I always believed that 99% of Kenyans were clean runners. And I still think this was the case before...but not anymore in 2015. About 10 years ago, if you showed a Kenyan runner that you were taking some supplements, like vitamin C or iron, they would laugh at you. "Wazungu [white people] need that, but they still can't beat us", was often the response. Kenyan runners had a very strong believe in themselves; their talent, the power of their training, in combination with altitude and ugali, the maize meal they eat every day. Taking anything that is not completely natural (like legal supplements) was considered un-Kenyan and unnecessary. But things have changed. Many Kenyan athletes, especially the young and the sub-top athletes, seem to believe that performing without the use of drugs is  no longer possible. From a complete belief in training, we are almost shifting to a complete belief in drugs. I don't mean to say that the majority of Kenyan athletes are using drugs. I still think many are clean, but the number of them using performance enhancing drugs is definitely rising - which is clear from the number of positive cases among Kenyan runners in the last 2 years. The problem is just that many of them believe that the only difference between them and a world-class athlete is that the world class athlete is on drugs. Apart from that (the use of drugs) they are the same. And that is sad. I strongly believe that world-class performances are possible. I have seen Hilda run 30.51 on a 10k and 2.24 in marathon and her sister run 14.31 in the 5000m. And I can see that there are athletes with more natural talent than them, who ran faster than that. When people stop believing this and in stead think (which is what I sometimes hear in Kenya) that any woman running under 2.30 in the marathon, or any man running under 2.10 is on drugs, that is a recipe for disaster. If (young) athletes continue to believe this, we can expect to see a tsunami of doping cases in Kenya in the coming years. So what can we do about this situation? For sure, the move from Athletics Kenya (AK) to ban two management bureau's is not a solution and probably only meant take away the attention from AK's own malfunctioning and fraud cases. What we do need is this;

• 1. Establish a doping lab in East-Africa so that regular blood testing can be done.
• 2. Make sure top-athletes fill in their own whereabouts, also in Kenya and Ethiopia. All athletes are in Facebook, so filling in their own whereabouts should be no problem (so far this is often done by managers). Of course, they need instructions for this.
• 3. Be tough on the missed tests; athletes who fill in their whereabouts, have to be in the place where they say they are (the 1 hour time-frame). In the last few years I have heard of many cases where the doping control officials could not find the athlete they wanted to test, or could only find them after many hours - which is what happens when athletes don't have to say where they are on a certain day. When athletes fill in their own whereabouts, this problem should be something of the past.
• 4. AK or the government should come up with an education programme for athletes, in which they are informed about the (negative) effects of drugs, which drugs are on the doping list, etc. I just came from India, where I'm coaching a group of young top-athletes and we were all educated about doping for 2 hours during a workshop from the National Anti-Doping Agency. The often heard excuse from athletes, after a positive case, is that they didn't know that something was illegal. Well, I think in most cases that is just a simple lie, but it's still important to educate the athletes. In Kenya, a large number of athletes is under-educated (they only went to primary school), which makes an education programma essential.
• 5. At random out of competition testing. In Kenya we have thousands of strong athletes. Only a small number can be part of the official testing pool. Those just below the world-top are often only tested during competition, so there is a serious risk of them using performance enhancing drugs. Testing at random, for instance by going to the main training venues (like Kamariny track, Chepkoilel track) on a tuesday morning and testing athletes at random might be a solution. I understood this happens already.
• 6. Apart from that, I hope the rise of doping cases can lead to the criminalisation of doping. Using, dealing with and administering of doping should be forbidden by law, since it leads to the stealing of money, fame and medals. And sometimes even to death. When the use of doping is a criminal offense, that gives the police the authority to go after suspects, whether athletes, coaches, managers or doctors. The police has better means than the WADA, like the use of microphones/camera's etc. in order to find criminals. They don't rely on testing. And when people have to face some years in prison, even when they were (fraudulent) Olympic Champions, that might scare more than just being banned from the sport.

When supplying and administering doping is against the law, 'doping-doctors' can be stripped from their license and the same counts for managers and coaches. In fact, now that I'm writing this, I wonder why the use of performance enhancing drugs is not yet criminalised in many countries all over the world. Because it might be the best way to really deal with this terrible disease. Is it because most countries don't want to go after their national champions? Are there too many legal obstacles for it? If you know the answer, please let me know! And if there is no valid answer, then maybe as athletes/coaches/managers we can push our governments into making this decision.

During a seminar about anti-doping in India we were informed about the rules of anti-doping and the side effects of doping.