A vast doping crisis is right on the heels of Kenyan runners

NEW YORK – When Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum

broke the world marathon record in early October,

he threatened a landmark barrier of human possibility: running 42.195km in less than two hours in a competitive race.

Kiptum’s time of 2 hours 35 seconds at the Chicago Marathon brought him tantalisingly close to the milestone, a feat achieved once – by a fellow Kenyan in a 2019 exhibition – but only by using pacing and hydration tactics that rendered the performance ineligible for a record.

Yet, because Kiptum’s triumph came as Kenyan athletics is struggling with an alarming doping crisis, the 23-year-old record holder – who has not been accused of doping – found himself discussing not only what he had done in Chicago, but what he had not.

The record time, Kiptum said when he returned to Kenya, was the product of running 241km or more per week at altitude, not the use of banned substances.

“My secret is training,” he said. “Not any other thing.”

As several top athletes from Kenya arrive to run the New York City Marathon on Sunday, they can expect to face similar questions about a doping problem that has led to punishments for nearly 300 Kenyan athletes since 2015.

They include former Olympic gold medallists, world champions and world-record holders.

In 2022 alone, 27 elite Kenyan runners were suspended for doping – amounting to 40 per cent of the athletes suspended at the highest echelons of distance running in 2022, according to the Athletics Integrity Unit.

The unit has been tasked by the sport’s top officials to assist in trying to clean up Kenyan running.

“Everyone in Kenya is saying this is a huge problem,” said Brett Clothier, the unit’s chief executive. “We’ve just got to fix it.”

The 270 Kenyans who have been barred from competition between 2015 and late October 2023 include some of the country’s most decorated athletes.

They are Jemima Sumgong, the 2016 women’s Olympic marathon champion; Wilson Kipsang, the 2014 New York City Marathon champion and a former marathon world-record holder; Rita Jeptoo, a three-time winner of the Boston Marathon; and Asbel Kiprop, a former world and Olympic champion in the men’s 1,500m.

A week after Kiptum’s record race, another Kenyan champion, Titus Ekiru, who has run the sixth-fastest marathon ever, was barred for 10 years for using prohibited substances and for falsifying medical documents with the aid of a Kenyan doctor.

Last November, the situation had grown so worrisome that a top Kenyan official, Barnaba Korir, acknowledged that Kenya was in “the intensive care unit” when it came to doping.

The recent achievements of Kiptum and Tigst Assefa, of Ethiopia – who lowered the women’s marathon record by more than two minutes in Berlin in September – come during ceaseless scrutiny and suspicion about speed-enhancing shoe technology and potential doping on the validity of great performances, which are now reflexively called into question after decades of international scandals involving numerous countries.

The use of illicit blood-boosting drugs and other prohibited substances, and attempts at cover-ups, have grown increasingly sophisticated.

According to the integrity unit, doping in Kenya is facilitated by a loose network that includes not just runners seeking an edge, but also real and fictitious doctors, fabricated documents, fake hospital visits and treatments, pharmacists, coaches and agents.

They are often as part of schemes that the organisation said amount to “criminal conduct”.

The hundreds of doping cases have also raised questions about the legitimacy of the performances by those who have won more than 100 Olympic medals for Kenya, including 34 of 35 gold medals.

“Sometimes, it’s heartbreaking,” said Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon, a two-time Olympic champion and world-record holder in the 1,500m and the mile.

“I encourage them to run clean to protect our image, to protect our country.”

Along with its neighbour, Ethiopia, Kenya dominates elite distance running.

In the world marathon rankings, Kenyan and Ethiopian men hold 73 of the top 100 positions and women from the two countries hold 70 of the top 100 positions.

Yet twice in the past seven years, Kenya has risked being banned from international competitions for extensive doping by its athletes.

The country has avoided an international ban because it is not considered to have participated in the kind of state-sponsored system widely documented in a more infamous doping pariah: Russia.

“There is no suspicion that the Kenyan government has in any way been complicit in this,” said Sebastian Coe, a former Olympic champion who is now the president of World Athletics.

Several factors make Kenya’s doping crisis unlike others, according to Clothier, of the integrity unit.

These include the place of running as an escape from poverty in Kenya, one of the world’s poorest countries, and the unmatched depth of the country’s professional runners.

There is also the historical lack of out-of-competition drug-testing for elite athletes who compete below the level of the Olympics, the world championships and the major marathons in Boston, New York, Chicago, Berlin, London and Tokyo.

“This is our profession,” said Kipyegon, the Olympic women’s 1,500m champion. “We have nowhere else to go, no offices to go to, to make a decent living.” NYTIMES