Kenya’s Wilson Kipsang, former marathon world-record holder and bronze medalist at the 2012 Olympics, has been provisionally suspended for whereabouts failures and tampering with samples, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said on its Twitter account on Friday.
Under anti-doping regulations, athletes have to inform testing authorities of their whereabouts for a one hour window of every day and three failures — not being present at the said time — within 12 months leads to an automatic ban.
No further details of the offenses were immediately available from the AIU.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Kipsang, 37, is a two-time winner of the London Marathon and has a personal best of 2 hours, 3 minutes, 13 seconds — making him the equal sixth-fastest man in history.
His time of 2:03.23 at the 2013 Berlin Marathon stood as the world record for a year.
He also won the 2014 New York Marathon and 2017 Tokyo Marathon.
“It is disappointing to hear another Kenyan, and a top one at that, becoming a victim of the doping scourge, but at the same time, we at Athletics Kenya take the development positively as we support the AIU in its effort to eradicate this scourge, which has taken a heavy toll on our athletes and image as a country,” Athletics Kenya executive committee member Barnaba Korir said.
“I am still in shock and terribly disappointed by the announcement,” Athletics Kenya representative Micah Chemos said. “Each day I wake up to some nasty news and reports involving our athletes, and this is in spite of the numerous seminars and education outreach we conduct around the country on this subject. This is a big name, an elite athlete, who should not just know better, but be a role model to the younger athletes.”
Kenya was among the nations placed on the World Anti-Doping Agency compliance watch list in 2016 and Kipsang is just the latest Kenyan athlete to be charged.
They include 2008 Olympic 1,500m champion Asbel Kiprop, former Boston and Chicago marathon winner Rita Jeptoo, and 2016 Olympic marathon champion and former London Marathon winner Jemimah Sumgong.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier