The Macau Sports Bureau (ID) has remained silent on the case of Flomena Chepchirchir, the Kenyan athlete that won the 2014 Macau International Marathon while under a ban issued by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
The Times questioned the ID last week about the occurrence, reported on Friday. Among other questions, we inquired if the bureau was planning to take any action to prevent banned athletes from running again in Macau.
The Associated Press has been investigating multiple cases of so called “second tier” Kenyan athletes – some of them banned by the IAAF – that are being enrolled in small races in the United States, where they compete for modest prizes that can financially support their families back home.
One of those Kenyan runners is Lilian Mariita, who in the past was caught by lab technicians on steroids. On that occasion she was banned for eight years effectively putting her career to an end and returning her to the muddy tea-plantation village in western Kenya of her origins.
Mariita competed in the US with the help of her agent and former elite Russian athlete Larisa Mikhaylova.
Mikhaylova’s business model is simple. In exchange for a cut of their prizes, she enters runners into far-flung road races across the US, which are often so modest and amateurish that they do not have sufficient funding for extensive drug-testing.
Three Kenyans who worked with Mikhaylova have been caught doping since 2012, Jynocel Basweti, the father of Mariita’s daughter, is one of them, who tested positive at a Mexican marathon for a steroid used in veterinary medicine. Nixon Kiplagat Cherutich was also busted for a byproduct of the steroid nandrolone, while Mariita failed two doping tests in eight months.
Their stories represent the underbelly of a top-to-bottom doping crisis in Kenya’s thriving but ill-regulated running industry.
Her athletes take on aggressive schedules to maximize prizes. As in the case of Mariita who ran 24 races across 13 states in 2014, according to the Association of Road Racing Statisticians, including over three weekends when she raced on consecutive days.
The outcome of these efforts was earnings of about USD24,000 that year, more than what 99 percent of Kenyans earn back home. RM
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