At the World Athletics Championships, Is It DNA or Doping?
On March 23, 1996 I boarded a school bus with the Kenyan cross country team in Cape Town. It was a beautiful South African summer day and we were all feeling pretty good. The Kenyans had just swept the men's and women's senior and junior team titles at the World Cross Country Championships and I had managed to finish not last in the men's senior race.
As soon as the driver closed the door and pulled away from the curb to take us back to our accommodation, the Kenyans started to sing.
That year was not a great one for music, but fortunately the Kenyans were not singing the Bayside Boys’ remix of “Macarena”, or “One Sweet Day”, by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men.
No, instead of tepid Billboard Hot 100 hits, the Kenyans were singing war songs in celebration of their historic victory, the vanquishment of foes from France and Japan and Ireland and Ethiopia. Especially Ethiopia.
The first World Cross Country Championships was held in Belgium in 1973, and although England won the first two senior women’s titles, the Soviet Union (remember them?) won eight of the next 16. [On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the United States and England combined to win nine of those first 18 titles, with only Romania sneaking in a victory to break up the Big Three.]
In men’s racing, Belgium won the first two senior men’s titles, and New Zealand won the third, but in 1981 Ethiopia won the 9th edition, and Kenya and Ethiopia have won every senior men’s cross country title since then except in 2019, when Uganda took top honors.
Since the 1980s, cross country running has been utterly dominated by East Africans, to the point that until recently, runners and coaches from other parts of the world believed that East Africans were superior distance runners.
And yet, few elite African runners thought this.
In the 1990s, two Kenyan athletes, Moses Kiptanui and Paul Koech, delivered a seminar to a group of European athletics coaches, and Koech, who was the World Half Marathon Champion in 1998 and had run 26:36 (very, very fast) for 10,000 meters, was asked why British runners were not competitive with Kenyans (this was well before the success of Mo Farah, who in any event was born in East Africa).
Koech said he felt the main reason was attitude. He said that when he was competing, he prioritized running completely, and said he did not feel most Western runners were prepared to do the same. Koech and his peers lived this life: wake up, eat, train, shower, nap, eat, train, shower, eat, sleep. Repeat. And he said to the European coaches assembled before him, who had been wondering for years if East Africans had some sort of insuperable genetic advantage, “Is that a life you’d be prepared to live?”
A couple of years ago I wrote about Japanese football players who appeared to me to be living very comfortable lives as large fish in the relatively small pond of Japanese professional football.
Everyone at the top (of any profession) has talent. What differentiates the good from the great is effort.
In professional sport, however, there is another factor: drugs (which I have also written about).
In 2001, Nike produced and aired a television commercial featuring cyclist Lance Armstrong, who at that point was in the midst of winning seven consecutive Tour de France titles (all of which were stripped from him in 2012). Lance was so dominant, in a sport so infamous for performance-enhancing drug use, that inevitably whispers started to circulate about the legitimacy of his accomplishments.
In the commercial, we see Armstrong cycling in the rain, riding in a wind tunnel, and undergoing a battery of physiological tests. In a voiceover, he says, “Everybody wants to know what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike, bustin’ my ass six hours a day. What are you on?”
Well, actually, Lance, now we know you were on human growth hormone and erythropoietin (EPO).
And it turns out that not only is there no Santa Claus for cyclists, but also no cross country running gene that is unique to East Africans.
Earlier this year, women’s marathon world record holder Ruth Chepngetich was suspended by World Athletics after having tested positive for a banned substance.
In 2023, Tokyo Marathon winner Sarah Chepchirchir was banned for eight years – her second doping offense – after having tested positive for testosterone.
In 2017, Jemima Sumgong, the first Kenyan woman to win Olympic marathon (at the 2016 Rio Games) tested positive for EPO and was handed an eight-year suspension (effectively ending her career). Sumgong had previously tested positive for a banned substance in 2012. [Her Olympic title has not been taken away from her.]
In 2014, Rita Jeptoo, winner of the 2014 Boston and Chicago marathons, was banned after testing positive for EPO. She was stripped of her 2014 marathon wins, but she retains her Boston and Chicago marathon titles from 2013.
