Kenyan marathoner Wilson Kipsang, the 2014 New York City Marathon champion and former world-record holder, said his nation’s athletics federation maliciously targeted him in announcing that he missed a drug test last month.
Kipsang, 32 and the 2012 Olympic bronze medalist, couldn’t be found for an out-of-competition drug test on Nov. 11, according to Athletics Kenya.
Kipsang said he was at a conference in South Africa on that date, and Athletics Kenya was aware of his whereabouts.
It is common for Olympic sports athletes to miss random out-of-competition tests, if they are not where they stated they would be at a given time on whereabouts forms.
That’s why it takes three missed tests, not just one, over an 18-month period to be punished. Kipsang hasn’t hit three missed tests and is upset that Athletics Kenya took the unusual step of announcing a single missed test.
“It is breach of privacy with malicious target to soil my name,” he said in a statement, according to Kenyan media.
“Missing unwillingly a single test, in fact for the first time cannot amount to issuing a press statement by a national federation.
“I am not the only athlete who misses a test. I am not the first one in Kenya neither in the whole world. Then, why Kipsang?”
Kenya is home to the world’s best distance runners, a group that has come under scrutiny with doping cases in recent months.
Rita Jeptoo, the two-time reigning winner of the Boston and Chicago Marathons, failed a drug test in September.
