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Dateline: Aug 2

Dateline travels to Kenya to hear from athletes about doping reports that have plagued the sport since 2012.

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On Dateline journalist Ade Adepitan travels to Eldoret in Kenya to hear from athletes about doping reports that have plagued the sport since 2012.

Has Kenya been able to win the race against cheating and corruption?

Kenya is home to some of the greatest athletes in the world, with more long distance champions having come from Kenya than anywhere else.

But explosive reports of Kenyan athletes doping have plagued the sport since 2012. It has been reported that more than 40 Kenyan athletes have failed doping tests, most in international races. This comes amid allegations and reports of systemic doping within Russian athletics and calls for a blanket ban on Russian athletes at the upcoming Rio Olympics.

Athletics Kenya, the sport’s governing body, has the job of implementing a doping control program, but the World Anti-Doping Agency has put Kenya on probation, claiming they’re non-compliant with global anti-doping rules. In response, Kenya passed new anti-doping laws in an attempt to restore faith in its athletes.

On this week’s Dateline, journalist, Ade Adepitan travels to Eldoret, to speak to Kenyan athletes on both sides of the doping issue.

He meets a marathon champion who is currently competing internationally, and who has asked to have is face hidden. Ade asks him: “Do you take performance enhancing drugs?” to which the marathon athlete responds with “yes, of course.”

The athlete claims he takes EPO (Erythropoietin), a banned drug that builds up red blood production so an athlete absorbs more oxygen and runs faster for longer.

The unnamed runner tells Ade that he believes that running is a business and that he is running to support his family. He also makes claims that he believes most professional Kenyan runners are taking EPO and that getting a hold of this drug through a local doctor isn’t that hard – something that he proves during filming.

In Kenya, winning can be a way out of poverty, and one runner who is pinning all of his hopes and dreams on making the national team is Julius Tarus.

Julius tells Ade that he is running “for money”. The hopeful runner can only afford to eat once a day – which is nowhere near the amount of calories an athlete needs for the amount of training he does.

Yet despite the odds, Julius tells Ade that he has never been tempted by doping, “For me, no, because the effects are long-term. It can affect me a lot and I can suffer. I will stay firm and strong, firmly and say no to doping.”

Since the allegations of doping were made and with fears that Kenya may be banned from the Summer Olympics, the Kenyan government has created an independent agency to police doping – but Wesley Korir a current runner, politician and founding member of PAAK, the Professional Athletes Association of Kenya, says the doping agency won’t work.

Winning the Boston and LA marathon twice, Wesley tells Ade, “It has to be people from the outside, because let me tell you we live in a corrupt country, a very corrupt country.”

Tuesday 2 August at 9.30pm on SBS.

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