Pardon me if you’ve heard all this talk about Kenyan runners before, somewhere between the needle and the damage already done. Either way it’s at the stage now when none of them should be welcomed or entertained around here again anytime soon.
This is far more widespread and worrying than any prospect of riders in the Tour de France returning to our shores. It’s about the clear and present danger of Kenyan runners returning to any of the big city marathons, including Dublin next Sunday.
How many more tales of fartlek at sunrise and ugali for lunch and the altitude high can survive against another doping bust before they all look too good to be true?
Marius Kipserem, Diana Kipyokei, Betty Wilson Lempus, Ibrahim Mukunga, Kenneth Kiprop Renju, Mark Kangongo and, last but not least, Philip Kacheran – all either banned or provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) over the last week or so.
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Kipserem is the latest of them. The winner of the Rotterdam Marathon in 2016 and again 2019, in August he tested positive for the now old-fashioned erythropoietin (EPO), that once popular hormone of choice going back to the last time the Tour visited our shores 24 years ago.
Though he twice denied it, Kipserem then admitted the offence, and so on Wednesday the AIU landed him with a three-year ban – plus one year off for (eventually) confessing to the truth.
Kipyokei, the winner of last year’s Boston Marathon, was done for triamcinolone acetonide, this one a steroid known for its anti-inflammatory effect, plus benefits in weight reduction and increases in endurance.
It was also once popular in the peloton going back to when Bradley Wiggins was found to be using it before his win at the 2012 Tour de France, only to escape any ban after being granted a controversial Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE).
After trying the TUE route herself, Kipyokei was also charged with tampering by the AIU, and she’s now looking at a four-year suspension also. The Boston Marathon have provisionally disqualified her pending an appeal, with zero chance of them getting back any of the $150,000 Kipyokei won on the day.
The AIU incidentally has identified a “recent trend” in which 10 Kenyan distance runners have tested positive for triamcinolone this year, some of those cases yet be revealed, with more likely to come.
Six days before Kipyokei was busted, Lawrence Cherono, the winner of the 2019 Chicago and Boston Marathon, also got confirmation he was being suspended for using trimetazidine, a powerful metabolic agent used to treat severe heart conditions.
Cherono was all set to run the World Championships in Oregon this summer until word of his pending doping offence suddenly emerged.
It’s not just the Kenyan marathon runners who are at it: Mark Kangogo tested positive for triamcinolone and norandrosterone after winning the famed Sierre-Zinal mountain race in Switzerland in August, again (eventually) admitting his truth in order to get one year off.
As for Kacheran – that last not least – the problem was the even older-fashioned testosterone. With a marathon best of 2:05:19, he was also part of Eliud Kipchoge’s Nike pace-making team for that Ineos-branded stunt in Vienna this time three years ago, when Kipchoge clocked his unofficial 1:59.40 to prove in his own words that “impossible is nothing”.
Four Kenyan runners from that same pace-making team have now been done for doping offences; Kacheran and Kipserem, plus Justus Kimutai and Alex Korio, both suspended for whereabouts failures.
I could go on like this only, just like Kenyan marathon times it’s hard to keep pace. There are now close to 60 Kenyans, mostly marathon runners, currently suspended by the AIU, a national tally smaller only than Russia.
In 2016, Kenya was put in Category A of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) watchlist. It is now time for World Athletics to consider imposing an outright ban on Kenyan athletics, similar to that imposed on Russia, at least until there’s some clear evidence they are cleaning up their act, not dirtying it even more.
Kenyan runners have certainly cleaned up the prizemoney in most of the autumn marathons so far. There are still a few more big city marathons to go this year, including Dublin next Sunday and New York the Sunday after, and the other alternative is for these races to stop welcoming Kenyan runners, or certainly stop paying them, at least until some more truths are told.
With each of these Kenyan doping busts, I also think back to my period of time spent there, in December 2011, the plan being to live and train among them for a few weeks and get some proper insight into why they’re so bloody good.
There’s little doubt it’s a magnificent training environment, especially around Iten, the remote and poor farming town that lies perched at 7,875ft on the western escarpment of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley and what feels – and breathes – like the edge of the world.
It is a sort of running paradise, a wild hive of running activity from the moment that sunrise first clears the thin air and splits the landscape into a kaleidoscope of bottle-green fields and dark tangerine clay tracks.
On arrival in Iten the first thing you notice are two large red rectangular arches, on the only road in and out, the Kenyan flag painted down each side and six words written across the top in white capital letters: WELCOME TO ITEN – HOME OF CHAMPIONS.
They say no town on earth – or indeed country, for that matter – has produced more distance running champions than Iten. The shame now is so many of them, World and Olympic, world record holders too, have been done for doping and tarnished Iten; Asbel Kiprop, Wilson Kipsang, Rita Jeptoo, Abraham Kiptum, Jemima Sumgong.
And if I saw that again I’d think HOME OF CHEATS, hit with the thought that if something in this sport looks too good to be true then it probably is.
