Rhonex Kipruto 6-Year Ban Official

This means the athlete’s 10-kilometre road-running world record in
Valencia in 2020 will be annuled.

Good to see !

It's crazy that he's been doing it for so long. The first abnormalities were in 2018, and he was notified about the abnormalities, and kept doing it. And took him forever to actually get penalized. He's basically busted because multiple times his Hb was above the 99 percentile that he should be, and at the same time had relatively low new red blood cell production which apparently happens right after using an erythropoiesis-stimulating agent. So the high Hb was already highly abnormal, and the low reticulocytes was the nail in the coffin. And this happened 4 or 5 times out of the 33 samples. Some of the data points were from a combination of samples relatively close together, like days or a couple weeks.

Good riddance to him.

Must not be a top Kenyan I heard they don't dope and it doesn't even benefit them.

Please don’t let me hear any excuses about catching only the low hanging fruit….Kipsang, Kipruto, kiprop, Kiptum, kwemoi, etc, etc, etc. The list seems never ending.

Seriously, WTF?!?!?!

I am wondering if athletes will abandon fighting ABP cases now. To fight these cases, you need to hire a lawyer, then find scientific experts who understand the ABP model (there aren't many of them) to make your case for you. So you spend a lot of time and money fighting. Oh, and if you lose, your ban could go up to 6 years. That's what happened to Kipruto and Rodgers Kwemoi.

Alternately, you admit the violation immediately and take a 3-year suspension. Neither option is appealing. But AIU is really incentivizing athletes to just take admit the violations and take the reduced ban.

It's beyond time to ban Kenya.

Get on the ball Seb Coe.

Dodgy agency, dodgy athlete. No surprises here.

You know what the actual weirdest part about this is....
Kipruto's values between samples 4 and 13 (3 and 14 were invalidated) were not considered evidence of doping. This span is November 2018 until January 2020 right before the pandemic.
His accomplishments in this time:
-World Bronze (26:52)
-26:24 10K World Record
-27:01 Peachtree Road Race (then a course record)

Of course in 2018, World Athletics has established in this document that they believe sample 2 was a sign of clear doping. So they are not ascribing to the view that post-pandemic is when he began his doping.

So here's the hypothesis I have:
-In that span and before, Kipruto was engaged in disciplined micro-dosing (staying within the 99% framework). But after becoming an alcoholic in the pandemic and reducing training he lost his discipline and started doping more flagrantly/desperately. This could also mess with his values.
-The more charitable view is that he started doping after returning to training more seriously in 2020, and felt he had to begin a doping regimen to make up for his lack of proper training/reliance on alchohol. Kipruto didn't argue this for obvious reasons, but maybe if he'd admitted to the 3-year-ban he could've made this case and gotten more of a hearing. It might've given him a chance to keep his pre-pandemic accomplishments. As it stood, the calculus Jon laid out is a poor one. Fight harder and get more years of bans and no benefit-of-the-doubt.

The World Athletics site still has him listed as the World Record Holder but it’s now officially Aregawi who has the WR of 26:33.

What a waste. He could have started a fancy Swiss-French sports watch company called Rhonex.

India still has more positives. He’d have to ban them first.

hes trying to make the sport more popular (although not succeeding). You really think he’s going to ban the most populous country in the world

so the road 10k record goes back to Cheptegei?

WTF is right! Why do all their names start with the letter K?

Manangoi

Where is Renato with EPO doesn't work on Kenyans? lol

And his team is trying to come up with excuses of genetics, timing of tests, etc. (of course these are all possible but come on).

Umm... how about not doping in the first place?

P.S. Kipruto didn't get 6 years for fighting the ban, but for "aggravating circumstances".

The panel wrote:

the Athlete was involved in a deliberate and sophisticated doping regime over a long
period of time in order to artificially enhance his performance through doping.

And, blood doping works of course:

Several abnormalities found in the Athlete’s ABP were linked to important competitions including the Valencia Half Marathon in 2020 and Kenyan Olympic Trials in 2021.
• Blood doping outside of competitions can also be used to gain an advantage as it permits more intense training and this has an obvious effect on performance even after a significant period of time. This is corroborated by the fact that in recent years many athletes have been found positive for EPO far outside of competition