When Kelvin Kiptum, of Kenya, broke the world marathon record in early October, he threatened a landmark barrier of human possibility: running 26.2 miles in less than two hours in a competitive race.
Kiptum’s time of 2 hours 35 seconds at the Chicago Marathon brought him tantalizingly close to the milestone, a feat achieved once — by a fellow Kenyan in a 2019 exhibition — but only by using pacing and hydration tactics that rendered the performance ineligible for a record.
Yet because Kiptum’s triumph came as Kenyan athletics is struggling with an alarming doping crisis, the 23-year-old record-holder — who has not been accused of doping — found himself discussing not only what he had done in Chicago, but what he had not. The record time, Kiptum told reporters when he returned to Kenya, was the product of running 150 miles or more per week at altitude, not the use of banned substances.
“My secret is training,” he said. “Not any other thing.”
As another handful of top athletes from Kenya arrives to run the New York City Marathon on Sunday, a race that runners from the East African country have dominated over the past decade, they can expect to face similar questions about a doping problem that has led to punishments for nearly 300 Kenyan athletes since 2015, a group that includes former Olympic gold medalists, world champions and world-record holders.
Last year alone, 27 elite Kenyan runners were suspended for doping offenses — a total that amounted to 40 percent of the athletes suspended at the highest echelons of global track and field and distance running in 2022, according to the Athletics Integrity Unit, an independent antidoping agency that monitors international-level competitors. The unit has been tasked by the sports’ top officials to assist in trying to clean up Kenyan running.
“Everyone in Kenya is saying this is a huge problem,” Brett Clothier, the chief executive of the unit, said in an interview. “We’ve just got to fix it.”
The 270 Kenyans who have been barred from competition between 2015 and late October 2023 include some of the country’s most decorated athletes: Jemima Sumgong, the 2016 women’s Olympic marathon champion; Wilson Kipsang, the 2014 New York City Marathon champion and a former marathon world-record holder; Rita Jeptoo, a three-time winner of the Boston Marathon; and Asbel Kiprop, a former world and Olympic champion in the men’s 1,500 meters.
A week after Kiptum’s record race, another Kenyan champion, Titus Ekiru, who has run the sixth-fastest marathon time ever, was barred from competition for 10 years for using prohibited substances and for falsifying medical documents with the aid of a Kenyan doctor.
Last November, the situation had grown so worrisome that a top Kenyan running official, Barnaba Korir, acknowledged that Kenya was in “the intensive care unit” when it came to doping. At the time, the country was facing the possibility of a global barring of its athletes, and the scandal was casting a shadow even on those who had not been accused of cheating.
The recent achievements of Kiptum and Tigst Assefa, of Ethiopia, who lowered the women’s marathon record by more than two minutes in Berlin in September, come during ceaseless scrutiny and suspicion about the effects of speed-enhancing shoe technology and potential doping on the validity of great performances, which are now reflexively called into question after decades of international scandals involving numerous countries.
The use of illicit blood-boosting drugs and other prohibited substances, and attempts at cover-ups, have grown increasingly sophisticated. According to the integrity unit, doping in Kenya is facilitated by a loose network that includes not just runners seeking an edge, but also real and fictitious doctors; fabricated documents; fake hospital visits and treatments; pharmacists; coaches; and agents — often as part of schemes that the organization said amount to “criminal conduct.”
The doping crisis is considered serious enough to threaten Kenya’s image as a cradle of distance running, and the mythical status of generations of Kenyan runners — living ascetic lives at high altitude in a culture of movement — who have brought beauty, romance and wonder to the limits of performance.
“When you start doing those negative things, the heart comes to say: ‘Have I been wrong in believing that these people are unique? Was I wrong in believing in the running?’” said Korir, the chairman of youth development for the Kenyan athletics federation, in an interview.
The hundreds of doping cases have also raised questions about the legitimacy of the performances by the men and women who have won more than 100 Olympic medals for Kenya, including 34 of the country’s 35 gold medals.
“Sometimes, it’s heartbreaking,” said Faith Kipyegon, a two-time Olympic champion from Kenya and the world-record holder at both the 1,500 meters and the mile. “I encourage them to run clean to protect our image, to protect our country.”
Along with its neighbor, Ethiopia, Kenya dominates elite distance running. In the current world marathon rankings, Kenyan and Ethiopian men hold 72 of the top 100 positions and women from the two nations hold 67 of the top 100 positions.
Yet twice in the past seven years, Kenya has risked being banned from international track and field competitions for extensive doping by its athletes. So far, the country has avoided an international ban because it is not considered to have participated in the kind of state-sponsored system widely documented in a more infamous doping pariah: Russia.
“There is no suspicion that the Kenyan government has in any way been complicit in this,” said Sebastian Coe, a former Olympic champion who is now the president of World Athletics, track and field’s global governing body.
Still, it was clear at an international track meet in Oregon in September that some high-profile figures believed that Kenya deserved more severe sanctions.
Asked if Kenya should face a ban from international competition, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, of Norway, the 2021 Olympic champion at 1,500 meters and a two-time world champion at 5,000 meters, said, “I believe there needs to be a bigger risk and a bigger punishment” than simply barring individual athletes.
“Right now, it’s definitely not working,” Ingebrigtsen said of the fight against doping in running, adding, “They’re catching a lot of people, but they’re not preventing anything.”
Since at least 2015, some Kenyan runners have complained publicly about corruption and indifference toward doping by the athletics federation in their country, which did not create a domestic antidoping agency until 2016. Embarrassed and under intense pressure, the Kenyan government has committed an additional $5 million a year over the next five years to curb doping.
Kenya’s antidoping agency has expanded its testing pool of second-tier athletes to 300 from 38 this year, and it has conducted 2,000 drug screens in 2023 compared with 700 in 2022. A legal framework is also being developed with the intent of criminalizing behavior by those who facilitate doping, Korir said.
Several factors make Kenya’s doping crisis unlike others, according to Clothier, of the integrity unit. These include the place of running as an escape from poverty in Kenya, one of the world’s poorest countries; the unmatched depth of the country’s professional class of runners; and the historical lack of out-of-competition drug-testing for elite athletes who compete below the level of the Olympics, the world championships and the major marathons in Boston, New York, Chicago, Berlin, London and Tokyo.
Thousands of Kenyans earn their livings from running, where prize money and appearance fees for a road race like a 10k, half-marathon or a top marathon can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. This kind of money can be “life changing, community changing,” in Kenya, Clothier said, providing the possibility to buy a farm or a hotel, or to open a school in a country where the annual gross domestic product per capita is about $2,100, according to the World Bank.
“This is our profession,” said Kipyegon, the Olympic women’s champion. “We have nowhere else to go, no offices to go to” to make a decent living.
The pressure to climb Kenya’s pyramid of success, along with insufficient drug screening of professional athletes who are not of Olympic caliber, has created a “wild west” environment for doping, Clothier said, in which athletes and their enablers are “taking much bigger risks than they do elsewhere.”
Kenya’s increased financial commitment to antidoping is encouraging, Clothier said, although more athletes will now surely be caught as the country’s drug testers cast a wider net. It will be a “long, long road” to fix the problem, he said. But Kenyan running has no choice but to follow it wherever it leads.
“It’s kind of now or never,” he said.