Sawt Falasteen - Australia's Jack out of swimming world titles with broken hand

The 23-year-old was fancied to win a medal in the women's 100m freestyle at Budapest after leading Australia to the 4x100m relay gold, posted a picture on Instagram Thursday with her left arm in plaster.

"The past couple hours I have been in shock and disbelief," said Jack, who also won silver in the mixed 4x100m medley relay at her first international meet since serving a two-year ban after testing positive to muscle growth agent ligandrol.

"I've had X-rays done which shows a spiral break in my 4th metacarpal. This was caused by a freak accident during my 100 freestyle warm-up involving another swimmer."

Australian head coach Rohan Taylor told reporters the accident happened while Jack was warming up in a practice pool at the Duna Arena.

"She was coming into the wall, basically taking a stroke into the wall and a girl in front of her, some swimmer, just turned and pushed off and as she went by, her finger got caught in the suit," he said.

Jack will return home for surgery and said she hoped to be fit for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham next month.

Her positive drug test in 2019 was hugely embarrassing for Australian swimming, coming just days after then Olympic champion Mack Horton staged a high-profile protest against Chinese rival Sun Yang.

Horton refused to share the podium with Sun at the 2019 Gwangju world championships, reigniting a row from the 2016 Rio Olympics where he labelled the Chinese star a "drug cheat".

Jack always claimed innocence and won an appeal to have the ban reduced to two years from four after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled she "did not intentionally or recklessly consume the prohibited substance".

S.Barghouti--SF-PST