Kibiwott Kandie, the Kenyan who once held the world record for the half-marathon, has been banned from athletics for seven years.
The Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) announced the sanction on Thursday. Kandie, 30, admitted he refused to provide a sample to a doping control officer in March 2025, and that he later submitted a forged government certificate to try to lift his provisional suspension. He was originally facing eight years. An early admission shaved off one.
His ban runs until March 13, 2032. He will be 36.
How he got here
Kandie was one of the best half-marathoners the sport has produced. He won Valencia three times, in 2020, 2022 and 2023. His 57:32 in Valencia in 2020 was a world record at the time and still sits third on the all-time list, behind Uganda’s Jacob Kiplimo and Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha. He also took bronze in the 10,000m at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
That is the career now closed off.
The test that never happened
On the morning of March 1, 2025, a doping control officer and a chaperone showed up at Kandie’s home in Kenya for an unannounced test. Kandie signed the electronic form acknowledging he had to provide a sample. Then he started making phone calls.
After several calls, he told the officer he had to leave right away. He said he needed to drive two hours to Eldoret to make an “important payment” to National Construction Authority officers who were about to shut down his construction site. The officer warned him that refusing a test carries the same penalty as a positive result. Kandie said he understood, made a few more calls, walked out to his car and drove off.
The AIU provisionally suspended him on March 14, 2025.
What the phone records showed
Investigators took possession of Kandie’s phone. The calls he was making during the failed test were not to construction officials. They went to a registered nurse based in Eldoret.
Working with the Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya, the AIU pulled his financial records. They found 11 transfers from Kandie to the nurse over the previous 12 months.
In a later interview, Kandie told investigators the nurse sold him “small household items” and occasionally analysed his haemoglobin levels. He said the calls on March 1 were about meeting up to buy more items.
The fake certificate
To get his suspension lifted, Kandie submitted what looked like an official Certificate of Application for an Environmental Impact Assessment from Kenya’s National Environment Management Authority. The document claimed he was needed in Eldoret on March 1 for a site inspection.
The AIU went straight to NEMA. The reference number on the certificate did not exist in their system. Kandie’s name was not in their records. No inspection had been scheduled at the Eldoret site that day. NEMA called the document “not genuine and deemed to be invalid.”
The AIU added a tampering charge on May 6, 2026. Kandie admitted both violations.
The AIU’s message
Brett Clothier, head of the AIU, framed the case as a warning.
“This case serves as a reminder that no athlete is above the rules in the sport of athletics. If an athlete refuses a test, it places the integrity of the sport at risk.”
He added: “The AIU has a strong forensic capability and will thoroughly investigate such cases to ensure the truth comes out in the end.”
For Kenyan distance running, already under heavy scrutiny for anti-doping cases, it is another blow. The sport has seen a string of high-profile sanctions against Kenyan athletes in recent years, including Ruth Chepngetich and Albert Korir, alongside an AIU investigation into age fraud.
For Kandie, who set the world record at 24 and stood on a Commonwealth Games podium two years later, it is the finish.
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