MONACO (AP) — Kenyan 10,000-meter runner Rodgers Kwemoi was banned for six years on Friday for suspected blood doping 18 times and disqualified from Olympics and world championships races.
Track and field’s Athletics Integrity Unit said Kwemoi was stripped of seven years of results through August 2023 for a “deliberate, systematic, and sophisticated doping regime.”
He lost his seventh-place finish at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, fourth place at the 2019 worlds in Qatar and his bronze medal result from the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Kwemoi also was stripped of the world junior title he won as a teenager in 2016 in a championship record time.
The ban will expire in August 2029 when Kwemoi will be aged 31.
He did not test positive for banned substances but was investigated based on suspicious blood values in his athlete biological passport, typically in the lead-up to major competitions.
An anti-doping tribunal judged “the use of blood manipulation over a prolonged period by the athlete was intentional” in a ruling published by the AIU.
Expert analysts said in the ruling his abnormal blood values in samples taken from July 2016 to February 2023 were not explained by moving between high and low altitudes.
With Kwemoi’s disqualifications, his long-time opponent Jacob Kiplimo of Uganda could be upgraded in two championship races. Kiplimo placed third at the 2016 world juniors race and fourth at the 2018 Commonwealth Games held at Gold Coast, Australia.
Kiplimo went on to take Olympic bronze in Tokyo and completed a 5,000-10,000 title double at the 2022 Commonwealths in Birmingham, England.
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