Kenya has missed a deadline to prove to the World Anti-Doping Agency it is tackling cheating in athletics.<\/p>\n
It comes after a spate of positive drugs tests among the country’s athletes and fresh allegations of corruption.<\/p>\n
Kenya has not been able to provide the assurances that the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is seeking and will be placed on a ‘watch-list’ of nations at risk of breaching the agency’s code.<\/p>\n
The East African country, whose athletes are dominant in distance running, will be given two months to bring in new legislation and funding, or automatically be declared non-compliant with Wada.<\/p>\n
That could mean a possible ban from the Olympics, which take place later this year in Brazil, and other major events.<\/p>\n
A Wada statement said while “some progress has been made” with the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya, there is “still a lot of work required”.<\/p>\n
It said that, following a series of questions to Kenyan authorities, it had not received the assurances it needed.<\/p>\n
“This is now a matter for our independent compliance process,” it said.<\/p>\n
How bad is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Kenya topped the medal table at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing with seven gold medals.<\/p>\n But the country has become mired in doping and bribery allegations.<\/p>\n Since 2011, more than 40 of its athletes have failed drugs tests:<\/p>\n \uf0a7As of January 2016, 18 Kenyan athletes were suspended for doping;<\/p>\n \uf0a7Those 18 athletes are serving bans totalling 55 years;<\/p>\n \uf0a7The best known is Rita Jeptoo, who has won the Boston and Chicago marathons;<\/p>\n \uf0a7Lilian Moraa Mariita was given the longest ban – eight years for taking steroids.<\/p>\n Three senior officials at governing body Kenya Athletics have also been suspended following accusations they were involved in corruption linked to Doha’s successful bid for the 2019 World Championships.<\/p>\n Both officials, and the Qatar campaign team, deny any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n The Kenyan government told the BBC it was taking the threat of doping “very seriously” and said its newly established national anti-doping organisation would soon be operational.<\/p>\n Why has Wada take action now?<\/strong><\/p>\n For several months, Wada has been trying to persuade Kenya to set up an effective national agency so more drug tests can be conducted, but progress has been slow.<\/p>\n Legislation has yet to be passed by the Kenyan parliament and proposed annual funding of 500m Kenyan shillings (\u00a33.5m) is still to be released.<\/p>\n A taskforce met with Kenyan officials in Nairobi last week and asked for certain assurances by Thursday.<\/p>\n But Kenya has now been referred to Wada’s compliance committee.<\/p>\n David Howman, Wada’s director general, said “a fully functional” anti-doping agency is “a vital step for a country of Kenya’s sporting stature” if it is to “effectively protect clean athletes”.<\/p>\n He said it must be established “at the earliest opportunity”. Kenya has missed a deadline to prove to the World Anti-Doping Agency it is tackling cheating in athletics. It comes after a spate of positive drugs tests among the country’s athletes and fresh allegations of corruption. Kenya has not been able to provide the assurances that the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is seeking and will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[249,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-sports","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=189181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=189181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=189181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=189181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"