SYDNEY: A group of swimmers who took sleeping drugs and played pranks on their female teammates before last year’s London games have avoided further punishment from the Australian Olympic Committee.

The AOC ruled Friday the fines handed to the six members of the men’s relay team, including newly-crowned world champion James Magnussen, by Swimming Australia were “proportionate and sufficient.”

But AOC chief John Coates warned the swimmers — Eamon Sullivan, Matt Targett, James Roberts, Tommaso D’Orsogna, Cameron McEvoy and Magnussen — that any further conduct which brought swimming into disrepute would result in them being banned for selection from the 2016 Rio Olympics.

It follows an AOC investigation, led by barrister Bret Walker, into the conduct of the swimming section of the Australian Olympic team at the 2012 London Games.

The investigation found the relay swimmers were in breach of their team agreement, but the AOC said it considered the financial sanction imposed by Swimming Australia to be proportionate and sufficient.

The exact amount of the fines handed out to the swimmers remains confidential but Coates said they were docked a percentage of their athlete support payments by Swimming Australia.

The AOC said that any further conduct which brought the swimmers or their sport into disrepute was likely to make them ineligible for selection to the 2016 Australian Olympic team.

“This is the yellow card,” Coates told reporters.

Coates said the AOC inquiry also found that the team’s former head coach Leigh Nugent had breached his team agreement obligations for failing to investigate the circumstances of the incidents when they were raised with him in London, but no further sanction would be made against him.

In a tumultuous period for the sport in Australia after the London Olympics, head body Swimming Australia lost its president, chief executive, head coach and major sponsor, while government funding was slashed.

It was Australian swimming’s first Games without an individual gold medal since the 1976 Montreal Olympics and its worst record haul — of one gold medal, six silver and three bronze — since 1992 in Barcelona.

The two inquiries into what went wrong in London pointed to a squad lacking leadership and found “toxic” incidents such as drunkenness and bullying had gone unchecked.

Among the revelations were that members of the freestyle relay squad had taken sleeping pills banned by the AOC and played pranks at a pre-games training camp in Manchester.