Kenya’s crisis is unique and driven by poverty, track and field’s anti-doping head tells the AP

In all likelihood, Kenya will haul in another good chunk of medals in distance races at this month’s track and field world championships, each one of them throwing more suspicion on a country with a reputational crisis because of doping.

Kenya has achieved unparalleled success in modern distance running, but a wave of positive drug tests over the last decade has made it the sport’s latest doping pariah and pushed it to the brink of a sweeping international ban that would put it alongside Russia.

Anti-doping authorities inside and outside the East African nation are grappling to get it under control.

“We’re trying to clean up our country,” said Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan middle-distance runner who broke three world records this year, has never failed a doping test, but was asked at a recent news conference — like many of her compatriots often are — to account for the more than 180 doping sanctions handed out to Kenyans since 2017.

The root of Kenya’s problem is unique in the global athletics ecosystem, according to the man whose job it is to fix it. It’s very different to the state-sponsored scheme that led to Russia being thrown out of international track.

In Kenya, there’s “a temptation to dope that’s like no other part of our sport, not even close,” said Brett Clothier, the head of the Athletics Integrity Unit, the independent body set up in 2017 to oversee international track and field’s anti-doping operations and which has been kept very busy by Kenya.

The first point Clothier made in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the world championships in Budapest, Hungary, starting this weekend is that you need to understand Kenya to understand the doping crisis that’s unraveled in Kenya.