World Athletics will not ban Kenya from competition

Kenya will not face a ban from world competition, World Athletics (WA) president Seb Coe announced Wednesday. The East African country has long been a distance running powerhouse, and ranked third in the athletics medal haul at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Accusations of widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs have been ongoing for years, with 2021 Boston Marathon winner Diana Kipyokei and compatriot Betty Wilson Lempus handed provisional suspensions in October.

“Over the course of one year 40 per cent of all the positives recorded in global athletics are in Kenya,” Coe told press after the WA council meeting in Rome. “World Athletics has been concerned,” he added. “Kenya has been on the watch list for a few years already.”

Another boost for Kenyan athletes as @wada_ama clears Kenya from potential athletics doping ban.
 
It's time to raise Kenya's flag high by showing the world we are capable of breaking records while staying true to ourselves.
 
 #Save your health & your career,avoid #doping. pic.twitter.com/foHiNANpFG

— National Youth Council Kenya (@NYC_YouthVoice) December 1, 2022

The Kenyan government’s commitment to providing an additional $5 million a year for the next five years to strengthen Kenya’s anti-doping programs, including more testing, investigations and improvements to anti-doping education, was agreed to be an appropriate response to the current situation.  “We will not allow unethical individuals to ruin Kenya’s reputation through doping,” Kenya’s minister for sports, Ababu Namwamba, shared on social media on Friday. “We must defeat doping and its perpetrators.”

Kenya is a Category A federation under the WA anti-doping rules, and the onus remains on Kenyan authorities to work closely with the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) to ensure these funds are used effectively.

Coe said that he appreciated the measures being taken to address the doping situation in Kenya. “I particularly welcome the additional resources made available by the Government of Kenya in this fight,” said Coe. “The only way that we can reduce the scale of this problem is a joint commitment across all the sports stakeholders in Kenya and of course WA and the AIU.”