(Reuters) -Rhonex Kipruto has been banned for six years for doping, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said on Wednesday, with the Kenyan set to lose his 10 kilometres road race world record and a world championship bronze medal.
Kipruto, 24, who won 10,000 metres bronze in the 2019 world championships, had been provisionally suspended for an anti-doping violation in May last year. He is now banned until May 2029.
Kipruto broke the 10km road race world record in 2020 in Valencia and won the 10,000 metres at the 2019 Stockholm Diamond League — results which will now be annulled.
A Disciplinary Tribunal ruled that there were irregularities in Kipruto’s Athlete Biological Passport (ABP), which shows discrepancies that can reveal the effects of doping.
“The Tribunal rejected Kipruto’s defence, concluding the ’cause for the abnormalities in the ABP is more likely to be due to blood manipulation’ such as through the use of recombinant human erythropoietin (rEPO),” the AIU said, adding that there was no other plausible explanation for the abnormal values.
The 24-year-old had denied the Anti-Doping Rule Violation (ADRV) charge but the panel said it was “comfortably satisfied” that the Kenyan was involved in a “deliberate and sophisticated doping regime over a long period of time”.
Kipruto can still appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Ed Osmond)
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