In some ways, it was inevitable.
Track and field and road racing have doping violators at the highest levels of competition, as the recent suspension of women’s marathon world record holder Ruth Chepngetich showed. Sooner or later, one of them would impact the results at the TD Beach to Beacon 10K, Maine’s largest road race founded by one of the world’s greatest marathoners, Maine’s own Joan Benoit Samuelson.
It happened last year. More than seven weeks after Faith Chepkoech, a relatively unheralded 21-year-old from Kenya, won the women’s elite race, she was stripped of her title for violating international anti-doping rules.
Chepkoech failed a drug test administered in Kenya on July 26 — eight days before Beach to Beacon.
Edna Kiplagat, 44, also of Kenya, was declared the winner. The $10,000 prize money was returned, then redistributed to runners who moved up in the results.
Dave McGillivray has been the Beach to Beacon’s race director since its debut in 1998. He’s also served as race director of the Boston Marathon since 2001. Was he angry that a cheating incident took place at Beach to Beacon?
“Um, I’d probably choose ‘disappointed’ more than anything,” McGillivray said Wednesday, standing near where runners will finish their 6.2-mile run on Saturday. “It’s unfortunate that things like that happen in our sport. Because of what’s happened and we recognize that there are people who try to beat the system, then every fast time now is being questioned.”
On Saturday, when over 6,500 runners will be on the course in Cape Elizabeth for the Beach to Beacon 10K, the drug testing protocols that have been in place since 2019 will remain relatively unchanged, said David Backer, the president of Beach to Beacon’s board of directors.
“I think it’s understood that cheaters aren’t welcome. That’s why it’s such a surreptitious activity,” Backer said. “I’d like to think (the fact) that we’re committed to testing is broadcast loud and clear and that cheaters aren’t welcome.”
WHAT IS BEACH TO BEACON’S ANTI-DOPING PROTOCOL?
The first step in limiting potential cheating is being selective when filling out the elite field.
“We don’t invite athletes who have a doping history,” Backer said. “Athletes we invite, by historical standards, are racing clean. They have clean reputations.”
Beach to Beacon typically invites 12 to 14 professional women, including top Americans. The same goes for the men’s field. East African runners have won 20 of the first 26 women’s titles and 21 of 26 men’s titles, with Kenyans winning the men’s race 18 times and the women’s division 17 times.
Backer said invited pro runners are told before they travel that Beach to Beacon does drug testing. Runners are required to sign an acknowledgement that they will be subject to testing when they pick up their race packet the day before the race.
The testing is conducted by an outside firm, hired by the race. This year, the United States Anti-Doping Agency has been contracted, at a cost of $6,200, to bring its own team to the race. The USADA will administer eight tests, label them (with the athletes initialing their samples at various steps), store them, and then get them to a certified laboratory where the samples will be tested for performance-enhancing agents, such as the synthetic blood booster erythropoietin that showed up in Chepkoech’s test.

The Danish firm Clearidium handled B2B drug testing in previous years. Backer said the switch to USADA, which he termed “the big dog” in the anti-doping world, was not made because of last year’s testing.
“It took too long to be able to do everything that needed to be done,” he said.
Who ends up getting tested is, essentially, random. Prior to the race, the USADA team will determine which placers among the men and women will be tested. While the winners are often among those tested, it is not definite they will be, Backer said
A race volunteer, termed a chaperone, will subtly approach the runner who finishes in a testing position as soon as they cross the finish line and escort them to the testing tent. The chaperone will stay with the athlete until the entire process is finished.
WHY DIDN’T BEACH TO BEACON’S TEST SHOW A POSITIVE RESULT?
At first blush, it seems odd that Chepkoech would test positive on July 26, and eight days later her test would come back negative.
“That’s because of the half-life of the performance-enhancing drug you’re taking,” Backer said, noting that EPO passes out of the system quite quickly. An athlete can train harder after taking the drug, giving them a competitive edge, and when race day comes they’ll appear clean.
EPO is a hormone that is naturally produced in the kidneys and stimulates the production of red blood cells, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
“Catching someone in Faith’s case last year, it sounds like they knocked on her door in Kenya and they tested her very shortly after she’d took the EPO, so it hadn’t yet become undetectable, but by the time got she got to Cape Elizabeth, it was undetectable,” Backer said.
It’s the combination of out-of-competition testing and race-day testing that makes the anti-doping system most effective.
“We do drug testing because if somebody is coming to our race and they aren’t racing clean, we want to do everything in our power to catch them,” Backer said. “The last thing we want is somebody leaving our race with prize money that they stole from the rest of the field by cheating and doping.”
WHY CHEAT? MONEY.
Matt West is the CEO of Dave McGillivray Sports Enterprises, the company hired to organize and essentially run race-day operations for the Beach to Beacon. Part of the job means managing certification and permitting with World Athletics, USA Track and Field, and this year’s anti-doping testing agency.
West acknowledged that doping is a sad reality in sports, often driven by money. A recent New York Times article detailed what Backer called the “grim reality” of Kenyan runners using performance-enhancing substances because of the money at stake in road racing. The first-place prize of $10,000 at Beach to Beacon is four times greater than Kenya’s average annual income of just under $2,300 in U.S. dollars.
“The money is incredibly important to them and they’re all pushing for it to get the money. So, they’re doing things that may not be right,” West said.
In the case of Chepngetich, she earned $100,000 for winning the 2024 Chicago Marathon and another $50,000 for breaking the world record. Experts pegged her actual total earnings at closer to $500,000.
Beach to Beacon’s total prize distribution is over $90,000, and it’s $10,000 first prize is one of the main components that make it an “elite” event in World Athletics’ labeling system, West said. The race also provides ranking points that can translate into additional financial benefits.
Last year’s results showed that even the best efforts can’t guarantee a completely clean race-day field, but ultimately, “the system worked,” West said.
A cheater was caught, the rightful winner was recognized and rewarded.
It just took an extra seven weeks.
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