The Rio Olympics have been "plunged into a new doping scandal after the Kenyan team’s track and field manager was secretly filmed offering to protect cheating athletes from the drugs testing authorities," according to the LONDON TIMES. Kenyan Athletics Manager Michael Rotich offered to "provide advance warning of drugs tests to athletes" in return for a £10,000 ($13,070) bribe during a Sunday Times undercover investigation. He had been "expected to lead his team at the opening ceremony in Rio on Friday but failed to turn up on the track after being confronted over the allegations." On Saturday night, Rotich was ordered to return to Kenya to face an investigation into what Kenyan officials described as "serious" allegations of misconduct. Rotich is head of Athletics Kenya’s North Rift province, the region "which has produced some of the world’s best athletes and is now a top destination for British and other international runners training at altitude." Rotich leads one of the "most powerful running teams in Rio." He was introduced to undercover reporters in Kenya "by a doping specialist who had been hired to supply a fictional team of British athletes with the banned blood-boosting drug erythropoietin (EPO) ahead of the Olympics." Over the course of three meetings Rotich requested a one-off payment of £10,000 to "give the doping athletes a 12-hour advance notice of a pending drugs test which would allow them time to flush the banned substances out of their system." Rotich claimed he could "provide prior warning of drugs tests because he knew the official anti-doping testers who, he said, would sometimes contact him to find out the whereabouts of athletes training in his region." Rotich also talked "extensively about how to avoid drugs tests before competition and explained that Kenya was a safe place for athletes to take banned performance-enhancing drugs without being caught" (LONDON TIMES, 8/7).
