MONACO (AP) — Women’s marathon world record-holder Ruth Chepng’etich has been banned for three years after admitting a doping violation, track and field’s Athletics Integrity Unit said Thursday.
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The AIU said Chepng’etich admitted anti-doping rule violations over the presence in her system of the banned diuretic hydrochlorothiazide, or HCTZ, which can be used to disguise the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The positive test was from a March 14 sample, and she was suspended in July.
The AIU also said Chepng’etich had accepted the sanction.
The 31-year-old Kenyan runner broke the women’s world record by almost two minutes at the 2024 Chicago Marathon, clocking 2 hours, 9 minutes, 56 seconds.
All Chepng’etich’s achievements and records before the March 14 sample will still stand.
The AIU said that while diuretics are known to be abused by athletes to mask the presence in urine of other prohibited substances, HCTZ has also been identified as a potential contaminant in pharmaceutical products.
Chepng’etich could not provide an explanation for the positive test when she was first interviewed, in April. At a later interview, on July 11, she was confronted with evidence from her mobile telephone indicating “a reasonable suspicion that her positive test may have been intentional,” the AIU said.
At the time, Chepng’etich maintained her position that she could not explain the positive test and that she had never doped.
Then, on July 31, Chepng’etich changed her previous explanation, the AIU said.
“She wrote to the AIU to state that she now recalled that she had taken ill two days before the positive test and she had taken her housemaid’s medication as treatment, without taking any steps to verify if it contained a prohibited substance,” the AIU said.
“She stated that she had forgotten to disclose this incident to the AIU investigators. She sent a photo of the medication blister pack which clearly marked the medication as being ‘hydrochlorothiazide.’”
The AIU said anti-doping rules treat such “recklessness described by Chepng’etich in taking her housemaid’s medication as being indirect intent, for which an increased four-year sanction applies.”
Since Chepng’etich eventually accepted the proposed sanction within 20 days, she was granted an automatic one-year reduction of the four years.
“The case regarding the positive test for HCTZ has been resolved, but the AIU will continue to investigate the suspicious material recovered from Chepng’etich’s phone to determine if any other violations have occurred,” AIU head Brett Clothier said in a statement.
In the U.S., hydrochlorothiazide is available by prescription only; brand names include Microzide, Esidrix and HydroDiuril. It’s most commonly used to treat high blood pressure or edema (swelling from fluid buildup).
AIU Chair David Howman said the case underlines that “nobody is above the rules” and lauded the industry’s commitment to the integrity of the sport.
Chepng’etich won the marathon at the 2019 world championships in Qatar. She dropped out of the race at the 2021 Olympics and the 2022 World Athletics Championships, and she failed to qualify for last year’s Olympics, in Paris.
In another high-profile suspension for doping, Spanish runner Mo Katir’s initial two-year ban for violating drug-testing protocol was extended to four years after it was discovered that he had falsified travel documents in an attempt to mislead investigators. His attempt to overturn the ban was rejected last month by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Katir, 27, missed the Paris Olympics because of the ban but will be eligible to attempt to qualify for the 2028 games, in Los Angeles. He has two world championship medals: silver in the 5,000 meters in 2023, and bronze in the 1,500 meters in 2022.
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