Kenyan runner and world record holder in men’s 10-kilometre road racing, Rhonex Kipruto, has been stripped of the world record in the half marathon and banned for six years in a doping case.
This decision follows the recent emergence of extraneous haematological values in the biological passport of Kipruto, showing a “conscious and complex system of doping.“
Kipruto’s ban has been effective since September 2018, so he is stripped of all his results starting from the year in question, including his 2019 world championship bronze in the 10,000-metre race in athletics as well as his 2020 10K road race record.
This record will now be handed over to Ethiopian runner Berihu Aregawi, who ran 26 minutes and 33 seconds on the 10K last year, nine seconds more than Kipruto’s record. He is hereby banned until May 10, 2029, after the AIU’s disciplinary tribunal ruled that “irregularities in his Athlete Biological Passport (ABP) resulted from doping.”
The allegations against Kipruto were established by the biological passports, which monitor the athlete’s blood samples with a view to producing a history of changes or irregularities consistent with blood doping. The case of Kipruto indeed does not bear any banned substances in his system, but the defence could not justify a plausible reason to account for the abnormalities that were evident in his concentration samples.
The management company that represents Kipruto has indicated that he is likely to institute an appeal through the Court of Appeals for Sport.
