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Kenya's Bungei wants cheats slapped with stiffer penalty to tame doping

Xinhua, January 14, 2015 Adjust font size:

Kenya's Beijing Olympics 800m champion Wilfred Bungei on Tuesday added his concern over escalating doping cases in Kenya, saying it is embarrassing and the government must pass stiffer penalty on the cheats.

Bungei told a news conference in Nairobi that it pains him whenever he travels when people doubt his performances yet he is retired.

"Sometimes when you are out of this country, people will query if you won legitimately, in the wake of the doping scandals that have rocked Kenya," Bungei said.

"I have to ask the government to pass stiffer penalty on the offenders because they are doing many of us a bad service. I am retired, but people will even start doubting that we won clean. I support the four year penalty for doping," he said.

World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has doubled from two years to four the penalty for first offenders, which came into effect from Jan 1. This was one of the key change in the global fight against doping in sports.

The World Anti-Doping Agency also passed a rule that offered athletes possible immunity from punishment in return for " substantial" information on doping, giving athletes an incentive to testify in a planned inquiry into their sport's drug-stained past.

The code which took effect Jan. 1, mainly focuses on the Beijing World Championships in August and the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

It will ensure that athletes found guilty of intentional doping miss the next Olympics games, a position strongly backed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

But the move to four-year bans - seen as the most obvious new deterrent - was joined by a clause that will allow athletes to escape any sanction if their information on doping is valuable enough.

"Kenya is not doing enough to educate and warn athletes against doping. But time is coming when we will have a clean house in Athletics Kenya (AK) to oversee the complete overhaul of the structures and sensitization of athletes against use of banned substances," said Bungei.

Sports or countries deemed not compliant with WADA rules can be thrown out of the Olympics and that is why Kenya has teamed up with China and Norway to set up a strong credible National Anti- Doping Agency in Nairobi. Endite