Advertisement

All eyes on Kenya’s track and field team ahead of Rio games

Monday July 25 2016
Dn Sports Flag 0208k px

President Uhuru Kenyatta, flanked by Athletics Kenya chairman Isaiah Kiplagat, presents the national flag to Julius Yego and Nancy Jebet of the Kenya Athletics team at State House, Nairobi on August 2, 2013. PHOTO | MOHAMMED AMIN

Kenyan athletes start their journey to Rio de Janeiro with a double-barrelled mission at the Olympic Games.

First, they have to prove their top medal standings at last year’s IAAF World Championships in Beijing were not a fluke. And, second, that such success is not catapulted by the Erythropoietin-injecting syringes of unscrupulous medics as claimed by the media.

In the past few months, an expose commissioned by The Times of London and German TV channel ARD, claimed it found evidence of “widespread doping” among Kenyan and European athletes at high altitude training camps in the North Rift region.

They claimed that some hospitals and pharmacies in Eldoret, Iten and Kapsabet were selling athletes banned performance enhancing substances such as the blood booster Erythropoietin, or EPO.

In the past few years, 42 Kenyan athletes have been banned for doping, the most prominent being former Boston Marathon champion Rita Jeptoo.

The increase in positive cases prompted the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to place Kenya on a doping watch list, later declaring the country “non-compliant.”

Advertisement

Subsequently, in an all-too-familiar, knee-jerk reaction, Kenya flexed its muscle by fast-tracking the Anti-Doping Bill through parliament after the government formed the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (Adak) to oversee testing of athletes.

But the government-heavy Adak failed to convince Wada of its independence and remains suspended, with Kenya missing an Olympic ban by a whisker.

Among the crusaders for the Anti-Doping Bill was Wesley Korir, the Cherang’any Member of Parliament, who is also in Kenya’s marathon team to the Rio Olympics.

He says Kenyan athletes have proved to the world before that they are champions and now it was time yet again to prove that they are free from doping.

“Besides proving we are champions, we are really determined to prove to the world that we are a bunch of clean athletes,” Korir said.

As the Games draw closer, the Kenyan contingent is at sixes and sevens, distracted by the happenings in court, where a leading manager and coach are both likely to miss the extravaganza owing to lawsuits.

Doping-related charges

Federico Rosa of Rosa Associati and coach Claudio Berardelli are both facing doping-related charges in the Nairobi courts. Between them, they have at least 12 of Kenya’s medal hopefuls in their stables.

The Italy-based Rosa Associati stable handles six athletes including Stanley Biwott, Paris Marathon title holder Visiline Chepkesho and Jemima Sumgong, winner of this year’s London Marathon.

Others are world 1,500m champion Asbel Kiprop, world 10,000 metres silver medalist Paul Tanui and Bedan Karoki, a silver medalist at both the world cross country and half marathon championships.

Berardelli coaches former world 800 metres champion Eunice Sum and Commonwealth 5,000 metres title holder Mercy Cherono.

But Kenya’s chef de mission to the Rio Games Stephen Soi will hope that the sideshows won’t put a damper on Kenya’s campaign to improve its best ever Olympic outcome of six gold, four silver and four bronze medals at the 2008 Beijing Games.

But Kenya is not alone in the doping circus. Ethiopia has witnessed its fair share of the doping spotlight with high profile coach Jama Aden being dramatically arrested in a sting operation at his Barcelona hotel on suspicion of doping related offences last month.

Police recovered EPO and other banned substances from the coach’s room.

Aden coaches several elite athletes, including world 1,500 metres record holder Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia and Great Britain’s Somali-born double World and Olympic champion Mo Farah. Aden also trains Great Britain’s two-lap specialists Mukhtar Mohammed and Jermain Mays.

Several Ethiopian runners have since been placed on an anti-doping watch list.

With Russia losing its appeal against an Olympic ban at the Court for Arbitration in Sport this week, the focus during next month’s Rio Olympic Games will most certainly be on the war against doping as much as it will be on global athletes’ Olympic dream of jumping higher, running faster and proving stronger.

Advertisement