2019 Tokyo Marathon Champion Ruti Aga Banned for Six Years

In September, the Athletics Integrity Unit had charged Ruti Aga, the 2019 Tokyo Marathon champion, with using methylprednisolone and with tampering, though at that point nobody had said what the tampering was. The answer came on Thursday, when the AIU banned the 32-year-old Ethiopian for six years.

Only two of those years are for the steroid. The other four are for tampering, which Reuters said covered both a prescription she submitted and answers in an interview that investigators found to be misleading. The prescription was meant to show that the methylprednisolone had been given to her legitimately for a knee problem. According to the AIU, as the Associated Press reported, the clinic it named does not exist, and the person who signed it was a relative of Aga’s with no registration as a doctor.

Because she did not respond to the charges, the AIU imposed the ban without a hearing. It is backdated to Sept. 10, when she was provisionally suspended, Reuters said, which keeps her out of competition until September 2032. She will be 38 by then.

Her positive sample came from a Chinese half-marathon she won in March. On the World Athletics results for that month she is listed as the winner of the Meishan Renshou Half Marathon on March 15, in 1:08:04, 29 seconds ahead of Liang Tiantian.

Aga was one of the most consistent women on the World Marathon Majors circuit for several years, with three second places and two thirds to go with her Tokyo win. She was third at the Berlin Marathon in 2016 and second there in 2017 and 2018, runner-up in Tokyo in 2018, and third at the New York City Marathon in 2019, the same year she won in Tokyo. In January she won the Xiamen Marathon for the second year running, in 2:22:45.

Methylprednisolone is a glucocorticoid, allowed out of competition but banned in competition when it is swallowed or injected. Athletes treated with one close to a race have to observe a washout period or hold a therapeutic use exemption, and since 2022 that has included injections into a joint.

Diana Kipyokei received the same six-year sanction in December 2022, in a case with a lot in common with this one. Her sample held triamcinolone acetonide, another glucocorticoid, and the paperwork she presented as coming from a hospital turned out to be fake. The AIU added four years for tampering to her two for the triamcinolone, and she lost her 2021 Boston Marathon title. In June, Kibiwott Kandie, the former half-marathon world record holder, was banned for seven years after refusing a test and then submitting a forged document.