NY Times: Kenyan officials being investigated for taking $500,000 in Nike money

As I said a lot of that has already been reported. The Kenyan officials are suspended pending an investigation into coverups and taking bribes.

Well it is both a Nike and a Kenyan thing. If you are giving a $500k payment that you think is essentially a bribe there are ways to counteract that. Nike could ask where the money is being spent. If it is not accounted for then it could speak up.

The Kenyan federation could be more transparent.

Not that it's on the same level, but this exact thing is why I think USATF should have bid out the Nike contract and publicly state how much it is for. USATF and the Kenyan Federation are non profits.

Then bravo to the Times and others exposing this. Because the public needs to care enough that it is not in the financial interests of Nike to act like this. It is very short sighted to think cheating the Kenyan athletes, harming the sport, is good long term for Nike.

Thedirty wrote:

A lot of Kenyans are frauds. Cheaters, thieves, scumbags. Makes the good ones look bad too. They should be banned from Rio for mass doping and top level corruption, and I'd hate to see that from a fan standpoint but it has to happen.

These 3 or 4 AK officials really are representative of all 45 million of us Kenyans. We're all "frauds", "cheaters", "thieves", "scumbags" and, don't forget, "dirty". Athletes, journalists and others who orchestrated protests and exposés that led to the overthrow of these crooks were merely trying to save their own hides. There is no such thing as a clean Kenyan athlete and we fully expect Kenyan distance running to be wiped out so dominance can return to the 'right' countries.

While we're at it, we shouldn't pass judgement on the American people who are about to actually cast tens of millions of votes towards electing a narcissistic, sketchy, stealing, racist, misogynistic, low-IQ, buffoon as president.

wejo wrote:

Loving it wrote:

What's funny here is that most in this thread, Wejo included! Have sunk their teeth into the Bad Nike part of the story and missed the REAL STORY! Hello, Kenyan officials extorting drug failing Kenyan runners and hiding their doping positives!! Dined dong, bing bong! Don't let that fail to sink in!

As a runner and running fan that is much more interesting to me than what some company may or may not have done for branding interests.

As I said a lot of that has already been reported. The Kenyan officials are suspended pending an investigation into coverups and taking bribes.

.

I think you missed the point about extorting the Kenyan runners to hide their doping positives. That is HUGE. I would think this would be SUPER HOT on letsrun. Everyone everywhere knows that politicians in Africa are especially corrupt, but here we have a high level insider stating that Kenyan runners have been testing positive and being protected/extorted over it.

That's a story worth selling. That's also much more substantial then anything letsrun promoted against the Nike Oregon Project. This is not something like Asbel Kiprops training partner saying "Asbel said he was very tired after a race, and wanted the season to be over, and then 2 weeks later runs a pb. Nobody does that." Are you guys going to run with this?

This is starting to bum me out wrote:

it gets better wrote:

most interesting part of the story to me:

(He said corruption in the athletics federation was so ingrained and so brazen that officials routinely extorted money from athletes who failed drug tests. He also said the organization’s chairman, Isaiah Kiplagat, had asked Nike to wire the bonus directly to his personal account, a request that Nike refused.)

"Routinely extorted"!

I wonder if there are records or samples from these failed drug test.

They are in ADAMS. The IAAF knows who fails what, where and when. The data ARD/Seppelt got is from the same system.

The sport is 'never tested positive' until they need to make a show of it. (Ethiopia)

ryan foreman wrote:

Well, I agree that there is some truth to that. But the article suggests there was deep concern about Nike losing Kenya to a China company. Presumably at the highest levels of Nike.

a) $500,000 is not 'deep concern', but yet -

b) NIKE makes a crapload of money selling track and running wear. By basically monopolizing the outfitting of Kenya (by keeping the high-ranking officials in their pockets), Nike continues to strengthen their grip of UKA, USATF, IAAF meets and policy, etc

Kenya offers a huge amount of essentially free advertising for Nike ($1.5 mil a year for the whole nation, which produce like 80% of the world's best runners, who compete around the world, basically 24/7 on weekends)

Nike wants to maintain a stranglehold on that. They're not interested in the sport cleaning itself up. They dump Meb for Mo. They are actively propagating the hush-money model because under the current system, it pays for them, for UofOregon, etc

The only thing I take from this is Seb was not aware this was happening. Also congrats to Paula Radcliffe on her recent nomination as IAAF vice-chairwoman of the IAAF Athletes’ Commission , and was appointed by Seb himself.