Nairobi — The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) the body designated to fight doping in the sport, has warned Kenya that it will get worse before it gets better as testing is scaled up owing to increased government funding.
Thomas Capdevielle, the Head of Testing and Compliance at the AIU has said that more testing and intelligence will lead to more drug cheats being netted, and this will have a dent on the country’s image at the moment, but good in the long term.
“What we anticipate is that things will get worse before they get better because higher levels of testing means we will catch more drug cheats. We want to go beyond athletes and also try to unearth the networks behind them; the pharmacists, managers etc,” Capdevielle told Capital Sport.
Capdevielle has been in the country with AIU stepping up testing of athletes, and for the first time ever, all athletes competing at the National Trials to select the team for next month’s World Athletics Championships have to undergo testing.
At the Nyayo National Stadium on Thursday evening, as they picked up their running bibs, athletes were also subjected to testing, both urine and blood samples taken.
“We are only taking athletes who don’t have a long testing history. I have been in Kaptagat and we tested some athletes so we will not test them today. We are looking at the recent testing history of the athletes because there are some who are based in Japan and we took the opportunity to test them as well,” the AIU boss said.
He added; “Athletes didn’t expect to be tested today as they picked up their bibs and this is what we want. We have worked very well with Athletics Kenya (AK) and ADAK (Anti Doping Agency of Kenya) and this is what we want to be doing at every major event in Kenya.”
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Last year, the government announced a Sh600m injection into ADAK’s budget to help raise the levels of testing and Capdevielle says this increased funding has been vital in them conducting more tests.
He says over the National Championships held last week and this weekend’s World Championships trials, AIU in conjuction with ADAK are set to test close to 400 athletes, seven times more than they did last year.
“At the National Championships last year we tested around 55 athletes and by the end of the day today (Thursday), we will have tested close to 400 athletes. This is a very high standard in the world and it is actually more than we do anywhere, including in the US trials,” Capdevielle disclosed.
He says they will scale the efforts beyond just testing, with investment in investigation, intelligence and education. He has however said there is no stigmatization of Kenyan athletes with increased testing.
“We have more testing in Kenya because definitely there are more athletes here competing at a very high level all over the world. We are not just focusing in Kenya because this is something we do all over the world,” he added.
Kenya has been listed in “Category A” of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) since days leading to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, and more athletes have been nabbed in the web since then.
