Samuel Kalalei, Kenyan marathon runner who won the Athens marathon last November, has been banned for four years after he tested positive for blood-booster EPO, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) has said.
His urine sample was collected after the Rotterdam Marathon in April and it returned positive for EPO. Kalalei was provisionally suspended by AIU, the independent agency of world athletics ruling body IAAF, on June 4.
The AIU said that all of Kalalei’s results, since that event in the Netherlands, would be disqualified.
The marathon runner had set a personal best time of two hours 10 minutes and 44 seconds to finish in seventh place.
Kenya’s reputation as a dominant force in global middle and long-distance running has been tarnished in recent years by reports doping by most of their elite athletes.
Earlier in the beginning of the year, the AIU handed four-year doping bans to Kenyan long distance runners Eliud Magut and Suleiman Kipses Simotwo. Both of whom had tested positive for Norandrosterone, a metabolite of the prohibited Nandrolone.
A World Anti-Doping Agency report said that between 2004 and August 1, 2018, as many as 138 athletes from Kenya had tested positive for prohibited substances, 113 of them during competitions.
-Reuters
