Does anyone master the 2022 charts of Sierre Zinal ? Be careful, even the biggest aficionados of this legendary trail race in Switzerland (31 km and 2,200 m of elevation gain), which will celebrate its 50th edition on Saturday, could be trapped. Quite simply because it took several months before the unprecedented Kenyan double Mark Kangogo-Esther Chesang was downgraded due to positive doping tests.
Like Andy Schleck in the 2010 Tour de France, after Alberto Contador was downgraded for doping, the Spaniard Andreu Blanes and the Swiss Maude Mathys (both 2nd) were therefore declared winners a posteriori. If Mark Kangogo had tested positive on August 13, 2022, just after the race, for norandrosterone (an anabolic steroid) and triamcinolone acetonide (a glucocorticoid), Esther Chesang was on her negative side that day.
But the 28-year-old trail runner had been provisionally suspended in May 2022 after testing positive for triamcinolone in Kenya, which the Kenyan anti-doping agency told the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU)… in January 2023. She should therefore not have been able to compete in Sierre-Zinal last season, which extended her suspension from three to four years. This imbroglio, which trail-running had never before been confronted with in its young history for winners of a major race, raises a question: has doping become a scourge in this discipline?
“The number of checks is starving”
“This episode was not a huge surprise, says Valentin Genoud, deputy director of Sierre-Zinal. We are not naive: there are increasingly big issues of financing and media coverage around trail running, so the risks of cheating are very present. We’ve shown the world that zero tolerance works, so we’re growing out of this. We want to guarantee a clean race by fighting against cheating. The organizers of Sierre-Zinal do not hesitate to “mandate” the agency Swiss Sport Integrity to carry out around ten checks on each edition, starting with the men’s and women’s podiums.
The process has a substantial cost, up to 850 euros per test, even if part of it is covered by the World Cup circuit. Similarly, Valentin Genoud tells us that since the downgrading of Kangogo and Chesang, “the regulations have been tightened regarding the anti-doping policy in order to legally and financially bind the athletes but also their manager”. Not all races show such vigilance regarding doping, according to Baptiste Chassagne, 29, the reigning French long-distance trail champion.
The number of doping controls, which are all urinary, is starving. They are only random for the first three of certain big races. Very few trail runners are suspended but that does not mean that there is no doping, just that there are no controls or almost. We sometimes have runners who slam something huge, then we no longer hear about them behind, that calls out. I didn’t have the slightest control after finishing 4th last year in the ultras of Transgrancanaria and Lavaredo, and 3rd in SaintéLyon. It’s as if I was looping “sausage races”. »
“We are not respected enough by the authorities”
Even the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (171 km and 10,000 m of elevation gain), the most prestigious ultra race in the world, with between 1,000 and 10,000 euros at stake for the Top 10 of the three main events (10,000 participants in total), did not control a single trail runner last year.
“It was really disturbing not to have had any control that day, regrets the American Jim Walmsley, 4th in the UTMB in 2022 and still among the favorites this summer. Being tested at the end of such a race is the minimum. It shows that the level of doping controls is a total failure in our sport, as they are almost non-existent. We are not respected enough by the authorities, since we are not an Olympic discipline. It is a difficult road to make our sport better. »
This hiccup on the UTMB 2022 is explained by the lack of specialized and authorized institutions in France. The French Agency for the Fight against Doping (AFLD) is the only authority having the right to carry out controls which it pays for financially. “These must all remain unannounced, so our presence does not have to be systematic on this or that sporting event”, we are justified on the side of the AFLD. Of the 10,000 checks carried out by the agency’s 130 samplers in 2022, 1,954 concerned professional rugby, 1,415 football, 1,023 athletics, and only 100 trail running.
