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Two Kenyan runners 'fail doping tests'

Rita Jeptoo is one of the biggest names in Kenyan athletics to have failed a drugs test © Getty Images

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Two Kenyan runners have reportedly failed drugs tests and received two-year bans with five other athletes being investigated.

Athletics Kenya has confirmed that Viola Chelangat Kimetto and Joyce Jemutai Kiplimo tested positive for norandrosterone, a metabolite of nandrolone, according to the BBC.

Kimetto reportedly tested positive at the Macau marathon in December last year while Kiplimo is alleged to have failed a test taken following April's Yangzhou half-marathon.

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Reuters also reports that Athletics Kenya has told the five other athletes under investigation to report to its office by Thursday over "particular issues revolving around doping cases" raised by their anti-doping unit.

Around 40 Kenyan athletes are understood to have failed doping tests in the past two years, one of the most high-profile being Boston and Chicago marathon winner Rita Jeptoo, whose tested positive for an A sample in October, with Olympic champion David Rudisha claiming his country is not doing enough to solve the problem.

The news comes amid explosive allegations from a German television documentary of systematic doping by Russian athletes, which has seen Russia's athletics chief quit his role as IAAF treasurer.

According to the Daily Telegraph, as many as 225 athletes are also named in documents which are said to reveal the true scale of an alleged doping cover-up by athletics' world governing body.

The athletes, from up to 39 countries, feature on a list of competitors with suspicious blood values taken between 2006-8, which was exposed last week by German television channel ARD.

Three Britons are said to be included on the list, including one high profile member of Team GB.

Lord Coe, a double Olympic 1500m champion and figurehead for the 2012 London Olympics says the IAAF must act to save athletics and that the current doping allegations plaguing the sport could be as damaging as the case of disgraced Olympic champion Ben Johnson.

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