2 runners ‘dropped’ from Kenya Olympic team over doping tests
FINA suspends 2 Russian swimmers
NAIROBI, Kenya, July 15, (AP): Kenya was forced to drop two runners from its Olympic team just over a week before the Tokyo Games because they haven’t taken the required number of out-of-competition doping tests, an official said on Thursday.
That has given 1,500-meter world champion Timothy Cheruiyot a lastminute place on the squad.
Kenya also hasn’t decided if steeplechase world and Olympic champion Conseslus Kipruto will be on the team and able defend his title in Tokyo.
Kipruto dropped out of the race at the national trials last month after two laps and is out of shape, while he is also facing a criminal case in Kenya having been charged last year with statutory rape. He is released on bail.
Kenyan team officials will meet to make a late decision on Kipruto’s inclusion.
Cheruiyot is now a strong contender for gold in the 1,500 in Tokyo after setting the world-leading time this year and winning backto-back Diamond League titles in Stockholm and Monaco this month. He wasn’t initially on the Kenya team after finishing fourth at the trials.
Cheruiyot will replace 18-yearold Kamar Etiang, who surprised to finish second at the trials in a personal-best time.
But Etiang hasn’t met doping regulations that require Kenyan athletes to take at least three outof-competition tests within 10 months of a major championship. The tests have to be at least three weeks apart. Those rules are enforced on Kenya because the country is considered high risk by the World Anti-Doping Agency after a large number of doping cases in recent years.
Another runner, United Statesbased 400-meter hurdler Moitalel Mpoke Naadokila, was also taken off the team because he hasn’t met the doping test requirements. q q q
Two Russian swimmers set to compete at the Tokyo Olympics were provisionally suspended for anti-doping violations by world governing body FINA.
Alexandr Kudashev and Veronika Popova Andrusenko were suspended based on evidence supplied by the World AntiDoping Agency, according to FINA. It said the evidence came from
WADA’s examination of materials recovered from the former Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, including the lab’s management information system.
Kudashev and Andrusenko were set to compete for the non-federation Russians. The Russian federation is barred from competing as a country in Tokyo because of ongoing doping issues found by WADA.
Andrusenko competed for Russia in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics in several events. The 30-year-old swimmer also competed in the International Swimming League in 2019.
Kudashev would have been competing in his first Olympics. The 25-year-old swimmer was a gold medalist at the 2019 World University Games.