Ruth Chepngetich, the women’s marathon world record holder, has been banned three years after testing positive for a banned diuretic in March and admitting to doping violations.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) announced Thursday that Chepngetich accepted a three-year ban, backdated to April 19. The AIU, which handles doping cases in international track and field, previously announced in July that Chepngetich was provisionally suspended.
The Kenyan Chepngetich tested positive for Hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) from a March 14 sample.
An AIU investigation found evidence from her phone “indicating a reasonable suspicion that her positive test may have been intentional,” according to the AIU.
In AIU interviews on April 16 and July 11 (when she was confronted with the phone evidence), Chepngetich could not provide an explanation for the positive test and said she never doped.
On July 31, Chepngetich changed her explanation, writing according to the AIU: “she had taken ill two days before the positive test and she had taken her housemaid’s medication as treatment, without taking any steps to verify if it contained a prohibited substance. She stated that she had forgotten to disclose this incident to the AIU investigators. She sent a photo of the medication blister pack which clearly marked the medication as being “Hydrochlorothiazide.’”
“While the AIU considered her new explanation to be hardly credible, for the purposes of the anti-doping rules (ADR), it did not assist in mitigating the standard two-year sanction for a specified substance such as HCTZ,” an AIU press release stated. “To the contrary, the ADR treats the type of recklessness described by Chepngetich in taking her housemaid’s medication as being indirect intent, for which an increased four-year sanction applies.”
Chepngetich’s possible four-year ban was reduced to three for admitting to the violation and accepting the sanction within 20 days.
On Oct. 13, 2024, Chepngetich won the Chicago Marathon in 2:09:56, taking 1 minute, 57 seconds off the world record. Chepngetich’s result from that race has not been stripped since she tested positive five months after her run.
However, the AIU will continue to investigate material recovered from Chepngetich’s phone, which includes what it called relevant messages or conversations from 2022, 2023 and 2025, plus a screenshot of a WhatsApp message from April 2024 with images of two testosterone vials.
Chepngetich denied ever using testosterone or knowing why she received the message. She said she may have unintentionally taken the screenshot.
According to the AIU, the diuretic HCTZ is used clinically to treat fluid retention and hypertension. It is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency for international sport without an accepted therapeutic use exemption. Diuretics can be abused to mask the presence in urine of other banned substances.
