Former marathon world record holder Wilson Kipsang, has been banned for four years for whereabouts failures and tampering by providing false evidence and witness testimony.

The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said the Kenyan’s ban is effective from January 10 2020, the date when he was provisionally suspended.

Under anti-doping regulations, athletes have to inform testing authorities of their whereabouts for a one-hour window of every day and three failures — not being present at the said time — within 12 months leads to an automatic ban.

The AIU found that Kipsang had committed a total of four missed Tests and/or filing failures including a missed test on 27 April 2018, a filing failure related to the Athlete’s whereabouts information provided for 18 January 2019.

He also missed a test on 12 April 2019 followed another missed test a month later.

“However, by application of Article 10.7.4(a) of the 2019 IAAF Rules, the anti- doping rule violations committed by the Athlete shall be treated together as one single anti-doping rule violation and the sanction imposed shall be based on that which carries the more severe sanction,” the AIU said in a statement.

posted Friday July 3rd