Marathon record holder gets 3-year doping ban

MONACO -- Women's marathon satellite record-holder Ruth Chepng'etich has been banned for 3 years aft admitting to a doping violation, way and field's Athletics Integrity Unit said Thursday.

The AIU said Chepng'etich admitted to anti-doping regularisation violations implicit the beingness and usage of the banned diuretic hydrochlorothiazide, oregon HCTZ, which tin beryllium utilized to disguise the usage of performance-enhancing drugs. She had been suspended successful July.

The AIU besides said Chepng'etich had accepted the charges and authorisation pursuing a affirmative trial for the banned diuretic from a March 14 sample.

The 31-year-old Kenyan runner broke the satellite grounds by astir 2 minutes astatine the Chicago Marathon past year, clocking 2 hours, 9 minutes, 56 seconds.

All of Chepng'etich's achievements and records earlier the March 14 illustration volition inactive stand.

The AIU said that portion diuretics are known to beryllium abused by athletes to disguise the beingness successful urine of different prohibited substances, HCTZ has besides been identified arsenic a imaginable contaminant successful pharmaceutical products.

Chepng'etich could not supply an mentation for the affirmative trial erstwhile she was archetypal interviewed successful April. At a aboriginal interrogation connected July 11, she was confronted with grounds acquired from her mobile telephone indicating "a tenable suspicion that her affirmative trial whitethorn person been intentional," the AIU said.

At the time, Chepng'etich maintained her presumption that she could not explicate the affirmative trial and that she had ne'er doped.

The AIU said that, connected July 31, Chepng'etich changed her erstwhile explanation.

"She wrote to the AIU to authorities that she present recalled that she had taken sick 2 days earlier the affirmative trial and she had taken her housemaid's medicine arsenic treatment, without taking immoderate steps to verify if it contained a prohibited substance," the AIU said.

"She stated that she had forgotten to disclose this incidental to the AIU investigators. She sent a photograph of the medicine blister battalion which intelligibly marked the medicine arsenic being 'hydrochlorothiazide.'"

The AIU said anti-doping rules dainty specified "recklessness described by Chepng'etich successful taking her housemaid's medicine arsenic being indirect intent, for which an accrued four-year authorisation applies."

Since Chepng'etich yet accepted the projected authorisation wrong 20 days, she was granted an automatic one-year simplification of the 4 years.

"The lawsuit regarding the affirmative trial for HCTZ has been resolved, but the AIU volition proceed to analyse the suspicious worldly recovered from Chepng'etich's telephone to find if immoderate different violations person occurred," AIU caput Brett Clothier said successful a statement.

AIU seat David Howman said the lawsuit underlines that "nobody is supra the rules" and lauded the industry's committedness to the integrity of the sport.

Chepng'etich besides won the marathon astatine the 2019 satellite championships successful Qatar, wherever the women's contention started astatine midnight to debar utmost daytime heat.