2016 Olympic Games

Rio Olympic Marathon Champion Jemima Sumgong Banned For Four Years

Rio Olympic Marathon Champion Jemima Sumgong Banned For Four Years

Kenya's first-ever Olympic marathon champion, Jemima Sumgong, is banned from sport for four years after false claims of inadvertently taking EPO while being treated for an ectopic pregnancy.

Nov 7, 2017 by Johanna Gretschel
Rio Olympic Marathon Champion Jemima Sumgong Banned For Four Years
Jemima Sumgong of Kenya has officially received a four-year suspension after failing an out-of-competition drug test earlier this year. She became Kenya's first women's Olympic marathon champion in Rio, but will now be ineligible for the 2020 Tokyo Games as well as the 2019 and 2021 IAAF World Championships.

The 32-year-old claimed to have inadvertently taken EPO while visiting a hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, to be treated for an ectopic pregnancy six days before the failed drug test. She claimed to have received a blood transfusion and unidentified medication from an unknown doctor.

A doping tribunal found the testimony "inconsistent at best," according to the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya. 

"We might go so far as to state that the athlete's attempt to explain how the substance entered her body bordered on an attempt to deceive the panel," they said.

Sumgong was unable to name the doctor who treated her and the medical documents she provided were deemed fake by the hospital.

Her gold medal from the 2016 Rio Olympic Games will be unaffected and she will serve her ban starting from April 3, 2017, the date her provisional suspension was announced. She failed the drug test on Feb. 28 of this year.

You can read the report below.