Norah Jeruto, the Kenya-born runner who won world championship gold for Kazakhstan in the 3,000-metre steeplechase last year, has been provisionally suspended on suspicion of breaking anti-doping rules, the Athletics Integrity Unit said this morning.
A notice of charge has been issued against Jeruto, 27, for the use of a prohibited substance or method, according to an entry on the website of the AIU, which oversees doping cases in track and field.
The AIU indicated the case involves her athlete biological passport, a mechanism for tracking competitors' blood values over a long period to flag up signs of possible doping.
A provisional suspension means she cannot compete until the case is resolved.
Jeruto won the African championship gold medal in the steeplechase in 2016 and the Diamond League title in 2021, both while representing Kenya.
She switched allegiance to Kazakhstan last year, having missed the Tokyo Olympics while she waited for the switch to take effect, and won the Central Asian nation's first ever world track and field gold medal in championship-record time in Eugene, Oregon, last year.
Jeruto's ban comes after New Zealand distance runner and Olympian Zane Robertson was banned last month for testing positive for erythropoietin (EPO) and providing false documentation in his defence after he was tested at the UK's Great Manchester Run in May 2022.
Robertson was banned for eight years.
The Sports Tribunal of New Zealand said in its decision that Robertson had claimed to have attended a Kenyan medical facility seeking a Covid-19 vaccination, but was instead treated for Covid-19, which included the administration of EPO.
Robertson supported his evidence with affidavits from Kenyan doctors, hospital notes, a hospital report and a witness statement from a Kenyan detective - much of which was disputed by the Anti-doping Agency of Kenya.
Speaking to the Runner's Only with Dom Harvey podcast, Robertson said he had been growing increasingly frustrated at the sport, and he made some "really bad decisions in a really dark place".
"It's been building on me for a few years - frustration and anger at the sport itself," he told Harvey.
"At any elite sport I believe the top is, it's not a level playing field like they say. Why do people like myself, I had to ask myself this question, why do people like myself always have to be the ones to lose or suffer, and in the end, lose our contracts, lose our income, lose our race winnings, and eventually end up not having the ability to have a family or live anywhere else in the world from the predicaments we are in."
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