-old returned a positive sample in June for prohibited non-steroid anabolic agent Ligandrol, a drug popular with bodybuilders. 

Jack, a member of Australia's 4x100 metres freestyle team that won at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games in a world record, claimed she may have somehow ingested the drug from those around her.

"I had a lot of people come forward and tell me that they took this drug, just general people who go to the gym," Jack told Australian broadcaster Channel 10. 

"Some people were using it as recovery.

"There was a case in the past called the kiss cocaine case…someone had taken cocaine and the partner who was an athlete kissed that person and they were contaminated.

"I was being told that anything I come in contact with, within that period, could have been a risk of the contamination.

"There's a chance of it being in a contaminated supplement.

"The only unfortunate thing is I actually hadn't taken supplements in the two months prior to that test."

The case Jack is referring to involved Canada's Shawn Barber, the gold medallist in the pole vault at the 2015 International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships in Beijing, who avoided a ban despite a positive cocaine test by claiming he ingested the drug via kissing in 2016.

Jack, however, has claimed she is not using that as her defence but merely as an example of how banned drugs can easily get into an athlete's system. 

American Olympic gold medallist Gil Roberts used a similar defence when he was cleared of a doping violation after successfully arguing that he ingested a banned substance by kissing his girlfriend.

Roberts, a member of the United States' gold medal-winning men's 4x400m relay team at Rio 2016, tested positive for probenecid, a diuretic and masking agent in March 2017. 

Roberts successfully argued his girlfriend Alex Salazar had been taking medication which she bought in India for a sinus infection, which contained probenecid.

Confirmation of Jack testing positive for a banned substance came during the same week compatriot Mack Horton refused to share the medal podium with Sun Yang after finishing second to the Chinese swimmer in the 400m freestyle at the World Aquatics Championships in Gwangju, sparking accusations of hypocrisy in Australian swimming.

Sun, who served a three-month suspension in 2014 after testing positive for prohibited substance trimetazidine, has been accused of deliberately smashing his blood sample in a row with drugs testers earlier this year.

"I didn't know in regards to how bad his backlash was - I was going through my own experience of social media criticism," Jack told Channel 10.

"I have never been bullied or harassed as much as I have been since that day.

"Mack made a decision in that time and I respect the fact he stood up for clean sport because I have always stood up for clean sport."

Jack is currently waiting for a hearing date for her case from the Australian Anti-Doping Agency but has not given up on being cleared in time to compete for Australia at next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo. 

"My dream has always been the Olympics, whether that be Tokyo or another four years time," Jack told Channel 10.  

"I deserve to be standing behind those blocks wearing the green and gold and I will be back.

"That dream is not gone. 

"That dream will never disappear. 

"I will keep fighting for it."