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A Kenyan athlete, and a serial marathon champion, Titus Ekiru has been banned from athletics for 10 years after he took performance-enhancing drugs and attempted to cover his tracks using fake medical records supplied by a senior doctor.
Ekiru, the sixth-fastest marathon runner of all time, twice tested positive for prohibited substances in urine samples in 2021 after winning both the Milan and Abu Dhabi Marathons.
The 31 -year -old Kenyan enlisted the help of the senior doctor who had supplied the banned products, in order to manipulate hospital records to explain his visits and justify an injection that had never been recorded.
the AIU said: “Based on the information received from the Hospital, the AIU considered that the Athlete’s explanations for the First Adverse Analytical Finding and the Second Adverse Analytical Finding were not genuine and that the medical documents that he had submitted to corroborate those explanations were forged/fraudulent documents.”
According to AIU, Ekiru tested positive for Triamcinolone Acetonide after winning in Milan but was not immediately charged after claiming the test result was due to legitimate medical treatment. He tested positive for Pethidine after winning in Abu Dhabi, and again claimed the outcome resulted from legitimate medical treatment.
The case was reopened last year and, working alongside the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (Adak), the AIU provisionally suspended Ekiru in June 2022.
In July, faced with substantial evidence against him, Ekiru decided that he no longer wanted to pursue the case. The AIU ended its disciplinary tribunal and issued its decision on Monday.
“The AIU considers that Aggravating Circumstances are present in relation to these violations, in particular, that the Athlete committed multiple Anti-Doping Rule Violations, engaged in deceptive or obstructive conduct to avoid the detection or adjudication of an Anti-Doping Rule Violation and engaged in Tampering during Results Management.”
The doctor who colluded with Ekiru, who has not been named, has been referred to criminal authorities in Kenya for further investigation.