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Four-time IAAF World Half-Marathon medalist Susan Chepkemei has been sanctioned for a doping violation, the IAAF reported yesterday. In an out-of-competition test in Kenya last September, Chepkemei's sample returned a positive result for Salbutamol, a medication commonly prescribed for breathing problems, usually asthma.
Indeed, according to Valentijn Trouw of Global Sports Communications, the Dutch management firm which represents Chepkemei, the medication was given to their athlete by a doctor in a Nairobi hospital where Chepkemei had presented herself for treatment.
"Beginning of September Susan Chepkemei had a severe pneumonia," Trouw said in a written statement. "After investigation in the hospital in Nairobi, she was told by the doctor to take a medicine (which contained the substance Salbutamol). Susan was convinced the doctor who gave her the prescription knew she was an international top athlete and she was given a medicine that didn't contain any substance which is prohibited according to the doping list. She took the medicine that evening."
The following day, Sept. 10, IAAF drug testers visited Chepkemei's home to take a sample.
"She fully co-operated with the test and wrote down on the doping form the medicine she had taken the evening before," Trouw continued. "Later in the year she was informed her doping test showed a positive result."
According to the IAAF, Athletics Kenya has imposed a sanction of one year of ineligibility, from Oct. 19, 2007, through Oct. 18, 2008, and all results achieved by Chepkemei from Sept. 10, 2007, to the present will be annulled. In that timeframe, Chepkemei competed in only one event: the IAAF World Half-Marathon Championships last 14-Oct where she did not finish.
Trouw also confirmed that Chepkemei is five months pregnant, a fact consistent with her lack of competition appearances in recent months.
Chepkemei, 32, has been one of Kenya's best long-term performers from 10,000m to the marathon. In 2002 she won the Commonwealth Games silver medal at 10,000m setting a personal best 31:32.04. She has a half-marathon personal best of 1:05:44 set on the aided course in Lisbon in 2001, but also ran a 1:07:36 on a record-standard course in Bristol, England, later that year at the IAAF World Half-Marathon Championships where she earned her second of three silver medals in those championships. She has a marathon personal best of 2:21:46 set at London in 2006, where she finished third.
One of her most dramatic races came in the 2004 ING New York City Marathon where she came second to Briton's Paula Radcliffe in a sprint finish.
PHOTO: Susan Chepkemei after the 2005 Boclassic road race in Bolzano, Italy (Photo by Bob Ramsak).
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