- AK director of youth development Barnabas Korir has stated that tough actions will be taken against anyone found guilty of age cheating.
- It was recently revealed that 34 Kenyan runners are under investigation by the World Athletics for engaging in age cheating.
- The 2025 National Cross Country Championships will take place in Eldoret on Saturday, February 8.
Athletics Kenya (AK) has put runners who practice age cheating on notice ahead of Saturday’s National Cross Country Championships.
The move comes just days after the federation disclosed that 34 Kenyan athletes including Olympians are under investigation by the World Athletics for age cheating.
Speaking on Friday morning at the Eldoret Sports Club where the championships is scheduled to take place, AK director of youth development Barnabas Korir stated that the federation has taken several measures to curb the menace.
According to Korir, AK will vet all the under 20 runners in the country to ensure no one wins unfairly.
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“Athletics Kenya with Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) and Anti-doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK) have come up with a strict regulation that each athlete must pick their bib numbers. On the other hand, we have issues with age cheating and we have found that in some instances, some athletes could be running in the categories that they do not belong to.
We have also established rules and regulations governing that as per the World Athletics rules. Therefore Athletics Kenya has decided to vet all the U20 athletes to make sure that the documentation they bring is legitimate,” offered Korir.
He added that the war on age cheating has been boosted by the arrival of officers who will guide the federation on how to pinpoint fake certificates.
Korir, who is credited for nurturing the careers of the likes of the reigning 800m world champion Mary Moraa, also forewarned coaches and top athletics officials in the country from helping runners forge their identification documents.
“We have also, as a federation, notified the coaches, the chairpersons from the regions that we will not accept anything that can be seen as supporting age cheating. We have zero tolerance on areas where athletes who are young, who deserve to win, compete with the older ones.
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We will do further investigations to see if there are coaches or parents who assist these athletes to obtain documents which are not relevant. Therefore, we are warning everybody that AK has taken very stringent measures in consultations with the immigration and the registrar of births and deaths to ensure that we have proper documentation,” ended the 59-year-old.
The eagerly awaited national cross country championships has attracted many runners, both upcoming and the bigwigs.
Some of the stars who are expected to compete in the event include the reigning 10000m world record holder Beatrice Chebet and Daniel Ebenyo, who will both represent the National Police Service.
Each winner in the senior category will walk home with a mouth-watering Ksh 200,000, which is an increase from previous editions.
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