Paris (AFP)
Kenya's Elijah Manangoi, 1,500m world champion in 2017, was suspended for two years for failing to meet his anti-doping whereabouts obligations, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said on Friday.
Suspended provisionally since July, Manangoi (27) will miss the Tokyo Olympics, postponed to the summer of 2021. According to the ruling, he "accepted the consequences of his anti-doping rule violation".
Manangoi was found guilty of missing three unexpected doping controls on July 3, 2019, November 12, 2019 and December 22, 2019.
According to the anti-doping rules in force, athletes must indicate their geographic locations to the anti-doping authorities 90 days in advance in order to allow unannounced out-of-competition testing every day of the year.
Three breaches of these obligations in twelve months constitute an anti-doping offense.
The suspension takes effect from December 22, 2019 and will end on December 21, 2021.
Manangoi took the silver from the 2015 Worlds in Beijing, before winning world gold two years later in London.
He had given up on the Worlds-2019 ten days before the competition, due to an ankle injury.
In 2016, he had not taken the start of his semi-final at the Rio Olympics.
His suspension is another blow to athletics, which has seen a succession of doping cases in recent months.
The American 100m world champion Christian Coleman was suspended for two years on October 27 for breaches of his anti-doping whereabouts obligations.
Bahraini Salwa Eid Naser, the reigning 400m world champion, narrowly escaped a sanction for the same reasons on October 20 after being provisionally suspended since June.
But the IAU appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
At the end of June, the president of the International Athletics Federation Sebastian Coe had urged athletes to take these whereabouts rules, which aim "to protect athletes" seriously, in an interview with BBC Sport.
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