Ethiopian marathon winner disqualified over drug

By Gina Mangieri [KHON 2] | June 25, 2008

The fastest runner in the 2007 Honolulu Marathon has been stripped of his win. That's after he tested positive for a banned substance.

When Ambesse Tolossa of Ethiopia crossed the Honolulu Marathon finish line first last December, officials say he did so with morphine in his system.

"It was very surprising what the nature of the substance was, because it's not a performance enhancing substance, it's an opiate," said race co-director Ken MacDowell.

Forty thousand dollars in prize money had been withheld pending the initial positive test after the race and the legal process that led up to the public announcement today. Second-place runner Jimmy Muindi now takes the top spot -- his sixth Honolulu Marathon win. The Honolulu Marathon has never disqualified a champion in all of its 35 years.

"I don't think it tarnishes it at all,” MacDowell said. “If anything it brings a bit of integrity to our specific event, because now what we're telling athletes is if you're coming here to race, we're doing everything we can to make sure you're all playing on a level playing field."

Tolossa had also placed first in the 2006 Honolulu Marathon, and had won in San Diego and Tokyo.

Honolulu Marathon began testing athletes last year after the 2006 top female racer Lyubov Denisova tested positive outside of competition several months later.

"We don't want people coming here saying, oh, they don't do drug testing so we're free to do whatever we want to do," MacDowell said.
Hawaii's fastest marathon runner, Jonathan Lyau, says he's glad the system is in place.

"It makes it more fair,” Lyau said, “and I think the athletes that it brings in, at least the clean athletes, feel more comfortable that they're there and they're running against fair competition."

Yet he understands the pressures on elite runners.

"I think it all comes down to money, to sponsorship, to keeping their career and longevity in the sport," Lyau said. “Usually you hear about EPO or steroids, but morphine, people know that as a pain killer. Unless he had an injury and he's trying to mask some kind of pain from an injury.”

The 2007 race was also hit with massive timing errors where officials had to review tapes to reconstruct finishing times for 2,400 runners.

"Maybe this new controversy will take people's minds away from the timing error," Lyau said. “Every year you never know what's going to happen."