Ruth Jebet: Olympic steeplechase champion handed four-year doping ban
Last Updated: 04/03/20 5:54pm
Olympic steeplechase champion Ruth Jebet has been banned for four years for doping.
Kenyan-born Jebet, who competes for Bahrain, tested positive for the stamina-boosting drug EPO in a sample she gave in December 2017.
She won the Olympic gold medal in 2016 and was the world record holder at the time she tested positive.
The verdict follows a lengthy legal battle that was partially delayed because Bahrain's track federation stopped funding Jebet's defence.
A disciplinary panel said Jebet offered contradictory explanations of how the EPO entered her system.
The verdict says she claimed she was injected by a person variously described by her as her husband or boyfriend and that she said on different occasions she had thought the substance was either vitamins or painkillers.
She also suggested that her former physiotherapist had misled her about the substance.
Jebet can appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
