Say No to Doping

Internationally, Kenyan athletes are great runners and my aim in this campaign is to make them proud of their natural talents and to advocate for a clean sport.

My name is Justin Lagat. I am one Kenyan athlete who doubles up as a freelance sports journalist covering the sport of Running. A long time columnist with RunBlogRun, Author of Determined Runners and The 17 Week Marathon Training Program that Improved My Time from 2:55 to 2:26, among others. I am also passionate about a clean sport.

So often, many young and upcoming athletes would turn to me for my thoughts on PEDs and I realize that if most of the athletes knew what they are getting into by doping, the cases of doping will reduce considerably. I will need the resources to do the campaigns by aproaching young athletes directly, on the media, to approach influencial people in sport to give their advice, etc.

Most of the athletes who end up doping have been made to believe that everyone who does well in sports does so with the help of drugs; which is wrong. These thoughts are implanted in them by unscrupulous doctors, agents and coaches who take advantage of their innocence regarding matters to do with doping in order to benefit financially from them. My aim is to educate athletes on the dangers of doping, the measures being undertaken by WADA and other relevant authorities to curb it and to reassure them that most of the star athletes who are their role models are actually clean, contrary to what they have been made to believe. It is my hope that a greater awareness of the problem will lead to a desire among all Kenyan athletes, and foreign athletes as well, to remain clean and compete fairly.