Kenya: concerns about doping

Until recently doping offenders’ reactions to returning a positive test tended to be passive, and relatively few tried to mount a defence once an offence had been detected.

That seems to have changed now, with two recent tampering cases involving Kenyan athletes. The similarities between these two cases have led a disciplinary tribunal to believe that there has been a systematic attempt to help athletes cover up their doping offences. They go so far as to describe this as amounting to “criminal conduct” involving “frauds on the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU).”

The two cases are those of middle-distance runner Eglay Nafuna Nalyanya, who has been banned by the AIU for eight years and long-distance runner Betty Lempus, who received a five-year ban. The disciplinary tribunal noted that similar explanations and evidence were submitted by both athletes. This included falsified medical documents and the listing of fictitious doctors.

The tribunal concluded, “It seems that elite Kenyan athletes are being assisted by a person or persons, including someone with considerable medical knowledge, to commit what amounts to criminal conduct involving frauds on the AIU, and that this is not limited to a single case but evidences a pattern of behaviour. We regard this conduct as a matter of the greatest possible concern and urge the AIU to take all possible steps to establish how this is occurring.”

Reacting to this news, AIU Chair David Howman said: “It is clear doping in Kenya is increasingly well organised and these cases underline the reality that medically-experienced personnel are involved. This is a serious threat to our sport.”