Legal restrictions on punishing dopers leave World Athletics chief Sebastian Coe frustrated

LONDON – World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said he was as frustrated as anyone at the farcical situation surrounding the legal marathon world record belonging to banned Kenyan Ruth Chepngetich, but added that the governing body’s hands are tied.

The 31-year-old’s astonishing 2hr 9min 56sec run in Chicago in October 2024 remains the legal world mark ​even though

she was handed a three-year anti-doping ban in 2025

, with her results expunged only from March.

Her excuse that she took her housemaid’s medicine was dismissed by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), which says it is continuing to investigate Chepngetich for other potential violations.

“I share your frustration, but ​I’m not a ​lawyer,” Coe said in a conference call to review the year in athletics.

“There are some legal challenges that the burden of proof can only be a positive test and evidence that doping infringement was taking place at the time of the performance... and if you don’t have that it’s extremely difficult to extrapolate around other events.

“The AIU does everything that it possibly can, but it does also have to work within legal strictures – however frustrating that is.”

Chepngetich was one ​of a series of high-profile dopers to be caught in 2025, with elite American sprinters Marvin Bracy, Erriyon Knighton and Fred Kerley also earning suspensions.

This week, AIU chairman David Howman, who served as the World Anti-Doping Agency’s director general for 13 years, said the anti-doping system has stalled.

“Intentional dopers at elite level are evading detection. We are not effective enough nowadays in catching cheats... it is hurting the anti-doping movement’s credibility,” he said.

Coe, however, was not quite ​so gloomy about the situation.

“I think what David is saying is that we have to go beyond,” he said.

“It’s very important that all our anti-doping organisations are working absolutely optimally. We have to really focus on intelligent testing. We have got to use AI ​much more to be able to really turbo-charge that intelligent testing to the allocation of resources where it really is going to matter.”

Coe was obviously more upbeat when discussing the success of the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo and looking forward to the inaugural Ultimate Championships in Budapest next September.

“It wasn’t that long ago we were talking about one or two major talents and now we are talking about a bandwidth of talent emerging across all our disciplines,” he said. “This is an extraordinary era.

“In Tokyo we had 84 countries that reached a final – the highest ever. In Tokyo in 1991 it was 47. I can’t think of another sport where we would be talking about that.” REUTERS