Former world champion sprinter Fred Kerley has been handed a two-year ban for missing three drug tests within a 12-month period, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) announced. The AIU, which oversees doping cases for World Athletics, stated that the American athlete’s missed out-of-competition tests constitute whereabouts failures under the World Anti-Doping Code.
The code requires athletes in a registered testing pool to provide daily location details so they can be tested without notice. Three missed tests or filing failures in a year can trigger a sanction of up to two years. The AIU quoted a 2022 ruling that called the 100-metre champion “negligent and, to a certain extent, reckless in not adhering to anti-doping regulations”. The missed tests occurred from May through December 2024.
Kerley was world champion in the 100m in 2022 and won bronze at the 2024 Paris Olympics, adding to his silver from Tokyo 2020. Last September, he became the biggest name in sprinting to announce he would run in the Enhanced Games, a start-up league that does not penalise athletes for using banned substances.
In response to the AIU statement, Kerley wrote on X: “How does someone come forward and say they were given drugs, the athlete gets banned but the whole camp isn’t investigated? Clean sport means accountability for everyone, not just the athlete.” Another post featured him bursting through men dressed as military police with uniforms reading ‘AIU’, ‘WADA’, and ‘USADA’, captioned: “You can’t control me, and the truth is louder than silence.”
In a possible reference to doping-control officers who arrived on a day he missed a test, Kerley posted: “A random number from Mexico that looked like a scam call and I’m supposed to answer that? I live in USA why is a number calling my phone from Mexico.”
