Doping widespread in Kenya? Fresh allegations by German journalist

Just to echo Kalenjin's words, I am also following this thread and all the responses with glee. It is truly laughable and yes, I HAVE BEEN LAUGHING!Sometimes, I don't know whether to laugh or pity some of the guys here.Gram, just to talk about your follow up on Runthedistance's murder analogy, youmsaidmthat there are dead bodies here hence a murder has occured.With regard to doping, where are the murdered people-dead bodies or if you like. WHERE AR THE DOPED BODIES?Let us be reasonable.

Nativeson - do you think Lance Armstrong was clean? What about the chinese women who were MUCH better athletes than the kenyan s?

im bored wrote:

How can anybody else in the world could possibly train harder than the Japanese? Yet now the Japanese are no where close to the Kenyans in the race of marathon.

Could it be they're training too hard, harder than than their genetic physiology can handle, but which the Kenyan's genetic physiology can?

Let me put in my fifteen shillings worth of opinion.

The guys who've taken this issue and run with it are essentially the guys who believe that many top Kenyans dope.

This doctor has given most of them cover and they can now say it by hiding behind the doctor.

My friends, wacha niwaambie (let me tell you), you won't get far with this witch hunt for that is what it is.

It is such a lot of fuss about nothing.

We have heard all sorts of ridiculous and asinine allegations about Kenyans and doping and the assertion that even the IAAFis neck deep in it (covering up for these poor souls as if Kenya is the only poor country in Africa-poorer than Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Mozambique and every other country out there).

What you guys have here is hope.

Just the hope that this issue will pan out and expose what some people have believed all along.

You are hanging your hats on this German's expose' or whatever you want to call it.

You have taken it as the irrefutable truth and run away with it.....

.......but in essence, what you have here is a firm grip on an empty sack.

It won't amount to much.

It will not amount to a hill of beans. PITY, PITY!

We can keep shouting at each other -that there is now evidence of potential doping or however you want to phrase it- and I can keep saying the contrary.

THIS FACT IS IRREFUTABLE HOWEVER;

NOT A SINGLE KENYAN HAS HAD HIS MEDAL REVOKED AS A RESULT OF DOPING. I can also add Ethiopia here.

I am also not aware of any Kenyan who've had his victory either in the golden league, diamond league, cross country or even the marathon overturned as a result of doping.

I will leave you with three Africans' names:

Adil Khaouch- golden league

Brahim Boulami- golden league

Rashid Ramzi-Bahrain, Olympics

These are top guys including a former world record holder.

We don't have such high caliber Kenyan athletes who've been busted yet, we have more than twenty times the number of Moroccan elite athltes.

There has to be an explanation to this!

It is not just sheer luck, lack of adequate testing or a Kenya/IAAF conspiracy to save the "poor" Kenyans!

There has to be an explanation as to why our elite athletes are never busted! Oh yes!

Good luck NAYSAYERS.

matt hooley wrote:

I'm an american distance runner! I don't dope! Americans don't dope - none of us!

Hey runthedistance - do you now understand how stupid that sounds? You have no idea who dopes and who doesn't. Try to wrap your brain around some basic logic before you spout off too much.

Also - this is not a court of law.

Wait a minute!

Your elite athletes have been busted and with this, they have brought down a whole team. They have brought down others.

Infact, they denied Nigerians an opportunity to have their national anthem played in the Olympics stadium!

Also, Kelli white. Marion Jones. Tim Montgomery. These are all olympics gold medallists.

Try another line of attack, not this one.

Our gold medallists are as clean as clean can get!

Deal with it.

Hey NativeSon - what about John Ngugi? OLY champ, world XC champ - banned for doping.

He refused to even be tested. What do you make of that? You can't have it both ways.

So the crux of your argument is that none of the Kenyan top dogs have been busted yet, therefore the team/country as a whole is clean?

What will you say when if one of the top guns get caught?

Native Son - I agree, and have trained with some of the very best Kenyans (prior to them having enough money for training shoes) and KNOW they were clean when I was with them. I still expect they are clean to this day. The problem with this thread is that the other Kenyans on here are denying that any Kenyans ever dope. That's just silly. If you know Kenyan athletes then you would also know that even THEY suspect other athletes (from Kenya) are doping. They normally point the finger at athletes with guys like Hussein Makke or Dr. Rosa. That doesn't mean it is TRUE that those managers ARE doping their athletes, but it shows that many unbiased Kenyans feel the same way as many posters on here. The flip side of this is that many American/European athletes use "drugs" as an excuse for Kenyan dominance. That excuse is worthless - Kenyans are no dirtier than anyone else (they may be cleaner on the whole) - and they would dominate regardless.

matt hooley wrote:

Nativeson - do you think Lance Armstrong was clean? What about the chinese women who were MUCH better athletes than the kenyan s?

I've just seen your question.

As for Armstrong, I do not know if he was doped or not. I did however see one of his colleague's (i forget his name) allegations on sixty minutes.

I cannot call it one way or another.

The only guy I know that was busted was a Spaniard, Cantador.

That woukd be similar to a Boston Marathon runner being busted or even an Olympics gold medallist. We've had none.

You can't even compar the two because Americans dont dominate cycling the way we dominate running.

