LONDON — Former 100m world champion Fred Kerley was hit with a two-year ban after failing to notify anti-doping officials of his whereabouts, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said in a statement.
Kerley, who won 100m gold at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, has been provisionally suspended since August last year after committing three whereabouts failures in a 12-month period.
An AIU disciplinary tribunal confirmed his suspension, ruling that the 30-year-old, who also won 100m medals at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics for the United States, had been “negligent and, to a certain extent, reckless” in failing to comply with anti-doping regulations.
An AIU statement said Kerley had breached those rules three times between May 11 and December 6, 2024.
A further whereabouts failure on December 7, 2024 was not taken into account when determining his suspension, which will run until August 2027.
The AIU said Kerley, a seasoned competitor in elite sprinting whose accomplishments also include world sprint relay gold in Doha in 2019 and Budapest in 2023, should have “exercised more care.”
“Unfortunately, sophisticated doping substances may only be detectable within an athlete’s sample for a few days or even hours after administration,” AIU head Brett Clothier said in a statement according to AFP.
“Anti-doping organisations need to be able to test athletes without notice on the day and hour of our choosing, otherwise anti-doping programmes will not work, and dopers will easily avoid detection. Whereabouts rules are therefore fundamental to the integrity of sport and must be respected,” he added.
Whether Kerley returns to elite international competition is an open competition.
The American has said he plans to take part in the Enhanced Games in Las Vegas in May, where competitors will be free to use performance-enhancing drugs.
World Athletics, the global governing body for track and field, has said any athlete taking part in the drug-fuelled inaugural edition of the event will face “significant” bans from the sport.