It’s not only Kenyan women who have been caught cheating. In 2020, former world marathon record holder and 2012 Olympic marathon bronze medalist Wilson Kipsang was banned for four years for “whereabouts failures” and for providing false information to anti-doping investigators. Kipsang won the London Marathon twice, and claimed titles in New York, Tokyo and Berlin.
Last year Rhonex Kipruto was banned for six years after the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), an independent agency founded in 2017 to combat the sport's doping problem, judged that he had engaged in “a deliberate and sophisticated doping regime.” His results since 2018, including a world’s best in the 10,000 meters on road, and a bronze medal in the 2019 World Athletics Championships, were disqualified. Also banned last year was Boston and Chicago Marathon winner Lawrence Cherono, who finished fourth in the Tokyo Olympic Games marathon in Sapporo in 2021.
Who else is in the Kenyan doping hall of shame? Former half marathon world record holder Abraham Kiptum, 2017 London Marathon champion Daniel Wanjiru, former Olympic 1500 meters champion Asbel Kiprop and former world 1500 meters champion Elijah Manangoi.
In 2016, just before the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the head of Kenya’s track and field squad was caught offering to tip off athletes about the timing of drug tests in exchange for payment. Since then, over 300 Kenyan runners have been banned after having been caught using performance-enhancing drugs. You may presume that the number of athletes who have been caught represents the tip of the iceberg.
This coming weekend, the World Athletics Championships begins in Tokyo. Among the favorites for medals are Faith Kipyegon (1500), Faith Cherotich (3000 steeplechase), Beatrice Chebet (5000 & 10000), Agnes Ngetich (5000 & 10000), Janeth Chepngetich (10000), Magdalyne Masai (marathon), Peres Jepchirchir (marathon), Phanuel Koech (1500), Timothy Cheruiyot (1500), Vincent Ngetich (marathon), Kennedy Kimutai (marathon).
The chances are excellent that a handful (or more than a handful) of Kenyans will go home with medals.
Thirty years ago, this success might have been attributed to the Kenyan Masai practice of drinking cow’s blood (high in protein!), like the brief dominance of China’s “Ma’s Army” in the early 1990s was attributed (by Coach Ma Junren) to the consumption of turtle’s blood and caterpillar fungus. [Ma’s athletes later admitted that the coach had “tricked and forced (them) into using large quantities of banned drugs for years.”]
The chances are also pretty good than in a few months, we’ll be reading about Kenyans who were busted for performance-enhancing drug use at these same championships.
Does this mean that Kenyan runners are “dirtier” than those from other countries?
Paradoxically, it is more likely a reflection of the Kenyan authorities’ efforts to clean up the sport in their country. In late 2022, the Kenyan government pledged to increase funding for anti-doping by $5 million a year for the next five years. The next year, Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics and himself the former world record holder for 800 meters, said, “There is a lot of doping happening [in Kenya], but the federation, anti-doping authorities and government are doing their utmost to try to fix the problem.”
At the same time, Brett Clothier, head of the AIU, said, “No-one thinks that there was less doping in Kenya five years ago. It's just now we're catching people and trying to fix things.”
Similarly, sophisticated observers don’t believe there is less doping in other countries.
While state-sponsored doping programs in Russia and China have grabbed headlines over the past five decades, athletes and teams in Europe and North America unquestionably have engaged in wholesale doping as well.
Doping scandals have been rife in cycling, of course, but also in track and field (remember the Balco scandal that brought down Marion Jones?). Nike über-coach (and three-time New York Marathon winner) Alberto Salazar was banned in 2019 for doping offenses, and even famously rules-abiding Japanese athletes are starting to get caught up in the anti-doping net.
But the scale of the problem in Kenya, of course, is enormous. Exponentially more Kenyans are being caught than – for example – Britons and Americans and Japanese.
Is it because more Kenyans are doping? Or because their pharmacists are not nearly as good?
I had no idea about this. For me, the myth of unbeatable Kenyan runners has been shattered after reading your article. It seemed like a widespread idea that doping was a problem exclusive to Western athletes (traditionally due to political reasons, where publicity and the country's prestige through its athletes are more important than honesty), but I see that's not the case. Surprising, to say the least.