Kenyan runner Rhonex Kipruto provisionally suspended for doping offence

Kenyan distance runner Rhonex Kipruto, the world record holder for 10km on the road and trained by celebrated Irish coach Brother Colm O’Connell, has been provisionally suspended for a doping offence.

The Athlete Integrity Unit (AIU), the independent anti-doping body of World Athletics, announced Kipruto’s suspension on Wednesday, having identified biological passport irregularities, an increasingly popular doping practice among Kenyan runners.

The 23-year-old Kipruto, who has trained under O’Connell since first joining his St Patrick’s High School training camp in Iten as a 15-year-old, clocked 26:24 in Valencia in January 2020, still the world 10km record on the road.

That performance came four months after he won 10,000m bronze at the 2019 World Championships in Doha. In 2018, he won the World Under-20 10,000m title in Finland.

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According to a statement from the AIU, Kipruto is charged with “Use of a Prohibited Substance/Method” due to his suspicious blood readings.

O’Connell has denied any knowledge or involvement of the doping offence, describing Kipruto as a “clean” runner.

“I carefully choose who I work with and to whom I dedicate my energy,” O’Connell said in a statement, as reported by Athletics Weekly. “I know Rhonex is an honest young man and it hurts me to see him suffering now.

“Our strategy is to train hard, and that’s the only way we achieve results. I have said many times that I am in favour of systematically combating doping so that we can protect clean athletes like Rhonex.”

Kipruto’s manager Davor Savija also denied any involvement: “This is injustice,” he said. “We will, of course, fully co-operate and be totally transparent.”

As recent as last month, Kipruto finished fourth in a 10km in Germany, running 27:09, and last year he won the New York Half Marathon in 60:30.

Speaking to The Irish Times in 2019, when O’Connell was accepting the World Athletics Coaching Achievement award in Monaco, having been successfully training Kenyan runners since 1976, he spoke about never once experiencing doping in Kenya first-hand.

“In my time, in my group, I have never witnessed anyone get involved,” he said. “Still it is disappointing, hugely. Because you’re working in that environment all the time, where what you do is coming into question, or any performance is tainted.

“If athletes would come forward and say ‘this is how I was doped’, or whatever, I think we could nail down people. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“The last few years the federation have come out very strong. They’ve set up their own doping control agency, Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya, (Adok), and they are very active, with lots of seminars and workshops and things like that going on, to try to sensitise people.

“There’s obviously a no tolerance level there, and Adok have caught quite of a few people, of the recent ones. As far as I can see, there isn’t regular doping, or where these guys start their individual doping I’m just not aware, first-hand.”

Last year, however, there were 25 reported AIU cases of Kenyan athletes doping, including 2019 Boston and Chicago marathon champion Lawrence Cherono, and Diana Kipyokei, the 2021 Boston Marathon champion. There are around 60 Kenyan athletes currently serving doping bans.

On Tuesday, the AIU also announced that Nicholas Mboroto Kosimbei, a 26-year-old Kenyan, was also provisionally suspended for testing positive for the banned performance-enhancing substance trimetazidine.

Kosimbei’s performances go back to 2016, where he clocked a 27:02.59 for 10,000m as a 19-year-old. Trimetazidine, intended to treat heart-related conditions like angina, is banned for its performance-enhancing potential in healthy runners.

Last November, World Athletics decided against imposing an outright ban on Kenya, despite their spate of doping offences.