Kenyan Athlete, Rhonex Kipruto has been banned for six years for doping.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) announced on Wednesday that the Kenyan athlete will lose his 10-kilometer road race world record and his world championship bronze medal.
The 24-year-old, who won bronze in the 10,000 meters at the 2019 World Championships, had been provisionally suspended for an anti-doping violation since May 2023. His ban will last until May 2029.
Kipruto set the 10km road race world record in Valencia in 2020 and won the 10,000 meters at the 2019 Stockholm Diamond League, achievements that will now be annulled. A Disciplinary Tribunal found irregularities in Kipruto’s Athlete Biological Passport (ABP), indicating possible blood manipulation.
“The Tribunal rejected Kipruto’s defense, concluding the cause for the abnormalities in the ABP is more likely to be due to blood manipulation,’ such as through the use of recombinant human erythropoietin (rEPO),” the AIU stated, adding that no other plausible explanation was found for the abnormal values.
Kipruto denied the Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) charge, but the panel was “comfortably satisfied” that he was involved in a “deliberate and sophisticated doping regime over a long period of time.” He still has the option to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
