CLEANING UP KENYA’S DOPING PROBLEM

that while other countries focus their drug testing on their top contenders, which might be five athletes in each of a few events, Kenya has hundreds of distance runners capable of winning, from a marathon all the way down to an 800-meter track race.

Th at’s incredibly difficult to control, Clothier said, and though the doping culture was bred in road running, it undoubtedly took hold in track runners, too.

W hile laying out some of the reasons behind it, Clothier is far from apologizing for Kenya’s doping.

He said also clearly to blame were Kenya’s own anti-doping guardrails, which were flimsy at the best of times, and non-existent for much of the time before the start of a turnaround in the last 12 months.

K enya only established a national anti-doping agency in 2016, an eye opener considering it has been the dominant force in distance running for decades and has won the secondmost medals across the board in the history of the worlds behind the United States.

B efore this year, Kenya had committed $2.5 million a year to anti-doping, Clothier said, not nearly enough. There were only 38 athletes in Kenya’s national doping testing pool last year, a miniscule amount. There will be 300 this year, Clothier said.

Apart from the international track body and the AIU’s attempts to prop up its testing program, Kenya was “a completely uncontrolled environment, quite frankly,” Clothier said.

IN all likelihood, Kenya will haul in another good chunk of medals in distance races at this month’s track and field world championships, each one of them throwing more suspicion on a country with a reputational crisis because of doping.

Kenya has achieved unparalleled success in modern distance running, but a wave of positive drug tests over the last decade has made it the sport’s latest doping pariah and pushed it to the brink of a sweeping international ban that would put it alongside Russia.

A nti-doping authorities inside and outside the East African nation are grappling to get it under control.

We’re trying to clean up our country,” said Faith Kipyegon, the Kenyan middle-distance runner who broke three world records this year, has never failed a doping test, but was asked at a recent news conference—like many of her compatriots often are—to account for the more than 180 doping sanctions handed out to Kenyans since 2017.

The root of Kenya’s problem is unique in the global athletics ecosystem, according to the man whose job it is to fix it. It’s very different to the state-sponsored scheme that led to Russia being thrown out of international track.

I n Kenya, there’s “a temptation to dope that’s like no other part of our sport, not even close,” said Brett Clothier, the head of the Athletics Integrity Unit, the independent body set up in 2017 to oversee international track and field’s anti- doping operations and which has been kept very busy by Kenya.

The first point Clothier made in an interview with The Associated Press ahead of the world championships in Budapest, Hungary, starting this weekend is that you need to understand Kenya to understand the doping crisis that’s unraveled in Kenya.

The vast majority of the hundreds of distance runners pouring out of Kenya’s high-altitude training grounds are not running for gold medals at the world championships and the Olympics or for national pride. They are competing for pay checks first, running to get away from poverty.

B ecause of that, Kenya’s doping problem didn’t start on the track, Clothier said, but in road running; the marathons and the 5K and 10K races around the world— the grinding edge of distance running away from the major track meets but which is the most lucrative part of athletics and where there›s good money on offer almost every week to attract Kenya’s bountiful talent.

This money that we’re talking about...is life-changing,” Clothier said. “Not just for them, but for their families, their whole communities. In essence, it really is all about the money.”

W hile that doesn’t justify it, it shows why doping to get ahead is maybe more of a temptation in Kenya than in the United States or Europe.

Clothier said Kenyan athletes, because of their economic need, “take risks that no one, no other athletes who are controlled by us, would normally take.”

The athlete numbers also mean

The issue reached a head last November, when an outright ban for the country was on the table before the Kenyan government committed another $5 million a year for the next five years to fight doping, and publicly accepted the problem was endemic and not, as it said for years, the work of a few rogue foreign coaches and agents.

The AIU is only now at the start of a five-year plan to save Kenyan athletics, but the elite athletes are being brought under tighter control for a start. Clothier said the Kenya team at the worlds will be “absolutely one of the most comprehensively tested teams.”

A s the program then looks to also reign in those vast numbers of runners who compete on the road, Clothier said it will be “a long ride” with even more failed tests, and more athletes banned.

We’re certainly expecting more positive tests. I’ll tell you that straight away,” Clothier said. “But that’s the system working.” AP

Bowie’s mental health struggles no secret in track’s tight-knit family

BUDAPEST, Hungary— Olympic gold medalist Tori Bowie’s autopsy included an easy-to-overlook, one-line notation beneath the heading “Medical History:” Bipolar disorder.

I n and around track circles, where the champion sprinter’s absence is hitting particularly hard heading into Saturday’s opening in Hungary of the first world championships since her death, Bowie’s mental health struggles were more than an afterthought.