As for the Chinese, they were doing very well in the eighties and then, it stopped! There has never been aan explanation for this!

The same thing with regard to the East Germans of former East Germany.

The Germans don't dominate anymore.

It is very suspect how all these recordsmcame to be. It is possibe that there was doping because they don't seem to replicate it. Just my thoughts!

pontoon wrote:

So the crux of your argument is that none of the Kenyan top dogs have been busted yet, therefore the team/country as a whole is clean?

What will you say when if one of the top guns get caught?

Ngugi was NEVER BANNED for dopping.

He was banned for missing out of competition.

People like to accuse Ngugi of having doped and that IS NOT the case.

The crux of the matter owes itself from this German's allegations.

He is alleging that there is widespread and systematic doping in Kenya.

If i am getting him correctly, Kenyans are good because there is easy availability of PED, esp. EPO in the Kenyan strets of Nairobi.

That is his main objective and that is why he did not go to let's say Uganda or Tanzania.

My contention is that our main athletes don't dope.

Can I say it for 100% of all the elite athletes (dozens of them)?

Of course not!

That said, the fact that none of them has has been caught should mean something.

May be they dope afterall becaause Chepkemei was caught.

May be the German is right.

Ha ha ha!

Runthedistance wrote:

Kenyans don't dope, you can put your head down, legs up and spin 360 degrees, the fact will still be the same, Kenyans don't dope. The rest of the world are not able to compete and they are trying to justify the using of drugs in the future. You can go ahead and dope world, we still going to going to stay clean and pure like we are.

Is this an absolute? Do you have proof that Kenyans don't dope? I'm assuming you mean ALL Kenyans, right?

As for HRE's post regarding the "extra"...really? you don't think some Kenyan who might simply be human and have the "urge" to take a bite out of the "forbidden tree"? Meaning, someone entices him in taking or he sees it just there for the taking knowing it's wrong and yet he knows, it's the ticket to a better life? Wow, if all Kenyan runners are innocent then I want their gene that has the control to fight' temptations'.

I didn't understand all the German, but maybe we are all missing enough "facts" to draw any conclusions. Too many links are missing in the chain.Does this Nairobi health store sell designer drugs that cannot be detected by WADA tests?Maybe, instead of posting baseless conclusions in letsrun (or creating German skandals), someone should simply send an e-mail to WADA and flag to them that Kenyans have been successful in distance events for the last few years and decades, and maybe WADA should start target testing them in case doping is somehow happening on a large scale undetected.

Querfeldein wrote:

You can now watch a slightly longer version online:

http://www.wdr.de/tv/sport_inside/sendungsbeitraege/2012/0521/kenia_video.jsp

I know it is a tough ask to comment on a documentary in a foreign language, but that doesn't give you a license to dismiss the facts.

NativeSon wrote:

This doctor has given most of them cover and they can now say it by hiding behind the doctor.

Good luck NAYSAYERS.

Reminds me of a few years ago when the tobacco lobby would drag out some no hoper doctor to say smoking wasn't bad for you and all the vested interests and naysayers would hide behind that one doctor.

NativeSon wrote:

That said, the fact that none of them has has been caught should mean something.

I'm guessing that for Kenyans it might mean something to have never been caught.

But you must realize that for Americans it means nothing. We've seen it play out first hand too many times - both for and against. For every Nigerian National Team there is a Shirley Babashoff. For every Marion Jones there is a…oh never mind that was a bad example but hopefully you get my point.

You know the story; systemic doping in Spain, China, Russia, USA, Morocco, and on and on and on. I am curious about countries with a history of corruption on the governmental level that are the latest version of squeaky clean in athletics achieving mind boggling success. So what do we know about the latest and greatest? Jamaica has Yams, Kenya has hard training, Ethiopia has altitude.

I’m personally in the camp where it wouldn’t matter if a Kenyan/Ethiopian doped or not as they would still be the best in the world. I think the motivation for Kenyans/Ethiopians to dope is to be selected for their national team and beat each other. It has very little to do with Europeans/Americans.

Anyway, a healthy dose of skepticism doesn't condemn a whole nation. But the more Kenyans doth protest the weirder it seems. I can very easily take doping allegations seriously if it’s an American but I find it a bit comical that Kenyans/Ethiopians/Jamaicans cannot. Talk about indoctrination.

This isn't about nations; it's about human nature.

98% of them don't dope, the 2% comprise of those who are misinform, ignorance, honest mistakes and somebody like Asiago who is irrelevant in the Kenyan running scene trying to ruin it for everybody else.

What I said was that the marathon record improved more in the 20 years from 1990 to 2010 than it had in the 20 years from 1970 to 1990 and that seems odd to me.

Junk Master wrote:

The willingness of Kenyans to say "Yes," must sure make it a lot easier for foreign agents/coaches to get them to dope.

Probably helps the white guys get laid too.

anonomie me wrote:

Junk Master wrote:

The willingness of Kenyans to say "Yes," must sure make it a lot easier for foreign agents/coaches to get them to dope.

Probably helps the white guys get laid too.

Ha ha ha ha!

I will not comment beyond that.

HRE wrote:

What I said was that the marathon record improved more in the 20 years from 1990 to 2010 than it had in the 20 years from 1970 to 1990 and that seems odd to me.

Thats why I said it could be because of the money.