Two time Commonwealth games 10,000m champion Lucy Kabuu has been banned for two years from any competition after she was found guilty for violating anti-doping rules after testing positive for Morphine.
On Monday evening, the IAAF Disciplinary Tribunal slapped the marathoner with two years after she tested positive for Morphine which is classified as a prohibited substance in sports.
Her ban will take effect dating back to August 1, 2018 and is expected to expire on July 31, 2020.
With hers suspension, Kabuu will have an opportunity to appeal to the tribunal. It also directed that all awards, prize and appearance fees as well as titles she won in the period from when her sample was taken should be forfeited.
“The Tribunal is comfortably satisfied that the Athlete has committed an Anti-Doping Rule Violations under Article 2.1 ADR and Article 2.2 ADR based on the presence of morphine greater than the DL and with a ratio of total morphine to total codeine higher than 2.0 and a concentration of total codeine not higher than 5μg/mL in a Sample collected on 8 April 2018,” the ruling, published on the Athletics Integrity Unit website stated.
Kabuu is the 2006 Commonwealth Games champion in 10,000m and 5,000m races. And she was tested during Milan Marathon on April 8th 2018 and her sample was analysed by the WADA-accredited laboratory in Rome, Italy and revealed the presence of morphine greater than WADA’s specified Decision Limit.
In her defense, Kabuu put in several theories, saying she did not know when she took the substance, but in its findings, the Integrity United dismissed all her claims as most had no proof.
Kabuu stated that she had been given medication during an in-patient visit at Nairobi Hospital in 2015 and she also was prescribed with some medication after undergoing a root canal procedure.
However, analysis by the AIU on all the medication she took found no traces of Morphine.