Sydney Marathon’s record-setting winner Brimin Misoi Kipkorir banned for doping

Kenyan marathon runner Brimin Misoi Kipkorir has been provisionally suspended after he tested positive for prohibited substances.

Kipkorir won the Sydney Marathon in September last year in a course record time of 2:06.18.

He returned a positive sample in an out-of-competition test on November 22, 2024.

“The AIU has provisionally suspended Brimin Misoi Kipkorir (Kenya) for the Presence/Use of Prohibited Substances (EPO, Furosemide),” the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) said on Monday.

Marathon running has been hit with a spate of high-profile doping cases in recent years, particularly from powerhouse Kenya.

Kenya’s Diana Kipyokei was stripped of her 2021 Boston Marathon title for doping in 2022 and handed a six-year ban.

Kipkorir also won the Frankfurt Marathon in 2022 and 2023.

Last year’s Sydney Marathon won by Kipkorir was the last before the event was announced as the seventh member of the Abbott World Marathon Majors.

The race joins Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York after a three-year program to improve the status of the event.

The status will draw more of the world’s fastest to Sydney and increase the focus on local elite long-distance runners.

But it’s the impact on the recreational scene that has most excited organisers and Australian distance-running great Steve Moneghetti.

“People internationally will want to come to Sydney as a running tourism destination,” Moneghetti told AAP from the sidelines of the New York race late last year.

“I was up at four (am) this morning, runners were going out to the start and they’re still coming across the finish line 12 hours later.”

Moneghetti won Tokyo and Berlin’s marathons, notched top-fives in London and the 1988 Olympics and has held the course record for Sydney’s other great run — the City2Surf — for three decades.

He hoped the city would fully embrace its membership in the “illustrious” club, as New York did.

“You would not believe the atmosphere - it’s five-deep out on the course, the whole journey,” he said.

“Like New York, (Sydney) might not be the fastest course in the world, but it will be the best experience - Aussie hospitality, the course finishing at the Opera House, going across the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the parklands through Centennial Park,” Moneghetti said.

“Hopefully, we can build that momentum to get great support out on the course and people will really know that Sydney is a wonderful place to come to run a marathon.”

NSW’s tourism body hopes so, too, estimating the value of Sydney’s elevation to distance running’s top-tier at $73 million over the next three years.

More than 25,000 runners took part in September and that number is expected to grow to 37,000 by 2027.

Part of that is by drawing in some of the pent-up demand for Sydney’s closest Abbott-level neighbour, the Tokyo Marathon, which is oversubscribed by about 500,000 applicants annually.

Organisers anticipate an entry ballot will have to be introduced with contingencies to support local runners and those who helped take it to new heights.

“A lot of the runners that have run in the last two years, they will be guaranteed a spot in the next three years,” race operations director Simon Bryan said.

“The ballot has to be introduced with the (increase in) demand.”

The Sydney Marathon is a legacy of the 2000 Olympics and was first held as a test event five months out from the Games.

- with AAP