Kenya’s Rhonex Kipruto, the world record holder for the 10km road race, has been banned from competing for six years because of anomalies discovered in his Athlete Biological Passport.
A disciplinary tribunal ruled that the abnormalities found in his blood samples pointed to doping.
As a result, the 24-year-old will lose his world record and the 10,000-metre bronze medal he won at the 2019 World Championships.
He set the 10-km record of 26 minutes, 24 seconds in Valencia in 2020 but finished a disappointing ninth in the 10,000 metres at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
Kipruto, who was suspended on May 11, 2023, for violating anti-doping regulations, will now be barred from athletic competitions until May 2029. Thus, he will miss out on the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics and the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Reason behind the ban
The Athlete Biological Passport is an electronic record that records an athlete’s biomarkers over their career. Officials are alerted that an athlete may be doping if these markers fluctuate significantly.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said: “The Tribunal rejected Kipruto’s defence, concluding the ’cause for the abnormalities in the ABP is more likely to be due to blood manipulation’ such as through the use of recombinant human erythropoietin (rEPO).”
“There was ‘no other plausible explanation’ for the abnormal values,” the AIU added.
Kipruto may file an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport over the ruling.
In an Instagram post, the athlete told his side of the story, stating: “I don’t cheat or dope! The truth is on my side. This is all I can say.”
View this post on Instagram
Source: BBC, Total Running Productions