In fact, more than sixty high-level Kenyan athletes have tested positive in recent years.
“At the start, we thought that it more concerned second-rate runners. And then, from 2016, very great marathoners, Olympic champions, winners of the biggest marathons like Chicago or New York fell,” explains Nicolas Herbelot, an athletics specialist.
“So there is a very big concern about doping in Kenya, which is all the more important as there is no strong state to fight against this practice,” he continues.
For Kenya, provider of the greatest long-distance running champions, athletics remains the main source of national pride. This is the only way, or almost, for Nairobi to exist on the international scene.
A place where champions train and train, the Rift Valley is a true running El Dorado. And the benefits for the country are not negligible, recalls Nicolas Herbelot in statements recently relayed by the Kenyan media.
“It’s good for the image, it’s good for the economy. On the one hand, it attracts a lot of sports tourism. Many Europeans, Americans, Australians settle there for a month and run. And then there is the money that Kenyan athletes bring home,” he added.
If the year 2019 will go down in the annals of Kenyan athletics as that of all records with the unprecedented feat achieved by Eliud Kipchoge, in October of the same year in Austria, by completing the marathon in less than two hours (1 :59:40), it was also marked by events which tarnished the brand image of Kenya, ranked in 2019 as the first most doped athletics nation in Africa and the third in the world.
A record 15 athletes have been caught cheating their way to victory in major international races with money as the motivating factor. All were banned from participating in all competitions for a period of between two and four years. However, Salomé Biwott, 36, was given a punitive sentence of eight years, the highest penalty in history for a second offense, seven years after the first.
Doping in Kenya has affected even the adolescent age group this year. Angela Ndungwa Munguti, aged 17, became the 43rd athlete in the list of Kenyan cheaters of all time and the 15th during 2019 when she was sanctioned not to participate in any events for a period of one year, by Global Athletics’ Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) in November for positive tests for norandrosterone, a metabolite of the anabolic steroid Nandrolone, which was allegedly used on October 7, 2018, during the Youth Olympic Games summer in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The AIU also suspended the career of three-time world and Olympic 1500 meter champion Asbel Kiprop over a doping violation discovered in 2018. Kiprop, who will remain out of competition for the next four years, has always maintained his innocence .
Kenyan 5000m runners Michael Kibet (20) and Daniel Simiyu (21) were barred from competing at the World Athletics Championships in Doha after failing to meet anti-doping requirements.
These serial doping cases have sent shivers through athletics circles in Kenya, who have begun to seriously think about overcoming this situation through recurrent testing of athletes.
2024-09-27 07:30:33