Given Kenya’s unrivalled distance-running prowess – last year was the first time the country finished outside the top three of a World Championships medal table since 2007 – it is easy to forget what a largely recent phenomenon it is.
Only one Kenyan male – Douglas Wakiihuri – triumphed in the first 23 years of the London Marathon up to 2004, a year after Paul Tergat had become the first Kenyan to hold the men’s marathon world record. Neither man failed a drugs test throughout their careers, but their success sparked something back home.
“After the era of Paul Tergat something went wild,” says Kenyan sports journalist Evelyn Watta. “It was when the Kenyan media opened up.
“Before that we only had one or two different broadcasters, but now we had everyone following athletics so everyone became aware of these runners becoming famous and rich.
“They saw you can actually live off running so everyone started aspiring to be runners.
“There is a saying that every other day a Kenyan runner is born. It has meant that it is so hard to stay at the top. That’s where doping comes in.”
Understandably, for a country experiencing such rapid global success, Kenya’s anti-doping infrastructure was largely left behind.
The Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (Adak) was only created in 2016, after the country had narrowly avoided a ban from the Rio Olympics for a series of doping breaches and corruption allegations.
In 2018 a World-Anti Doping Agency (Wada) report titled ‘Doping In Kenya’, external found 138 Kenyan athletes had tested positive for prohibited substances between 2004 and 2018, but a lowly 14% of those were caught in an out-of-competition test.
“For a very long time, Kenyans were not tested at home,” says Watta.
Gunter Younger, the Wada report’s lead author and director of intelligence and investigations, said the financial attractions for doping are paramount.
“For most of the athletes we talked to, income was the biggest factor, not only for their family but sometimes their whole tribe,” he says. “Most of the athletes were in a sub-elite group so for them, winning 5,000 euros (£4,292) ensured they could survive for a year.
“There’s a big shame for them to admit they have cheated, but they take the risk to get some money. They have little education and don’t know what the drugs are or the repercussions for their body – for them it was more important to run.”
That Wada report found much of the doping in Kenya was “unsophisticated and uncoordinated”. But Clothier says the past five years have seen an increase in sophistication and “organised criminal activity”.
Indeed, when investigating the doping case of middle-distance runner Eglay Nalyanya this year, the AIU uncovered a “pattern of behaviour” in the forged documents that formed part of her fraudulent defence and those used by fellow Kenyan athlete Betty Lempus.
Attempting to cover up their drug taking, both women submitted letters from non-existent doctors for intramuscular injections that never took place.
This led the tribunal to conclude 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”. Nalyanya and Lempus were subsequently banned for eight and five years respectively.
It was only the latest example of Kenyan drug cheats lying to cover their tracks.
When questioned about the presence of EPO in a 2014 drug test, three-time Boston Marathon champion Rita Jeptoo produced falsified medical records which were the “culminating peak in an overall strategy” of cover-up and concealment, according to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas).
Rio Olympics marathon champion Sumgong produced similarly altered medical records following an EPO positive, and when Kipsang committed four whereabouts failures in 2018 and 2019, he provided false witness testimony and used a fake photograph of an overturned lorry to try to justify a missed test.
Their actions are indicative of a wider malaise in Kenyan society, says Watta: “The problem of doping exposes the Kenyan culture of corruption and impunity. We do bad things and somehow we buy our way out.
“I can drive a faulty car, but if the policeman stops me I will bribe my way out. It’s a national culture that is now being fought, but it’s deeply ingrained and it’s gone across sports as well.”
Clothier says the country’s corruption culture is “absolutely a concern”, but believes the increasingly organised criminal activity, fuelled by “exploiters” looking to benefit financially from athletes, is a greater worry.
“If a good runner emerges they have dollar signs flashing all around them,” he says. “Exploiters – whether it’s medical professionals, pharmacists, fixers, whoever – will offer them drugs.
“None of the athletes in Kenya need to go far and wide to search out drugs. People come to them offering drugs. It’s a financial opportunity. So there are networks of people who approach athletes.”