Sprinter Fred Kerley has received a two-year ban for missing three drug tests within a 12-month period, the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) has announced.
The AIU, which oversees doping cases for World Athletics, said the American athlete’s missed out-of-competition tests qualify as 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 from a ruling that in 2022 called the 100-metre champion “negligent and, to a certain extent, reckless in not adhering to anti-doping regulations”.
The decision said that Kerley's missed tests occurred from May through December of 2024.
Kerley was world champion in the 100m in 2022 and won bronze over the distance 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.
The start-up league does not penalise athletes for using banned substances.
“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," Kerley wrote on X in response to the AIU statement.
Another social media post featured him bursting through a group of men dressed like military police, with uniforms that read ‘AIU’, ‘WADA’ (World Anti-Doping Agency), and ‘USADA’ (U.S. Anti-Doping Agency).
“I’m tired of holding everything in,” it said.
“You can’t control me, and the truth is louder than silence.”
Another post, which could have been a reference to the doping-control officers that arrived on one of the days he missed a test, said “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.”
Kerley's suspension will run through 11 August 2027.
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