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Doping: Marathon world record-holder Chepng'etich banned 3 years over 'water pill'
Ruth Chepng'etich wins Women's Marathon in Japan in 2023.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) has banned women’s marathon world record-holder Ruth Chepng'etich for three years for doping.
AIU, the independent integrity arm of World Athletics, announced on Thursday that it had banned Chepng’etich after the three-time Chicago Marathon champion admitted to Anti-Doping Rule Violations (ADRVs) regarding the presence and use of Hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ), which is also known as the ‘water pill’.
The 31-year-old 2019 World marathon champion accepted the charges and sanctions following a positive test for the banned diuretic from a sample on March 14, 2025, and a subsequent AIU investigation into the circumstances.
Ruth Chepng'etich celebrates crossing 10km senior women on December 17, 2022 during the Athletics Kenya Prisons National Cross Country championship at Prisons Staff Training College.
Chepng’etich, who is a member of Rosa Associati management, had withdrawn from the London Marathon held on April 27, 2025, alleging that she had not prepared well, only for AIU to pull the rag under her feet on July 17, 2025 by flagging her for anti-doping offence.
Chepng’etich shattered the women’s marathon world record and became the first woman in history to run sub 2:10 when she clocked 2:09:56 to win the Chicago Marathon in October last year.
She also won the Chicago Marathon in 2021 and defended it in 2022. She then obliterated the previous record of 2:11:53 by Ethiopian Tigist Assefa set in Berlin on September 24, 2023 to recapture the title last year.
AIU’s Chief Executive Officer, Brett Clothier, said Chepng’etich will keep her world record and her previous victories because the disqualified results are those dating from March 14, 2025.
The AIU issued Chepng’etich with a Notice of Charge seeking a four-year sanction on August 22, 2025.
Chepng’etich admitted the ADRVs and, since she accepted the proposed sanction within 20 days on September 10, 2025, she was granted an automatic one-year reduction of the four years due to the Early Admission and Acceptance of Sanction provision in ADR 10.8.1.
Ruth Chepng'etich celebrates after finishing first in the women’s race, setting a world record at 2:09:56 during the 2024 Chicago Marathon at Grant Park on October 13, 2024.
Chepng’etich had previously maintained her position that she could not explain the positive test and that she had never doped, but changed that explanation on July 31, 2025. She wrote to the AIU that she had now recalled that she had been taken ill two days before the positive test, and that 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 the incident to the AIU investigators. She sent a photo of the medication’s 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.
The ADR treats the type of recklessness described by Chepng’etich in taking her housemaid’s medication as being indirect intent, for which an increased four-year sanction applies.
A statement from AIU indicated that whilst diuretics are known to be abused by athletes to mask the presence in urine of other prohibited substances, HCTZ has also been identified as a potential contaminant in pharmaceutical products.
It has been ascribed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) a minimum reporting limit of 20ng/ml, below which a positive test should not be reported. An estimated concentration of 3800ng/mL of HCTZ was found in Chepng’etich’s urine sample.
Marathon champion Ruth Chepng'etich.
When she was initially interviewed by AIU investigators on April 16, 2025, Chepng’etich could not provide an explanation for the positive test.
At the time, to rule out the possibility of contamination, evidence was collected from her including her detailed recollection of all the supplements and medications she had taken in the lead up to the positive test, and all available supplements and medications in her possession were immediately retained by the AIU for analysis.
Chepng’etich’s mobile phone was also copied for analysis.
At a subsequent interview, on July 11, 2025, Chepng’etich was confronted with evidence acquired from her mobile telephone indicating a reasonable suspicion that her positive test may have been intentional.
AIU explained that she was also informed that all the supplements and medications that had been taken for analysis had been reported by a WADA-accredited laboratory as negative for HCTZ.
AIU Chair David Howman said this case underlines that “nobody is above the rules” and lauded the industry’s commitment to the integrity of the sport.
