Winning Through Cheating: Kenyan Athletes Who Have Violated Anti-Doping Rules In 2022

The respect Kenya commanded as a middle and long distance powerhouse is quickly fading as cases of athletes using performance enhancing substances is at an all time high. 

According to a report appearing on The Weekly Review, Kenya is “lucky to survive the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) sanction.”

Doping is being facilitated by coaches, agents, managers and rogue officials keen on the dollar at the expense of the athletes. Some of these athletes are at times not even aware of the nefarious designs of their handlers. They have been made to imbibe liquids, tablets or injected with performance substances. 

Other ways athletes use to dope is through massaging of the muscles and “a highly specialised scientific process that entails transfusing of oxygen-laden blood, known as blood doping”.

The publication goes on to state that the effects can be fatal as some of these athletes have collapsed and died mysteriously. Others have their reproductive health irreversibly damaged. 

Prohibited substances

Nandrolone tops the list of the most prevalent performance enhancing substance detected in Kenyan athletes standing at 35 per cent (49 of 138) of all (Adverse Analytical Findings (AAFs). 

Others are corticosteroids, prednisone, prednisolone and methylprednisolone follow at 13 per cent (18 out of 138) of all Kenyan AAFs. They are administered orally or via injection.

The third most prevalent prohibited substance accounting for 12 per cent is Erythropoietein (EPO). 

Via The Weekly Review