Huge age cheating scandal discovered in Kenya for last year's World Jrs

Just ban them as a nation from the meet for a poor reliability score. Reconsider re-entry at a later date if improvement is demonstrated.

Not only are they cheating athletes from other countries, they are cheating athletes from within their own country.

This is news? Everyone knows Africa is a hotbed of all forms of cheating. Look at what soccer had to do to stop the rampant age-cheating by African ‘junior’ teams from all areas of the continent. Nice that they would use a pic of ‘super teen’ Wanyonyi.

Widespread systemic age cheating and widespread systemic doping, both of which have been going on for many years if not decades. Yet Seb Coe and World Athletics still won’t ban Kenya because they are too scared of being cancelled and being labeled racist. Other sport federations soccer, weightlifting, volleyball etc are suspending/banning national federations left and right for violating rules. Meanwhile WA just let the Kenyan circus continues. What a joke.

Wait.....you mean Kenyan high school children don't have mustaches, have wrinkles, and are balding?

And that's the girls team......

“Deep System of Cheating.”

If that doesn’t describe Kenya’s legacy I don’t know what does.

Now do ethiopia.

Interesting article. We’ve basically been told that to ask these questions is racist. Glad to hear someone is doing the right thing.

And it was the Director of Youth at AK. Good for him for not just covering it up like USADA does for our cheating cases. He also has gotten AIU involved which decreases the chances of corruption in the investigations.

If they were Russian competing under the white flag they would be banned

Kenya just needs to be banned. They are an utter disgrace in athletics. And they have immiserated the entire sport.

Age cheating at age group championships in athletics? A tale as old as time itself and it's never changing. Never.

I was at a World Juniors once (upon a time) where two dudes in the Ethiopian team told me and another guy on the team they were 24. We just laughed - what are you going to do.

But I think my favorite result still comes from the World U/18 champs in 2011 where Leonard Konsencha of Kenya won the "boys" 800m in 1.44.08 at the youthful age of 17. A few months later David Rudisha won his first world title in 1.43.91.

This was young Lenny - what a talent.

Open image

Anyway we were laughing/cry-fouling/amazed 30 years ago and we will still be in another 30.

Nobody cares, least of all BYU athletes.

Why, exactly, do we need world junior championships? It seems like at that age national championships and possibly subsequent scored international “friendlies” would be plenty. (I also don’t think age-restricted meets below U-23 should count for bonus world rankings points—if you want adult points then compete in adult meets.)

💤

There's probably a better than even chance that Wanyonyi will be one of the confirmed age cheats.

Hopefully they will also have proof that his coach Claudio Beradelli was involved and he'll get banned too.

I think you got that the wrong way around. WADA and the AIU have forced Kenya to tackle its age cheating problem.

Just last year at the World U20 Championships in Peru, and the Kenyan government was promising any gold medalist Ksh 500,000. That's nearly $4,000, which is around the annual average salary in Kenya.

The CS also announced that gold, silver and bronze medallists will receive cash awards of Ksh 500,000, Ksh 350,000 and Ksh 150,000 respectively.
"As your Cabinet Secretary I want to promise you that anyone, who will win a medal, I and my friends will each add Sh. 100,000.”

citizen.digital

Kenya U-20 athletics team flagged off for World Champs

Athletics Kenya boss Jackson Tuwei predicted a bumper harvest for Team Kenya

Open link

Does all the cheating from Kenya for all these years cast doubt on the genetic advantage theory?

Every time commenters here like myself state that age cheating is rife in Kenya because of the rampant corruption and percentage of out of hospital births, people come up and call out racism. It is pure ignorance to deny that age cheating is a huge problem in Kenya. There have been many previous stories that have supported this claim, whether in soccer or track. Sometimes experience tells you what is actually happening and you have to listen to it as a predictor or descriptor of what's going on. It does not mean that we know for a fact that all of Kenya's age-group competition results are fraudulent, or those of Ethiopia. But many, if not most, are, and the old guys who took the World Junior and World Youth spots were older and more experienced and stronger and faster than the younger kids trying out for those spots, as well as the younger athletes from other countries competing. Then they so often fizzle out during what should be their prime years, because they had to be at or near their lifetime bests to even make those teams in a country with so much competition.