Olympic marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir provisionally suspended for EPO
The Athletics Integrity Unit suspended Peres Jepchirchir after an out-of-competition sample taken in Kenya before her Sydney Marathon win tested positive for EPO.
Photograph: Katie Chan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (2024 London Marathon)Peres Jepchirchir, the 2021 Olympic marathon champion, has been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit. The AIU announced on Friday, October 23, that an out-of-competition sample collected in Kenya before her Sydney Marathon win returned an adverse finding for EPO, the blood booster.
Jepchirchir, 33, won Sydney on August 30 in 2:18:31, more than three minutes clear of Irine Cheptai. Her record is one of the best in the sport: Olympic gold in Tokyo, the world marathon title in 2025, and wins in New York in 2021, Boston in 2022, London in 2024 and now Sydney. She set the half marathon world record in 2017.
A provisional suspension is not a ban. She cannot race while the case runs, and she is entitled to answer the charge. Sydney's organisers said they were extremely disappointed, that she is owed due process, and that they would say nothing more until it ends. The World Marathon Majors fund extra out-of-competition testing with the AIU, which is how samples like this one get taken.
It came a day after the AIU banned Ruti Aga for six years, and a year after Ruth Chepng'etich was banned for three.
The testing is working. That is the only good news in it.
Sources: ESPN; Al Jazeera; ABC News.
