Emily Chebet (centre) with Joyce Chepkirui (right) and Florence Kiplagat (left) during the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland on July 29, 2014. Chebet was on November 27, 2015 banned for four years for doping. PHOTO | BEN STANSALL | AFP
By AYUMBA AYODI
Two-time World Cross Country champion Emily Chebet is among seven Kenyan athletes banned for doping offences.
Chebet, who won the 2010 and 2013 World Cross Country senior women’s race titles and failed in her bid for a hat-trick at the 2015 World Cross Country Championships in Guiyang, China, has been banned for four years.
Also to receive four years suspension each are the 2015 Beijing World Championships sprinters Joyce Sakari and Francisca Koki.
Sakari and Koki returned adverse findings that saw Sakari being barred from taking part in the 400m semi-finals, having set a national record of 50.71 seconds in the qualifiers. Koki had failed to go past the first round in the 400m hurdles.
Sakari and Koki’s ejection from Beijing tainted Kenya’s historic performance where they topped the medal standings for the first time at the World Championships.
Agnes Jepkosgei Cheserek (Norandrosterone), will serve four years while Bernard Mwendia (Norandrosterone), Judy Jesire (Norandrolone), and Lilian Moraa (Erythropoietin-Epo) will serve bans of two years each.
Chebet becomes the first Kenyan champion at a major world championship to be sanctioned for using prohibited substances.
“Emily Chebet has been sanctioned for four (4) years effective 17th July 2015 to 16th July 2019 after being found guilty of using the prohibited substance Furosemide,” said a statement from Athletics Kenya while reprimanding the 29-year-old Administration Police officer.
The bans brings to 43 a total number of Kenyan athletes who have been sanctioned for doping in the last three years as the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) cautioned Kenya for its poor systems in nabbing offenders when they called for the suspension of Russia over systematic doping.
Chebet now joins the list of shameful runners who have doped, coming two months after a young and promising 800m runner, Agatha Jeruto, was handed a four-year ban for the use of prohibited substance Norandrosterone.
Disgraced long distance runner Rita Jeptoo, who had won Chicago and Boston Marathon back-to-back in 2012 and 2013, was banned for two years in January this year after she tested positive for prohibited substance Erythropoietin (EPO).
Chebet failed in her bid to win her third World Cross title finishing sixth where Kenya’s teenage sensation Agnes Jebet Tirop, 19, won, but her performance contributed Kenya’s team silver.
That could see Kenya being stripped off the silver medal by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
Chebet won her maiden cross title in Bydgoszcz, Poland in 2010 but an injury saw her fail to defend the title 2011 in Punta Umbria, Spain where the reigning World 10,000m champion, Vivian Cheruiyot prevailed.
Source: Daily Nation