“As if trail running had remained a minor sport”
In charge of the management of the elite athletes of the UTMB, Marie Sammons announces in view of the edition to come in three weeks in Chamonix that: “to prevent a situation similar to 2022 from reoccurring, the UTMB Group is giving the means to ensure that tests will be carried out on the finals of the OCC, CCC and UTMB races in addition to tests that the AFLD could also carry out”. Unlike the UTMB, Ironman is currently the only private sports organization outdoors to become a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) World Anti-Doping Code. The organizer of the longest triathlons in the world can therefore order tests as they see fit for each of their events.
But why is it still such a headache, even for the most prestigious trail races? Journalist at Spe15, site specializing in doping, and creator of the Festival des Templiers around Millau (Aveyron), Odile Baudrier has her opinion on the question: “the notoriety of the discipline has experienced a leap and the financial stakes are very present around the major races , more by the contracts that can be obtained with equipment manufacturers than by victory bonuses. But no rigid frame has yet been fixed around the trail. It’s as if it had remained a minor sport, despite the organization of world championships. In France, it is not a priority for the AFLD, especially not in a pre-Olympic period”.
No trail runner integrated into the AFLD target group
A month ago, the Spe15 site revealed an unexpected affair, namely a positive EPO test for Didier Zago, during the French mountain running championship in September 2020. The AFLD, which had taken the sample from this 45-year-old trail runner, confirms to us “that an investigation wide has since been in progress”, this one involving the provisional suspension of the Pyrenean athlete. Five years earlier, it’s the Ecuadorian ultra-trailer Gonzalo Calisto, fifth in the UTMB, who also tested positive for EPO, and was therefore downgraded and suspended for two years. Extremely rare cases in the world of trail running, really?
Even the greatest specialists, who live 100% from trail running, have still not been able to integrate a target group like the AFLD pilot in France. Nearly 300 high-level French athletes, all disciplines combined, must provide location data to allow out-of-competition checks. But even the four recent French trail world champions have not joined this system. This is why the manager of a trail team confides.
In the absence of longitudinal follow-up, we do not have sufficient medical data to remove certain doubts. If I have the slightest doubt about an athlete, I prefer not to have him in my group. It also happens that we warn each other between managers of different teams to share our questions about trailers that we consider potentially not to be clean. »
“To date, doping is not a worrying subject in the world of trail running, assures Marie Sammons of the UTMB Group all the same. We must legitimately ensure that this remains so in the light of a sport which is becoming more professional and which is attracting more and more athletes from all walks of life. This is why we would like to move towards a longitudinal follow-up program. Elite trail runners would be the first to be relieved to be part of a target group that would bring recognition and credibility to their performances.
“Public health, the AMA has nothing to do with it”
An evolution that is not yet on the agenda. On September 10, 2022, Mark Kangogo was on the other hand able to win the Jungfrau marathon (Switzerland, 1,950 m of D +), where there was not the slightest doping control. And this, because it took two months for the IAU to share the results of his positive test in Sierre-Zinal, which subsequently earned him three years of suspension. “The system is too slow between control and results, points out Valentin Genoud. Likewise, the IAU must at all costs maintain common lists of suspended athletes worldwide and take a strong position against doping. We can no longer close our eyes to this question. “Despite the forty cases of doping of Kenyan athletes in the past season alone, the Sierre-Zinal organization assures that “there is not one nation more doped than another”. Twelve Kenyans should take the start of the event in Switzerland on Saturday, compared to eight last year.
Former professional cyclist at Festina when the doping scandal broke in 1998, Christopher Bassons has since been very involved in the fight against doping, but also passionate about trail running. The one who has been collaborating for twenty years with the AFLD warns: “Doping is not rooted in trail running as it was in my time in the culture of cycling for decades, where it was stuffed with amphetamines. But he is starting to be present there at all levels, because of social networks and appearances. When an amateur trail runner participates in a race, it’s not only for him but also for all the people who encourage him on the networks. This need for recognition through races can lead to doping, and it will never be controlled. The danger is in the proliferation of small medicinal products, which leads to poisoning of the body. But the sole purpose of WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) is to seek to preserve sporting fairness. Public health has nothing to do with it. »