Doping cases in Kenya to increase before getting better

“There’s a lot of doping in Kenya and it’s a very serious issue,” Clothier, an Australian national who heads the independent AIU, said during the show hosted by veteran sports journalists Bernard Ndong and James Wokabi. “We and our partners are doing the very best (to fight the doping) and there’s a lot of work to be done, and, quite frankly, the job needs to be revved up in Kenya,”

Christopher Kelsall

October 26, 2022

The Athletics Integrity Unit is focused on eradicating doping in Kenya. Currently, there are approximately 70 Kenyan athletes serving suspensions from the sport due to doping, whereabouts failures, tampering, or anomalies found in their Athlete Biological Passport.

There are approximately 1500 samples tested per year, expect that number to double, and subsequently the number of doping positives to go up as well.

The situation in Kenya will get worse before it gets better according to the head of the Athletics Integrity Unit Brett Clothier.

Thirty athletes have been suspended in the past 12 months.

PASSPORT TO DOPING DETECTION

AIU Head Brett Clothier was among guests on Kenyan television (NTV) last night, discussing the recent spike in the number of Kenyan athletes registering Anti-Doping Rule Violations. pic.twitter.com/BcRSLaMguU
— Athletics Integrity Unit (@aiu_athletics) October 25, 2022

The Anti-doping Agency of Kenya’s Bildad Rogoncho told listeners during an exclusive interview on NTV’s increasingly popular Monday night sports show SportOn! in a podcast that “we and our partners are doing the very best (to fight the doping) and there’s a lot of work to be done, and, quite frankly, the job needs to be revved up in Kenya.”

“You have a great anti-doping agency and we work very well with them, but, frankly, they need more resources to fight this peril and this (increased funding) is the next level of this fight.”

Kenya currently is a Category-A listed nation according to the World Anti-doping Agency. As such, the testing has increased greatly. The organizations expect more tests to be done and have said that a lab needs to be set up within Kenya as opposed to sending samples to Qatar as is the current procedure.

Additionally, there is a statute of limitations of eight years on samples taken from the Olympic Games. Expect samples from the 2016 Rio Olympic Games to be tested at a higher rate and subsequently more doping positives to come out of that event.

The optics will not improve for Kenya anytime soon. However, doping in Kenya is blamed more on ignorance as well as so-called “cartels” that are set up in the country. Rogoncho pointed out that doping in Kenya is not like it is in Russia, where it is state-sponsored.