They were a stark reality that came to light during training over the years. They also revealed themselves in the Florida neighborhood where police found her body days after the 32-year-old, who was eight months pregnant, died at home due to what the coroner said were complications of childbirth.

“It’s not that she slipped through the cracks,” her one-time coach, Al Joyner, told The Associated Press last month. “I think people didn’t take it seriously enough.” extreme mood swings, can be treatable with medication and counseling. However, the National Institute of Mental Health cites studies that say that of the some 4.4 percent of US adults who experience the disorder, 82.9 percent encounter “serious impairment.”

Though Bowie had access to mentalhealth services through both the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee and USA Track and Field, officials at both organizations said she did not avail herself of those in the months and weeks before her April 23 death.

The officials said they believe Bowie’s mental health played a role in how she handled what became an increasingly difficult pregnancy, one she dealt with without much assistance from friends, family or medical professionals. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the confidential information.

T he AP spoke with Joyner as well as six other USA track and Olympic officials or team members who knew Bowie over her decadeplus as a prize-winning sprinter, then during her retirement. AP also reviewed autopsy and police records, including a 911 call from a family acquaintance who had been asked to check on Bowie at her house after no one heard from her in days.

“Last time I spoke to this girl, it was over three weeks ago. I saw her here at her home and she was living without power,” said the acquaintance, whose name is redacted from the 911 recording. “I reported to her family that I was concerned about her mental health.”

There were other red flags.

Neighbors saw Bowie sleeping on the floor at a local recreation center and another time, sleeping on a bench with groceries near her feet at a park near her house. The neighbors spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal the disturbing details of Bowie’s case.

O ne of the neighbors called the US Olympic committee with their concerns and the committee notified USA Track and Field. Track officials reached out to Bowie’s agent, Kimberly Holland, but Holland said Bowie was not in need of help.

Holland told the AP this month that Bowie had access to health care. “I didn’t have any red flags,” she told The Washington Post in June, adding that Bowie was insistent on not delivering her baby in a hospital.

Police went to Bowie’s house on May 2 after receiving several calls, including the 911 call from the acquaintance, who told the dispatcher she didn’t feel safe entering because of the smell emanating from the residence.

E arlier this month, a lawsuit was filed seeking foreclosure on Bowie’s Winter Garden, Florida, house, saying she had been delinquent on payments since October 1, 2022, nearly seven months before her death.

W hen the autopsy came out, it indicated there were no signs of foul play or drug use. Bowie’s bipolar disorder didn’t make many headlines, nor did another detail—her weight: 96 pounds, even at eight months pregnant. In her heyday, the 5-foot9 sprinter was a wall of muscle and weighed 130.

More was made of what the coroner listed as complications related to childbirth: among them, eclampsia, which results in seizures that can lead to coma and stems from high blood pressure during pregnancy.

A ccording to the US Centers for Disease Control, Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related issues than white women. Bowie was the third woman on the 2016 US Olympic gold-medal relay team who suffered complications in childbirth. All three were Black. But while Allyson Felix and Tianna Tashelle delivered in a hospital, Bowie died alone.

The news of her death hit hard around track-and-field circles.

“ There’s just a very heavy sadness that I think everybody feels, like, ‘Wow, this could have been preventable.’ Or, ‘I didn’t get to tell Tori how I felt,’” said retired decathlete Trey Hardee, who has struggled with mental health issues of his own. Placed in a foster home as a baby, Bowie was taken in and raised by her grandmother—a formative episode that Joyner said shaped her life.

It seemed like she was always out to prove something,” Joyner said. “And then when she did prove something, it was never good enough.... That’s a dangerous thing. Everybody’s been taught the same way: ‘If I do this, it’s going to be easy street.’

But then when you do all those things and it’s not happening, it makes you stop believing in fairy tales.”

Yet, in many ways, Bowie’s career was a fairy tale.

Fast on her feet and able to jump high, Bowie gravitated to basketball as a kid growing up in Sand Hill, Mississippi. Urged to give track a try, she and everyone around her quickly found out just how good she was. She went to Southern Miss, where she won the NCAA long jump title in 2011.

A few years later, she was among the top sprinters in the world. She won silver in the 100 and bronze in the 200 at the 2016 Rio Games, then capped off the Olympics by teaming with Felix and Co. for the relay gold. AP

ALTHOUGH Olympic gold medalist Tori Bowie had access to mentalhealth services she didn’t avail herself of those in the months and weeks before her April 23 death. AP

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