2016 Olympic marathon champion gets doping ban doubled to eight years

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Jemima Sumgong, a Kenyan female marathon Olympic gold medalist in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, saw her doping ban double from four years to eight on Friday for a second anti-doping offense of “tampering with a doping control,” according to British media outlets.

The extension of the ban has literally taken the 34-year-old Sumgong out of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.

Back in 2017, Sumgong was found positive for EPO in a blood test, which put her under a four-year ban from running marathons. In response, Sumgong explained that the positive EPO result came from an injection and a blood transfusion to treat ruptured ectopic pregnancy at a hospital in Nairobi in February 2017. Then she submitted five hospital documents to anti-doping officials to support her case.

Dopes and gold medal in sports /VCG Photo

However, Sumgong's story ceased to stand as the hospital confirmed that she had never visited during that month. The hospital also said that Sumgong's documents were fabricated as they lacked a unique hospital number while adding that a woman who suffered a ruptured ectopic pregnancy would need to stay at an acute gynecology ward for four days.

Though Sumgong tried to justify her story by claiming that she received treatment from a fraudulent doctor amid a doctor's strike and thus had no record of her visit with the hospital, she could not give a good reason for why the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)'s record showed that she was in Kapsabet, a five-hour-drive from the hospital at that time.

An International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) independent disciplinary tribunal chaired by Michael Beloff QC ruled that there was “compelling evidence” that Sumgong was lying about her whereabouts and fabricated the documents submitted to anti-doping officials. "To put the matter colloquially, she could not be in two places at once," wrote Beloff in a 33-page decision.