The Athletics Integrity Unit has has banned the reigning Athens Marathon champion Samuel Kalalei for four years after testing positive for blood-booster EPO.
Kalalei’s urine sample, which was collected after the Rotterdam Marathon in April, had returned positive for EPO.
The 23-year-old was provisionally suspended by AIU, the independent agency of world athletics ruling body IAAF, on June 4.
The AIU said that all of Kalalei’s results since that event in the Netherlands would now stand disqualified. Kalalei had set a personal best time of two hours 10 minutes and 44 seconds to finish in seventh place.
Kalalei is the third Kenyan athlete to receive a doping ban this year while four further cases are still pending.
They include former Olympic 1500m gold medallist and three-time world champion Asbel Kiprop, who was found to have traces of EPO after a test in November 2017.
In the same month, Rio 2016 Olympic women’s marathon gold medallist Jemima Sumgong received a four-year ban.
In September, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) said Kenya had a “serious problem” with doping.
A Wada report said that between 2004 and 2018, more than 138 athletes from the east African nation have tested positive for prohibited substances, 113 of them during competitions.
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