Drug Cheat Who Won US 15K Title in March Gets Popped (Twice!) For Taking Drugs Yet Again
By Robert Johnson
September 24, 2020
In March, I expressed amazement that Moroccan-born EPO cheat Ridouane Harroufi had won the US 15K title.
For starters, I believe that if you test positive for EPO, you should be banned from track and field for life as there was no way it was an innocent ingestion of the drug. But that’s not the way the rules are written, and I do believe in following the rules.
What I didn’t get was how this guy was allowed to become a US citizen in the first place. With hundreds of thousands and sometimes more than a million immigrants that are desperate to get into this country each year and with the huge backlog of immigration cases, why wasn’t being a drug cheat a disqualifier for citizenship?
Immigrants are supposed to show they have “good moral character,” yet somehow this drug cheat who was popped for EPO in 2013 was granted citizenship after his drug bust. Yet people like Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov, the couple that risked their lives to bring down the doping regime in Russia and have been living here for five years, can’t even get an interview for citizenship? Or Edward Cheserek, who has been in the US for a decade now, can’t get a green card and even has problems even renewing his visa? That’s insane.
Well, I have some good news to report. No, the Stepanovs haven’t been granted citizenship. The good news is that Ridouane Harroufi won’t be winning any more US titles anytime soon. Harroufi has been busted for doping yet again. And this time he got popped twice.
Today, the US Anti-Doping Agency announced that “Harroufi, 39, tested positive for an anabolic agent as the result of an in-competition drug test collected on March 7, 2020 at the USA Track & Field 15k Championships, as well as during an out-of-competition drug test collected on May 12, 2020.”
Harroufi isn’t contesting the tests and has accepted an eight-year ban from the sport.
Good riddance.
Talk about this article on our messageboard. MB: Unreal: Ridouane Harroufi – the doper whom the US made a citizen – gets popped for doping two more times!!!
Related: From March. MB: Why wouldn’t testing positive for EPO be an automatic disqualifier for US citizenship? Ridouane Harroufi win US 15k title
Podcast Interview: The Stepanovs Share Their Story With LetsRun.com Would you risk your life and be willing to relocate your family halfway across the globe simply because you believed in clean sport? These two heroes did just that.
LRC “The Russian Affair” By David Walsh: The Story Of The Stepanovs, As You’ve Never Heard It Before