Olympic and World Championships marathon gold medallist Peres Jepchirchir has been provisionally suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit after an out-of-competition pattern examined optimistic for EPO.
Kenyan Jepchirchir offered the pattern previous to profitable the Sydney Marathon on 30 August 2026.
The 33-year-old clocked a time of two hours, 18 minutes and 31 seconds to win in Sydney.
EPO, or erythropoietin, is a pure substance produced throughout the kidneys that stimulates the creation of recent purple blood cells.
If injected, it is just detectable within the urine or blood for a brief window of time, and will increase the quantity of purple blood cells, which carry oxygen to the muscle groups, within the blood stream.
Jepchirchir grew to become the Olympic girls’s marathon champion on the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and returned to the Japanese capital to win the World Championships in September 2025.
She broke the ladies’s half-marathon world report in 2017 and on three events in 2020.
Along with Sydney, her different main wins got here on the New York Marathon in 2021, the Boston Marathon in 2022 and the London Marathon in 2024.
Jepchirchir received the Sydney race, which grew to become the seventh world main in 2025, by greater than three minutes from compatriot Irene Chepet Cheptai.
She offered the pattern which examined optimistic for EPO whereas in Kenya previous to the race.
