Kenya’s world marathon champion Peres Jepchirchir has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) \u200cin a sample taken before her Sydney Marathon victory, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said this Friday.<\/p>\n
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The AIU added that the out-of-competition sample collected in Kenya returned an adverse analytical finding for EPO, which boosts the production \u2060of red blood cells.<\/p>\n
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“I can only say that I feel terrible about what happened and I think it’s only right that an athlete who uses the performance enhancing drugs should be disqualified,” her agent Gianni Demadonna said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n
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The 33-year-old is a former Olympic champion and half-marathon world record holder as well as a four-times World Marathon \u200cMajors \u2060winner.<\/p>\n
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She won gold at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and has also claimed major marathon victories in New York (2021), Boston (2022), London (2024) and Sydney (2026) .<\/p>\n
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Jepchirchir dominated the women’s race in Sydney in August, pulling clear of \u2060the field to finish in 2:18:31, more than three minutes ahead of second-placed compatriot Irine Cheptai.<\/p>\n
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Last year, Kenya’s women’s marathon world record \u2060holder Ruth Chepngetich was banned for three years after admitting anti-doping rule violations involving hydrochlorothiazide, a prohibited diuretic, though her \u2060world record of 2:09:56 remained on the books because it was set before her positive test.<\/p>\n
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–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":48915,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-48914","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Peres Jepchirchir has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for the banned blood booster","published_date":"2026-10-23 16:52:29","news_description":"Peres Jepchirchir has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for the banned blood booster","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48917,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/48914\/revisions\/48917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=48914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}