Anti-doping body grapples with absentee athletes

What you need to know:

  • Anti-doping Agency of Kenya (Adak) and Athletics Kenya have clarified that they are working together to ensure that doping tests are well planned and all athletes going to London World Championships are tested.

Anti-doping Agency of Kenya (Adak) and Athletics Kenya have clarified that they are working together to ensure that doping tests are well planned and all athletes going to London World Championships are tested.

Adak Chief Executive Officer Japhter Rugut said that as much as they are doing all they can to ensure the International Association Athletics Federations (IAAF) requirements are met, the athletes should honour the call to national duty and report to camp as they have been selected to Team Kenya.

“The athletes also need to ensure that they report to camp and are available for the tests,” said Rugut.

He reiterated that the responsibility of athletes to update their whereabouts did not lie with Adak and the athlete would bear the consequences of breaching this protocol.

Rugut was reacting to head coach Julius Kirwa’s appeal to Adak to speed up the mandatory three Out-Of-Competition (OOCT) tests for each of Team Kenya athlete for the World Championships.

Kirwa feared that most of the athletes in his team could be locked out owing to the requirements. Rugut explained that they have had several challenges in having the athletes tested with many of the athletes on the list to the World Championships travelling out of the country to participate in the various Diamond Leagues across the world.

Rugut said that after the trials many of those athletes ,who were in the list of probables did not make the final Team Kenya and instead new names made it to the team.

“This meant that testing for these athletes had to start afresh before they reported to residential camp on July 9. Adak has on many occasions consulted on this with AK top management and senior officials from the Ministry of Sports,” said Rugut.

“There are a number of athletes who have qualified for the London Games in the past two weeks and we have done our best to test them every time their names are provided.”