Peter Eriksson, former head coach of Athletics Canada, has published an online petition accusing the three governing bodies—the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), World Athletics (WA), and the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU)—of failing to prevent widespread doping in the sport of athletics.
Eriksson has requested that the three entities release the tests and records of women’s marathon world record holder Ruth Chepngetich, as he believes her 2:09:56 performance “exceeds the limits of female human potential.”
In October, Chepngetich became the first woman to run under two hours and 10 minutes for the marathon, lowering the previous mark set a year earlier by Ethiopia’s Tigst Assefa by nearly two minutes. Her record was greeted with mixed reviews, given Kenya’s ongoing doping scandal, which has more than 100 runners serving suspensions (according to the AIU Global List of Ineligible Persons.)
In the petition, Eriksson writes: “The ratification on 11 December 2024 of Ruth Chepngetich’s 2:09:56 marathon performance in Chicago on 13 October 2024, which has been greeted with profound skepticism by leading athletics experts because it exceeds the limits of female human potential, is an embodiment and symbol of the abject failure of World Athletics (WA), the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to detect and control rampant doping in international athletics.”
Eriksson further states it is a “…dereliction of their duty to protect the interests of and opportunities for clean athletes…”
Opinion: there should be an asterisk around the women’s marathon world record
World Athletics officially ratified Chepngetich’s world record in early December, just two months after she ran it at the 2024 Chicago Marathon. This ratification confirms her marathon time was found to be clean.
The governing body follows a rigorous process to ratify all world records, including course certification, timing accuracy and anti-doping tests. Among these, the anti-doping process is the longest, usually taking several months to obtain test results from a lab.
Eriksson is asking for signatures to compel WA, AIU, and WADA to disclose all testing conducted on Chepngetich in the 12 months before the 2024 Chicago Marathon on Oct. 13, 2024. He is also demanding that these organizations take urgent measures to eliminate doping in athletics, including:
- “Disclosing and suspending coaches and agents linked to athletes who test positive for doping.
- Enhancing testing, particularly in East Africa.
- Reporting back on the enhanced testing on a half-yearly basis.
- Immediately suspending all athletes from competition for the remainder of the calendar year from any country that has more than 10 of its athletes test positive during the year.”
The 72-year-old took on the head coach position at Athletics Canada in August 2013, a role that included both the Paralympic and Olympic programs. The mandate for hiring Eriksson was to improve the medal count at major events, such as the Paralympic and Olympic Games, and other major championships. From 1996 to 2013, the average medal count for the Canadian track and field teams at major events was between zero and two. Under Eriksson’s tenure, this increased at the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio, where Team Canada won six Olympic medals and seven Paralympic medals.
He was named Athletics Canada Coach of the Year in 2008 and was awarded the Medal of Confederation by the Senate of Canada in 2017 for his work at the Rio Olympics.
Eriksson left the Athletics Canada position in December 2016 and worked as a high-performance adviser for Own the Podium, a Canadian funding agency for elite sports. Since 2021, he has worked as an independent high-performance consultant.
