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Amby Burfoot wrote an opinion piece over at Marathon Handbook about how there have been no positive drug tests at the Olympic Games, World Athletics Championships and Marathon Majors. Yet, athletes who returned positive results from out-of-competition tests competed in those events.

Marathon Majors include Tokyo, New York, London, Boston, Chicago, and Berlin marathons. Sydney may become the seventh.

Burfoot wrote, “Not only is this approach deeply flawed and naive, it clearly doesn’t work. In-competition testing never catches any top-level athletes. Not at the Olympics, not at the World Championships, not at the World Marathon Majors.

This has probably been true for some time. But the events of the last six months have made just how broken our system is painfully obvious.”

He added that no top finisher has tested positive at their events. Rita Jeptoo and Wilson Kipsang are two examples of athletes who won Marathon Majors events and did not test positive in competition but did get handed suspensions.

Rita Jeptoo

Jeptoo is a Kenyan marathon runner. She won Boston twice as well as Chicago, Stockholm, and Milan. Jeptoo was the bronze medallist at the 2006 IAAF World Road Running Championships. She later tested positive for EPO and was suspended. Jeptoo finished seventh in both the Osaka and Helsinki World Athletics Championships. She finished third in the 2006 World Half Marathon Championships, which was a 20km road race, rather than the 21.1km half marathon. Her time was 1:03:47.

Jeptoo finished no worse than sixth place in nine marathon events, taking three wins.

It was the Athletics Kenya that caught her. It was not any of the aforementioned international events which are required to have doping control officers on site and testing top finishers.

Wilson Kipsang

Similarly, fellow Kenyan Wilson Kipsang had won a number of marathons. He finished top 10- in 13 marathons, winning six of them. All 13 were Marathon Majors. Before super shoes became out of this world in terms of the assistance they provide, back in 2016 Kipsang ran 2:03:13. It is difficult to imagine how close to 2:00:00 he would have run in today’s shoes.

Kipsang also finished third in the 2012 London Olympic Games marathon and fourth in the 2009 Birmingham World Half Marathon Championships. Kipsang won or placed in many more race events around Europe and North America. Never did he test positive at an event.

It was the Athletics Integrity Unit that banned Kipsang for Whereabouts Failures and Tampering or Attempted Tampering of samples, not an in-competition test of which there were dozens of opportunities to catch him.

Solution

What does seem to work is out-of-competition testing, as well as monitoring the Whereabouts program and the Athlete Biological Passport, which tracks blood values. When blood values change by an unnatural amount, the AIU will begin the process of seeking a provisional suspension, appealable to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The Whereabouts program can be gamed, but sloppy athletes have been caught and suspended.

Perhaps all World Athletics labelled events should have a very small tax applied, per finisher. Each finisher in a race, once they cross the line, incurs a liability insurance fee from approximately $1 to $3 USD depending on the size of the event. Timing companies also charge at a per-finisher rate. With there being many thousands of finishers in each of the Marathon Major events, as well as other large road races and championships, a small fee would add up and that money could be applied to anti-doping. Perhaps further expanding the AIU.

The tax could take the place of anti-doping in-competition, which is expensive and cumbersome in some cases. And clearly is not working.

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