By Charlie Bennett in Paris

Jade Jones denied ever taking performance-enhancing drugs just months after she was cleared to compete at the Olympics despite a missed doping test.

The double gold medallist was suspended pending further investigation earlier this year after failing to provide a sample to a doping control officer on December 1.

A missed test is normally treated the same as a failed one, but Jones escaped sanction after being found to having committed a no-fault doping violation on confidential medical grounds.

“No, I can confirm I never took drugs,” Jones said, after crashing out of the 57kg first round at the Grand Palais.

“I have done hundreds of tests in my career and since then I have done 13 tests more and I have never had anything in my system.”

Jones revealed she was undergoing dehydration training and had not eaten or drank for two days while preparing for a weigh-in ahead of the European Championship.

She was reminded of the potential repercussions of missing a test five times by a doping control officer, but signed a document stating she could not provide a sample.

UK Anti-Doping, taking into account the view of a consultant psychiatrist, accepted she suffered a “loss of cognitive capacity” and bore “no fault or negligence for her refusal or failure to submit to her sample collection”.

“I said straight away [to the doping control officer], you have to come with me [to a dehydration bath], I need to lose the weight. But basically, she did not know if she could come or not,” Jones added.

“There was a lot of stress, I was waiting, and I needed to go and dehydrate and weigh in. I was stressed and I was not in the right mind. I had this thought that you could miss three [tests]. So, I was very lucky they looked into it and seen I wasn’t in the wrong.

“I signed a piece of paper. But I didn’t know what I was signing. I was fully dehydrated. I hadn’t drunk and wasn’t in the right mind to sign it.”

Jones, who won Olympic gold at both London 2012 and Rio four years later, did provide a sample to a different tester 12 hours later, which came back negative.

She escaped a four-year ban and arrived in Paris looking to become a three-time champion. But her gold medal chances went up in smoke in the first round when she suffered a shock defeat to Miljana Reljikj.

She hung around to see if she would still have a shot at bronze through the repechage, but those chances disappeared when the North Macedonia lost in the quarterfinals.

The saga overshadowed Jones’ preparations for the Games, though she denied it influenced her performance.

The 31-year-old was seeded third for the Olympics but was on the back foot in the best-of-three encounter with 14th seed Reljiki straight away.

Reljiki landed a head kick with five seconds to go to snatch the first round, before Jones pinched the second 5-4 to send the contest to a decider. The pair drew 1-1 but Reljiki was credited as being the more aggressive fighter and was awarded the victory – leaving question marks over Jones’ future.

“I don’t know,” she said when asked if she will carry on to a fifth Olympics in LA in four years.

“Before coming here, I had committed 100%. Everything was building to Paris, and I will just go back home, see my family, and see what happens.

“The more you win, the harder it gets, the pressure, the mental side of it, and it’s just tough. I came out and I froze, I did not have the balls it took to fight freely and let me legs go.”

Elsewhere, 68kg fighter Bradly Sinden pulled out of his bronze medal fight due to a suspected MCL knee injury he sustained in the quarterfinals.

Sinden beat Croatia’s Marko Golubic but lost his semi-final to Jordan’s Zaid Kareem before taking the decision not to aggravate it further.

Watch every moment of Olympic Games Paris 2024 live only on discovery+, the streaming home of the Olympics