AK Chairman Isaiah Kiplagat dispelled claims made by a German Television journalist over the weekend that he spent time in various parts of the country where he established that blood doping is rampant not only amongst the country’s renowned distance runners but even with some foreign athletes who train at the high altitude regions.

“This story depicts Kenya as a country that uses drugs to enhance performance of its top athletes. I want to assure the world that 99 per cent of our athletes win cleanly,” Kiplagat told journalists at Riadha House, Nairobi where he was flanked by the National Olympics Committee of Kenya Chairman Kipchoge Keino.

“As AK we are not aware of any athlete who has used drugs and have not been punished according to IAAF rules.”

“I am shocked by the claims!” said Kipchoge.

“It should be remembered that we were given a gold medal at the last Olympics due to someone who had used drugs,”he added in reference to Asbel Kiprop’s 1500m gold medal after Moroccan Bahrain born Rashid Ramzi was stripped off after returning a positive test.

Sportsnewsarena.com on Tuesday established that German sports journalist Hajo Seppelt claimed he spent time in various parts of Kenya where he posed as an undercover sports agent and found out that doping was rife.

He linked some Kenyan runners to Doctors who perform blood doping which is an illegal method used to boost athletic performance by increasing the number of red blood cells in the body.

“We are taken aback by this journalistic childishness and we want this journalist to come forward and present the details he claims he has,”Kiplagat dared sternly.

“As you know we have always exposed all our athletes found cheating!”

The journalist who even named some top Kenyan athletes - Olympic and marathon champions in his show, further alleged that this malpractice may have gone unnoticed by the International Association of Athletics federation, IAAF as they never carry out doping tests in the country to establish the varied blood levels, which was refuted by Kipchoge, a two time Olympic medallist .

“We are working with WADA. There are 5000 out of competition training and we have invited them here to test our athletes.

That man just does not want to see our country perform well,” he added.

“We cannot send anyone who is on drugs to the Olympics. We learnt our lesson at the 2004 Olympics when we sent two boxers who had chewed Miraa (Khat) and they were sent back.”

The Athletics body has in the meantime written to the Kenyan Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Information to refer international journalists and agents to them for clearance.

“We have asked the Immigration Ministry to seek our clearance. We have foreigners who are dealing with our athletes who have been on tourist visa for the last ten years,” said Kiplagat.