Since the beginning of the year 17 Kenyan athletes they have been suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), the independent body responsible for monitoring violations of the rules of conduct in athletics. In total, more than fifty Kenyan athletes are currently suspended by the AIU. Only two countries in the world currently have more banned athletes: India, which has a much larger population than Kenya, and Russia, which is still serving a blanket ban for its numerous doping-related cases.
The problem of doping among Kenyan male and female athletes, especially in the athletics disciplines that concern endurance racing, exists for years, and it is since 2016 that the country is among the seven that the AIU considers to be at greatest risk. As always, with doping, however, it is difficult to understand whether the cases are a sign of the effectiveness of anti-doping or whether they are only “the tip of the iceberg”.
As a result of the many suspensions in recent months – many more than in the past – there has even come to talk of the possibility that Kenya could be excluded entirely, as a country, from the competitions organized by World Athletics, the world governing body of athletics light.
The local Sports Ministry has recently spoken out against the possibility of Kenya being excluded, and supported by the Kenyan Olympic Committee wrote to Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics: “We cannot allow Kenya to be ousted because of a few greedy and dishonest individuals.” An exclusion would in fact represent great damage both economically and to the image of a country which has won 34 of its 35 Olympic gold medals in athletics.
Brett Clothier, director of the AIU, has explained atTeam that the fact that there are many cases in Kenya has, at least in part, to do with the growing popularity of marathons. In marathons, Clothier said, “even the hundredth in the world can earn a lot of money, which, on the other hand, does not happen, for example, in the long jump”. However, elite athletes may run only a few marathons in a year.
It follows that, compared to a sport like high jump, there are more athletes with the possibility of earning money despite not being the best in the world in absolute terms, and therefore more temptations to take drugs. The pandemic has also reduced the number of competitions and possible earnings, consequently increasing the competitiveness between athletes and therefore cases of doping. Clothier also spoke of doping techniques and products that are now “easily available” in Kenya.
Several recent cases have to do with triamcinolone acetonide, a drug used for, among other things, rhinitis and allergies, but which is banned by WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency. Among those who are currently disqualified for having tested positive for triamcinolone acetonide there is also Diana Kipyokei, winner of the 2021 Boston Marathon, one of the most important in the world.
Among those who have been suspended for doping there are also three of the over forty runners who, in the role of the so-called “hares”, three years ago helped the Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge to run – albeit in rather particular conditions – a marathon in less than two hours.
Kipchoge, who in his long career at the top has been tested several times, without ever being positive, spoke of the increase in doping cases in Kenya as something “worrying” and added that “we still can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel”.
