The Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK) has released its latest list of provisionally suspended athletes.
One name stands out. Mercy Adongo Oketch, Kenya’s national 400m record holder, is among those provisionally suspended after testing positive for two prohibited substances: trimetazidine and furosemide.
An athlete of Oketch’s standing would ordinarily warrant a separate press release. Instead, her name appeared among the agency’s latest list of suspensions.
Trimetazidine, classified as a hormone and metabolic modulator, is primarily prescribed to treat certain heart conditions. It improves the heart’s efficiency in using oxygen. Furosemide, meanwhile, is a diuretic that can dilute urine and potentially make the detection of other prohibited substances more difficult. It is classified as a masking agent.
The latter substance is particularly noteworthy given the recent case involving fellow Kenyan Ruth Chepngetich, the women’s marathon world-record holder. Chepngetich was found to have an extraordinarily high concentration of the prohibited masking agent in her sample. While furosemide is not a performance-enhancing substance in the conventional sense, its presence raises questions that are difficult to dismiss. A smoking gun, if not necessarily the gun itself.
Chepngetich’s sample contained 190 times the minimum reporting threshold for hydrochlorothiazide, a prohibited diuretic and masking agent.
Chepngetich ran 2:09:56 at the 2024 Chicago Marathon.
Shades of Ma’s Army from China.
Also appearing on the list is Noah Kibet, the 2022 World Athletics Indoor Championships 800m silver medallist. ADAK provisionally suspended the Kenyan for the presence of triamcinolone acetonide, a glucocorticoid used to reduce inflammation, including in tendons and joints.
Oketch, 24, is one of the more prominent figures in Kenya’s emerging sprint community. Her suspension is an unwelcome development for a country better known internationally for its distance-running dominance and increasingly ambitious about establishing itself in the sprints.
In May 2025, Oketch was part of the Kenyan women’s 4x400m relay team that set a national record of 3:25.80. She also holds the national 400m record of 50.25.
In March 2026, at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland, she established another national record, running 51.25 in the indoor 400m.
Like Chepngetich’s marathon world record, those performances and records will likely remain in the record
