The London Marathon is an incredible spectacle - but I don't believe what I see
Marathon running has a big doping problem and Kenya are the worst offenders
In the decade to December last year, there were 55 ‘big city’ marathons, or six each year across Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York, minus five events lost to the pandemic.
In 18 of those races, or 32.7% of them, at least one person on the podium in the men’s or women’s elite races was a doper. Most typically that person was the race winner, and from Kenya.
The London Marathon, which takes place tomorrow, was most recently won by a confirmed doper in 2017, when Kenya’s Daniel Wanjiru triumphed. His compatriot doper Wilson Kipsang won in London in 2012, 2014 and finished on the podium in 2015. Their fellow Kenyan doper, Jemima Sumgong, won the women’s elite race in London in 2016, the same year she won Olympic gold in the marathon at the Rio Games.
If we add other podium athletes in the period who had a ‘problematic’ relationship with performance-enhancing drugs (such as Mo Farah, more of which later, and a Kenyan former world record holder who was always tipped off about doping tests), those 18 races rise to 25 — or more than 45% of the big city marathons in that period had a top-three finisher later done for drugs, or with an uncomfortable association with drugs.
In some of those races, both the men’s and women’s elite races were tarnished by Kenyans later banned for doping. This happened at the 2017 Tokyo marathon, when Kipsang won the men’s race and Sarah Chepchirchir won the women’s race'; and the 2014 New York Marathon, where the men’s race was won by Kipsang and the women’s runner-up was Sumgong.
We’ll return to look at their specific misdemeanours and punishments shortly but this matters because Kenya has utterly dominated the world’s biggest marathons for two decades.
Kenyan men won 36 of the 55 big city marathons (or 65.5%) in the decade to December 2023, with Ethiopian men winning 14 (or 25.5%) and runners from every other nation combined winning five (or 9%).
Kenyan women won 35 of the 55 big city marathons (or 64%) in the decade to December 2023, with Ethiopian women winning 15 (or 27%) and runners from every other nation combined winning five (or 9%).
Kenya has a huge performance-enhancing drugs problem, rampant among its own athletes and suspected among many visitors from other nations who travel to East Africa for altitude training.