Atop Medal Table at Worlds, Kenya Is Also Under a Cloud

I doubt there is a sophisticated systemic attempt to win rather I suspect that there are many athletes who get manipulated into doping specifically for financial gain. There have been stories of foreign agents running stables of middling (by Kenyan standards) athletes around the world, and pocketing a fair share of their winnings...wouldn't surprise me if the same agents have dopers on their books. The role of these agents should be queried. Sadly, when you have few options in life and enough raw talent to go out and win a few races, you become a disposable means to an end for unscrupulous agents, coaches etc. Add to this the Kenya athletics federation which is run in a cavalier manner and you have fertile ground for doping to take root.
Doping allegations taint the achievements of all athletes running for Kenya. I hope that the clean runners can champion a transparent drug testing scheme to ensure dopers get caught and banned.

Americans have explanation for everything but are always wrong. Its a culture where in Kenyan schools we trained to run long distances, I did it and most guys too. In Jamaica schools train their students in sprint games, it a culture so stop the 'genius' talk. Even in the 1980s when US had these drug boosters and Kenyans did not we used to beat you so it changes nothing

Perhaps Moses Kiptanui could try coaching somewhere else. It would give him a chance to coach other athlete without such naturally endowed (or unnaturally endowed) talent which would expand his experience.

Yeah yeah hater. Trying to steal the thunder from Kenyan Athletes hard work, with negative headers? Give credit where due please. Kenyans have been winning their traditional events way before most of those foreign Athletics agents stepped foot in Kenya, with some shady gents recommending drugs or giving their athletes banned drugs without telling them the truth.

Most of these Kenyan athletes were just simple Kenyans from mostly farming communities, and started running after seeing athletics change the lives of their fellow citizens. ( Most of these folks are not dirt poor like you would like to think about Africa, or Kenya in this case) Most have tens of acres of land, and they do farming.

Kenya is brimming with talent and you can bet right now in Kenya there's a kid training hard o be on that medal table next year. Read lts runs post about Kenyan athletes. There's this trolling German writer that keeps propping his EPO articles whenever Kenyans have big races coming so as to profit from the free publicity. His articles haven't stopped Kenyans from winning.

I remember watching this years Boston Marathon women's race. There was this hating woman presenter. She was trash talking Kenyans all through the race, and must have been left with a rotten egg in her face when yet another Kenyan woman won the race.

I feel the same for you reading this article. You are just jealous of Kenyan athletes. Give credit where due please.

WHY CANT YOU GUYS USE THE DRUGS N WIN IF WINNING COMES BY DOPING,, THOSE DRUGS FROM YOURS COUNTRIES DOES IT MEANS THE DRUG WE MADE FOR KENYAN BECAUSE THEY SEEMS TO FAVOUR KENYANS ONLY....

Thank you NYT for filing this story under the correct heading of "international sports". Several smaller doping related stories in the track and field world have been filled under "cycling", without explanation, an exasperating(if unintended) slight to doping-weary cycling fans.

While many people seemed to be so up-in-arms about PEDs and doping, especially as it relates to professional cycling and track and field, the fact is all major professional sports are full of "enhanced" athletes. The American love-fest with the NFL is all you need to know about about doping: the NFL as it exists today would not be possible without a big portion of the athletes being doped to get so large, strong, and quick, and that's all the viewing public wants to see in an NFL player.

The NFL's so-called anti-doping program is laughably lax; it has to be, otherwise the sport and how it's played would look very different. When the NFL employs a real anti-doping program, one that is administered by an external, independent agency, that conducts truly random tests of all starting players of all teams, and implements biological passports like cycling and track and field have, then I will start to care about doping.

Americans and many fans are hypocrites, and unable to square their desire for the biggest, strongest, and fastest and their odd morality concerns with professional sports.

Cheating is a way of life across all spectrum's. Sports is just as corrupt as government. Who cares? There are bigger fish to fry.

Enjoy sports for your own pleasure and your family's pleasure and your health. The Olympics, FIFA, the NFL, MLB... its all a corporate profit machine. Don't participate in that... let them dope, use steroids and bang their heads together... Don't let you kids do it.

It is time to just ignore the pros (and they are all pros at this level.)

Doping is an unethical, unnatural, unfair advantage.

But any news story about Track & Field in the United States is better than none at all.

My guess from looking at distance running times over the years is that Europeans had EPO in the early 1990s, but the Kenyans and Ethiopians largely did not. Then EPO seems to have gotten to the East Africans in the mid-to later 1990s.

The key to catching drug cheats is unannounced out-of-season testing. But when a competitor trains up a remote mountain and can't be located, then there's no way to catch them. Of course, developing countries may have financial difficulties putting such testing together but still, any seasoned runner who stil disappears up a mountain half a year operates under a cloud of suspicion (and that's a very generous description).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it seems that some of these drugs could be formulated to include a marker of some sort that would be an fairly inarguable 'using EPO (or whatever)'.

More so than in most other sports, distance runners race with their competition right beside them. If you have an advantage that allows you to outkick the competition after two hours running side by side, that final sprint is one of the sleaziest finishes in sports.

Seem to me the opaque Jamaican anti-doping program, if one even exists, is in dire need of similar scrutiny. Osain Bolt's records have always seemed too good to be true, and in this day and age, that problem means they aren't.