Rio 2016: Olympics hit by new doping scandal over bribery allegations against Kenya track and field chief
Major Michael Rotich filmed offering to warn athletes about drug tests in exchange for one-off fee of £10,000 – but the team manager insists he was himself investigating the undercover reporters
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Your support makes all the difference.The Rio Olympics have been plunged into yet another doping scandal, after the head of the Kenyan track and field team was caught in an undercover sting offering to tip off athletes over the timing of drugs tests.
Major Michael Rotich was due to lead out his team at the opening ceremony on Friday, but failed to turn up after he was presented with the allegations. He has now returned to Kenya pending an investigation.
In a joint investigation, the German broadcaster ARD and The Sunday Times said Rotich told undercover reporters he could give athletes 12-hour advance warning of when they would be tested by anti-doping teams, in exchange for a bribe of £10,000.
Responding to the allegations, Mr Rotich did not deny what he was filmed saying.
Instead, the team manager said he had himself gone along with the meeting to expose the fictitious doping under discussion and “protect” his athletes.
The allegations would be scandal enough for a Games already hit by revelations about widespread and state-sponsored doping across Russian athletics. Kenya has more medal contenders in the middle- and long-distance running events in Rio than any other nation.
But there could also be broader international implications. The East African country is a favourite as a training destination for teams around the world and, according to The Sunday Times, Rotich was filmed boasting about Kenya as a safe place for athletes to take banned performance-enhancing drugs without being caught.
ARD reporter Hajo Seppelt tweeted a response from Athletics Kenya (AK) spokesperson Evans Bosire, who said they were considering whether to “hand [the matter] over to police”.
Mr Bosire said: “These are very serious allegations...and we cannot have someone of that character managing our team. We cannot just sweep it under the carpet.”
The tone of that response was altogether different to one tweeted to Mr Seppelt by the official account for AK, which has since been deleted. It read: “You know what? You're already loser on this jealousy on Kenyans. Give us a recap of 1976 games.” Many African countries boycotted the Games that year in protest against apartheid in South Africa.
In the undercover film, Mr Rotich said he was able to give advance warning of tests because he knew the officials responsible for carrying them out, adding that they would sometimes contact him to find out the whereabouts of athletes.
The recording was made during investigations earlier this year into claims doctors were providing banned substances to athletes training in at the British team’s altitude-training base in Iten, Kenya. Those reports led to the arrest of three medics by the Kenyan authorities.
Presented with the allegations, Mr Rotich told The Sunday Times he agreed to the meeting to investigate the undercover reporters, who claimed they were hired to supply a fictional team of British athletes with the banned blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO) ahead of Rio.
“I am not a sell-out and I was doing it for the benefit of the future,” he said.
Meanwhile, the fallout continued from the decision to allow Russia to go ahead and compete in some aspects of the Rio games despite a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report exposing a Moscow-run doping system amounting to a “deliberate abuse of power” by the Russian government.
On Saturday night, Russia's first champion at the Rio Olympics suggested his win would help to lift the gloom from the country's doping scandal.
Beslan Mudranov, who won gold on Saturday in the men's 60-kilogram judo class, said he was “really pleased I could get a gold on the first day, because everyone knows what kind of situation we had in Russia before the Olympics”.
After Russia’s team lost more than 100 athletes over its doping scandals, Mudranov said that, besides him, “many (Russian) athletes who could also have won gold, many of them weren't let in”. Still, he added, his win was “not our last gold” in Rio.
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