Thousands of meters above the large rift valley that crosses eastern Africa, the small town of Iten, Kenya, the Home of the Champions calls itself. It has long produced and attracts world -class running talents, its high altitude and red dirt roads serving as a training field for thousands of people.
The city also has a much less commendable reputation. It is a well -documented center of a doping crisis that shows few signs of being controlled.
The runners come here in search of access to competitions, talented coaches and the benefit of training in a thin air, all to try to enrich with the race. Many Kenyans trying to join the elite support tight and dirty living conditions, little food and separation from their families at the service of their ambitions.
In a region where average annual income is just over $ 2,000 (R $ 11,200) and competition is so intense, the potentially transformative attraction of prohibited substances, locally as “the medicine”, is obvious. A few thousand dollars in awards or participation in a single race abroad may be the difference between corridors and their families eat three meals a day or fight for the next one.
They estimate that doping is worth the risks not only to be caught, but also to harm your health and, in some cases, until they die.
In this environment, the doping industry flourished, with pharmacies in the city of Eldoret, the region’s health center, serving as a channel for substances that improve performance. The crisis brings together extreme poverty, an opportunity to make money, corruption and a region overflowing with talent for running, which makes a more difficult advantage than anywhere else.
“This economic reality means that the high -risk situation will always be impossible to eradicate completely,” said Brett Clothier, head of the global athletics unit responsible for anti -doping efforts.
Many corridors and coaches suspect their rivals dop at the list of athletes prevented from participating in international competitions. The Kenya, which has a population smaller than 25 other countries, has the largest number of names on the list.
Some of Kenya’s most prominent corridors were caught by anti -doping exams and prevented from competing. The worldwide record holder of the women’s marathon, Ruth Chepngetich, born in the Rift Valley, was suspended this month after positive testing for a forbidden substance. Your agent did not respond to a request for comment.
International authorities have made progress. The Kenyans are now among the most tested athletes anywhere, Clothier said, adding that, as spread as doping was, it was much worse for just a few years.
However, global anti -doping organs suspect that inspection efforts may be touching only the edges of a cheating epidemic. Authorities in Kenya responsible for fighting doping were caught accepting bribes. Some were arrested.
The scale of the problem led the athletics regulator to threaten to ban the Kenya of global competitions unless his government is committed to spending $ 25 million to combat doping, an impressive amount in the anti -doping world.
“We have to teach them a different way of seeing things: that using illegitimate means to do well will not help them in the long run; they harm their health, and they may not succeed,” said Barnabas Korir, member of the executive committee of the Kenya Athletics Federation, which is also part of an anti-doping multiagencia body.
“It’s a matter of completely changing the attitude.”
Corridors everywhere
Before dawn, any day, corridors raise the red earth along the main road to ITEN or other training routes. In the busiest moments, it may seem that more people are running than walking along the road.
The best are in their own teams. Their promising athletes sleep, eat and train at camps. The most promising compete in local and regional races and, if successful, teams send them abroad to win cash or sponsorship prizes.
Thousands of other athletes exist on the outskirts of this structure outside the teams. On a Tuesday this year, one of them, Daniel Rotich, 24, was at Kipchoge Keino stadium, which bears the name of one of Kenya’s most revered corridors. It is a decrepit building that is a magnet for runners seeking to improve.
Rotich arrived before dawn, waiting for a coach who, in the end, did not appear. With a young son and another on his way, Rotich convinced his wife that he should try to run, as he had been promising at school.
He had corn and beans for a few more weeks, enough time, expected to improve his pace and attract the attention of a camp that would provide housing and food in exchange for part of any gain. His wife sent him the equivalent of a dollar every two days, he said, and slept in a thin blue carpet in a room with a clay floor that a friend let him use.
“It’s hard, but we have to survive until you get it,” he said after running ten 1,000 meters each. “It can take two years or six months.”
Its story is typical. “You will never find someone running out of health,” said Toby Tanser, a former company who wrote books on Kenyan race in one morning amid the applause of children on a surrounding training camp.
Although many corridors here convince that they can stand out from the crowd, Tanser said, “The sad reality is that about 95% of the runners who train in Iten will never have a career.”
A better life
To win the competition and earn an income that changes life, which can mean as little as $ 5,000 ($ 28,000) or $ 10,000 per year, doping is an attractive proposal.
In the last decade, Alfred, an athlete who recognized forbidden drugs, has achieved success in modest races. The income, he said, allowed him to provide a house for his family and his mother, who lived in the house of clay and straw where he was raised.
Doping was the only way he saw for a better life, said Alfred, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his last name was not used.
Access to prohibited substances is simple, according to anti -doping authorities and athletes. Pharmacies spread across the streets of Eldoret, a city with about half a million inhabitants and the region’s main commercial hub, about 30 minutes by Iten’s drive. Runners can get just about everything they need to improve their performance. For those who cannot afford, some pharmacists or doctors make agreements to get a percentage of future gains, said athletes and anti -doping authorities. Pharmacists in Iten and Eldoret and surroundings refused to give interviews.
“If a doubtful doctor or pharmacist says ‘try this’, people simply do,” said Clothier, the anti -doping officer.
The repression of the authorities also targeted drug suppliers. In May, an Indian citizen was arrested in Iten carrying forbidden drugs, including human growth hormones.
Efforts as presentations on the risks of doping had negative results, said Joseph Cheromei, a respected local coach known for his hard line against doping. The presentations of anti -doping agents, added Cheromei instead described to corridors which substances would increase their speed.
Running to avoid capture
Mass tests are the latest tool that authorities have developed to detect iten fraud.
One November morning, authorities broke into a track where dozens of athletes were training and locked the gates. Chaos settled, according to Ben Kipchirchir, a Kenyan corridor.
Kipchirchir said he witnessed athletes climbing walls and jumping fences to escape. “They ran everywhere,” he said, smiling sadly.
Often Kenyans and other drug users show little consideration of physical risks, such as dangerously high heart rate, kidney and liver disease and even death.
In the fall of 2024, in the same track as Iten, a 20 -year -old man trying to a scholarship to an American college fainted and died after a 3,000 meter test, reports from the press.
He is one of many young Kenyan athletes who died running, according to press reports about their deaths. The causes of death have been difficult for sports leaders to determine as they failed access to autopsy results.
“If someone dies like this, a fit athlete, a young man, there has to be a reason,” said Korir, the Kenyan leader. “It can’t be someone who just falls dead.”
Kipchirchir’s goal of becoming a professional becomes more difficult every day as younger rivals come together to the fight to get ahead.
Tired, he watches them, finally accelerate-jacks “to the medicine,” he said-quickly surpassing him in the race to change his lives.
“It’s not fair,” he said.
