Kenyan athletes want the world’s best doctors to monitor athletic’s doping

by Andy Robinson

Earlier this week, Kenyan athletes supported the proposal for six of the globe’s best doctors to regulate the countries top runners in a bid to stop the doping scandals that have plagued the nation’s most prolific sport.

Kenya is on the World Anti Doping Agency’s watch-list after 49 of the country’s athletes violated rules over the past five years, nearly preventing the country from competing in Olympics Rio 2016.

Athletics Kenya insists athletes will have to go through these doctors if they want to stand a chance of competing.

This comes after an investigation earlier this summer found Kenyan doctors giving 50 elite athletes banned substances.

Robbie Fitzgibbon, 20, British 1500 metre runner, was at the training camp just weeks before the bust at the Rift Valley and he explained how he felt when he found out what was going on.

“I didn’t seen anything first hand but the documentary afterwards said that there was apparently EPO syringes where I was staying in the bins and videos of athletes going to local hospitals and getting juiced up.

“That documentary was eye-opening but I don’t know if it was true or not. That was definitely the biggest scandal that I’ve seen and it was shocking because I was there, I was training at that very place.

“We were staying with an Ethiopian marathon runner who was apparently clean but a few months later we found out she was doping. We were living with these athletes that weren’t clean, which is never good.

“Obviously looking back on it now it’s serious business because the whole British athletics organisation have to look at themselves and say ‘can we send athletes to this training camp if there’s syringes everywhere?’ I think it’s pretty safe now but it’s out of our control.

“You’re always going to have your performance questioned if you run really, really well. I try to just think they’re clean but I’m a bit naïve to it. I just focus on me, I don’t really care about what others are doing.”

Team GB are still sending athletes to Kenyan training camps whilst debating whether to withdraw completely or persist with the country’s new regimes.