Achol gets six-year ban, insists: ‘I did not know how banned substances got into my system’
The Athletics Integrity Unit, AIU, has banned Kenya’s Emmaculate Anyango Achol for six years from 26 September 2024 for Presence/Use of a Prohibited Substance (Testosterone and EPO) despite the 24-year old’s insistence that she did not know ‘how the EPO and Metabolites of Testosterone consistent with exogenous origin came to be in her system.’
The former African U20 3000m silver medalist who placed fourth at the 45th World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Belgrade, the capital and largest city of Serbia last March, was notified in September by the AIU of the adverse analytical findings, including that the adverse analytical findings may result in anti-doping rule violations pursuant to the relevant anti-doping rules and of the imposition of an immediate provisional suspension.
The notice of allegation, according to the AIU, included a written demand for Achol to attend an interview with the AIU to provide her explanation.
Achol attended the interview via video conference the next day and insisted she was innocent.
The Kenyan admitted that EPO and Metabolites of Testosterone consistent with exogenous origin were found in the samples that were collected from her but she did not know how they came to be in her system.
She explained she had a medical condition for which she had been taken to and treated at various hospitals in Kenya on several occasions after she had fainted and did not know what she had been injected with during her treatment at these hospitals because she did not remember being there and only discovered that she had been treated after she had returned home.
Achol provided receipts for her hospital treatment and insisted that she had not deliberately taken or injected any prohibited substances.
After reviewing the documents she submitted including X-ray scans, the AIU ‘remained satisfied that none of them explained the presence of the prohibited substances in her system and that she had committed anti-doping rules violations as set out in the rules.’
