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Doping issues shadow Kenyan track team heading into Summer Olympics

Athletics Kenya CEO Isaac Mwangi reacts Monday after being shown video footage of two Kenyan athletes making allegations of corruption against him.

Athletics Kenya CEO Isaac Mwangi reacts Monday after being shown video footage of two Kenyan athletes making allegations of corruption against him.

(Ben Curtis / Associated Press)
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Six months before the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Kenya’s powerhouse track program is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

On Wednesday, two of its athletes who were caught doping told the Associated Press that the head of the country’s track federation offered to reduce their four-year bans if they paid him $24,000 each.

Isaac Mwangi, the chief executive of Athletics Kenya, was quoted as calling the allegation “just a joke.”

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Earlier in the week, an African media outlet reported that three men had been arrested for posing as World Anti-Doping Agency officials in a scheme to elicit bribe money from Kenyan athletes.

With its stable of middle- and long-distance runners, Kenya ranks among the top track programs and recently won seven gold medals — tied for the most of any country — in the 2015 world championships.

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But international officials have long been concerned about cheating in the African nation.

In another off-the-field development this week, the head of Kenya’s national Olympic committee threatened to pull the entire team over concerns regarding the Zika virus outbreak in Brazil.

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