Elijah Manangoi accepts AIU's two-year ban

The 2017 World 1500m champion Elijah Manangoi said he accepted the Athletics Integrity Unit's (AIU) two-year ban for three whereabouts, a World Athletics anti-doping violation, however, he insisted that he was a clean athlete.

"I have received the verdict from AIU and as I sit here, I have acknowledged that I made a mistake on my whereabouts failures and I have accepted their decisions, though it will be difficult to forgive myself," Manangoi said in a statement shared by his coach.

"I'm a clean athlete and I will be back on track and win right."

Here is his explanation from the case for the missed tests is as follows:

According to Manangoi, he missed one drug test due to a traffic jam, another one he missed because a 3rd party failed to update his whereabouts.

Under the World Athletics Anti-Doping Rules, 3 whereabouts failures (Filing Failure and/or Missed Test) within a period of 12 months constitute an anti-doping rule violation, for which the applicable sanction is 2 years' ineligibility.