Barely four days after Usian Bolt produced a stunning performance to win the 100 metres and reinforce his status as the best-ever sprinter in history, the IAAF World Championships in Beijing have been hit by a major doping scandal with two Kenyans failing dope tests.
The revelation yesterday that Koki Manunga and Joyce Zakary’s samples returned positive after they had undergone ‘targeted tests’ at their hotel before the championships began came as a blow to track and field’s world governing body which had gone to great lengths to assert that athletics remained a clean sport despite reports in the media that it had failed to stem the menace of performance-enhancing drugs.
Zakary clocked a national record of 50.71 seconds in Monday’s first round of the women’s 400m, but did not start the semi-final on Tuesday for which she had qualified. African silver medallist Manunga failed to make it out of her first round of the 400m hurdles on Sunday.
The storm over rampant doping by athletes had cast a shadow over the World Championships, with new IAAF President Sebastian Coe vowing to focus most of his efforts on eradicating the scourge immediately after being elected to the post following a fierce battle with fellow athletics legend Sergey Bubka.
In fact, the build-up to the Beijing event was dominated, not by talk of the possibility of world records being broken, but by concerns over doping in which Kenyans and Russians were the prime suspects. It certainly caused panic within the IAAF, with outgoing President Lamine Diack lashing out at the media saying, “We are not cycling.”
Cycling, of course, is a sport where doping had been rife with some of the best-known riders, including American Lance Armstrong, going from hero to pariah after being outed as drug cheats.
Yesterday’s announcement tempered the joy of the Kenyan squad who won two gold medals at the iconic Bird’s Nest Stadium where Julius Yego produced the longest throw in 14 years to win the men’s javelin, while Hyvin Kiyeng Jepkemoi pipped hot Tunisian favourite Habiba Ghribi for the women’s 3000m steeplechase title.
“It’s a shame for them,” said Kenyan teammate Yego, whose monster third-round effort of 92.72 metres was the longest since Czech world record holder Jan Zelezny threw 92.80 in 2001.
“In sport you win clean so it’s a shame for them. I can’t make any more comment on that.”
Athletics Kenya, the nation’s governing body, later said it had “already met with the IAAF and the athletes involved, and has begun investigating the situation which led to these results and appropriate follow-up action will be taken in Kenya”.
Kenya was rocked this year when marathon star Rita Jeptoo was banned for two years after being caught doping with the banned blood-boosting hormone EPO.
The IAAF, under Coe, would do well to come up with an honest probe of its own rather than dismiss investigative reports as mere sensationalism. It shouldn’t forget that had it not been for the media, cheats like Armstrong probably would have gotten away with their legacy and riches secure.
