KIPROP CLAIMS CORRUPTION AFTER DRUG-TEST FAIL

ASBEL KIPROP, the former Olympic and three-times world 1,500m champion, has made the extraordinary claim he was the victim of corrupt anti-doping officials after being informed by the authorities he had failed a drugs test. The Kenyan, 28, has tested positive for a banned substance — believed to be the blood-boosting drug EPO — and will receive a lengthy ban if the IAAF’s Athletics Integrity Unit concludes he has committed an anti-doping rule violation. Kiprop said he was ‘told for the first time that my sample turned positive on February 3, 2018’. But he denied any wrongdoing and made a series of astonishing claims in a 1,400 word statement issued via an African journalist on social media. Kiprop said his sample had been tampered with and that he was tipped off in advance by Kenyan doping control officers that they would be visiting him for an out-ofcompetition test and said they then extorted him. He also said he was offered an IAAF ambassadorial role if he admitted he had cheated, despite that allegation making little sense. In what would be a serious breach of regulations, Kiprop (left) — a police officer in Kenya — said that on ‘26 November 2017’ he was ‘notified by way of telephone call from an anti-doping agent, Mr Simon Karugu ‘Mburu’ to be available for a doping test on 27 November 2017’ at his ‘disclosed whereabouts’ in Iten, Kenya. The next morning, Kiprop claims, Karugu and Paul Scott visited his house and he gave a sample. Kiprop then alleges the doping control officers asked him if he ‘could give them some money’, and says he paid them using an app on his mobile phone. He claims he was ‘extremely shocked’ when told his sample was ‘positive’. Yesterday on social media, the journalist through whom Kiprop issued his statement claimed the AIU had confirmed there had been a breach of regulations by the doping control officers. But a source close to Kiprop also claimed the AIU had in fact rejected his claims.