Zane Robertson. Photo / Greg Bowker
Disgraced Kiwi long-distance runner Zane Robertson continued to race, and win, despite being suspended after failing a doping test last year, the Herald has confirmed.
Robertson was this week handed an eight-year ban by the Sports Tribunal after a failed drug test was followed by a Drug Free Sport New Zealand investigation into his claims that he has administered EPO while getting a Covid-19 test in Kenya were false. He was given a four-year ban for the failed drugs test and another four-year ban for tampering.
Robertson was initially tested after competing in the 10km event at the Great Race in Manchester last May where he finished 11th with his twin brother Jake winning the race. Zane Robertson’s A sample returned the presence of EPO, with a B sample producing the same results.
He was suspended in September and Drug Free Sport New Zealand (DFSNZ) began investigations the following month.
Despite the suspension, he entered the 10km event at the El Gouna Half Marathon in Egypt in November, appearing on the official race’s Instagram account to promote the event.
Drug Free Sport New Zealand said it was made aware he was planning to race in Egypt and after dialogue with Robertson’s legal team, and DFSNZ believed he had withdrawn from the event.
It wasn’t until the Herald informed DFSNZ that it realised he not only raced but took out the event by 0.1 seconds from the second-place getter, Egyptian local Yossef Elshazly. Third-placed Belal Salah Tawfik was another 0.1 seconds back in a sprint finish won by the Kiwi. The event does not offer cash prizes for race wins, it states on the official website.
DFSNZ is now asking for that victory to be stripped from Robertson, which is likely to be his final race for the next eight years. He is banned until September 20, 2030.
Robertson won the race in a slower time for his standard, almost six minutes off his season best of 28.32 minutes in Malaga in April, a month before the Manchester event.
Zane and his twin brother Jake left Hamilton aged 17 to move to the Kenyan village of Iten. There they slept rough in a small room together and went seven years without seeing their parents as they prepared for the Commonwealth Games and Olympics.
When investigations began into his failed test in Manchester, Robertson claimed that he had attended a Kenyan medical facility seeking a Covid-19 vaccination but was instead treated for Covid-19, which included the administration of EPO. He also claimed that he had told the attending doctor that he was an athlete and could not be treated with a substance that was on the prohibited list.
In a witness statement in December, Robertson said: “Whilst I admit that EPO was present in my system, I believe there was no fault or negligence on my part (or at last no significant fault or negligence on my part) because when I attended the hospital, I told the attending doctor that I was an athlete and could not have anything that was prohibited. He acknowledged he understood this.
“I asked for a Covid 19 vaccine but instead I received treatment for Covid 19 (which included EPO). Having asked for the vaccine there was no reason for me to believe that what I was being administered was not the vaccine. It was not obvious to me that the doctor administering the treatment was not the same doctor I had told was an athlete because both were wearing face masks to protect me from Covid 19 infection.
“I believe I did everything I could to prevent EPO from being administered but it occurred through medical negligence of the hospital.”
His statement included sworn affidavits from two Kenyan doctors and hospital notes which “appeared to be a report generated at a Kenyan medical facility confirming that EPO was administered to Robertson” the Sports Tribunal findings said.
Robertson then filed witness statements the following month including a Kenyan detective which corroborated his claims.
In the Sports Tribunal findings released on Wednesday, DFSNZ provided a statement following investigations it had made into Robertson’s assertions, which led to the allegation of tampering.
Nick Patterson, chief executive of Drug Free Sport New Zealand, told the Herald it was late in the investigation that the tampering charge was added.
“We’ve got an investigation and intelligence team here run by a former detective in the New Zealand police, a former SFO investigator. He got into the detail of the defense put forward. Our team here then reached out to our equivalent in Kenya - Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya. We sought advice from them and they went and did some investigations on the ground in Kenya.
“What we needed to do was to prove that the ingestion of EPO that, that piece was not true. So the focus was on the medical side, on the hospital side.”
DFSNZ’s investigations found that Robertson was not administered EPO at the facility, that he had not attended the facility on the claimed date, that of the two doctors he claimed had treated him, one was a laboratory technician and the other was not employed at the facility, that the medical notes were not generated at the facility and the patient number on the notes was not Robertson’s.
DFSNZ alleged that Robertson’s statements and supporting documents included falsified documents and false testimony which, if proven or not contested, amounts to a breach of Rule 2.5 (tampering).
“He was just facing 2.1 and 2.2, which is the presence in use. And then we subsequently added the tampering at a later stage and that was quite late on in the piece to the proceedings at that point. We and he through his legal counsel then talked and we’ve been talking throughout,” Patterson said.
“If there’s a quicker way to get to a resolution, we’ll always go down that route. And in this case, it was this joint memorandum, saying let’s agree these facts and that way we can take it to the tribunal and get it dealt with really quickly and we can all move on, including Zane can move on because he’s facing a sanction.”
Speaking on the podcast Runner’s Only with Dom Harvey, Robertson opened up about why he decided to cheat, claiming it was a “one-off”.
“It’s been a pretty depressing and devastating day for me,” he said on the podcast.
“There’s many reasons and it’s just not one particular reason. I hate it so much that it’s just a one-off hit and I got caught. It’s been building on me for a few years. Frustration and anger at the sport itself and any elite sports, I just believe it’s not a level playing field like they say.
“I started to ask myself this question: why do people like myself always have to be the ones to lose or suffer. In the end, lose our contracts, lose our income, lose our race winnings, and eventually give up not having the ability to have a family ... that was one reason.”
He added that personal and professional troubles — including a “nasty divorce” — also drove him towards doping.
“The other [reason], especially after the Covid era, prize money and races went down. Contracts were almost dropped as well. After the Olympics I was told by one of my companies we thought you would run better, and an immediate exit from the deal.
“Nothing was seeming to go my way. I had a lot of background noise away from the running year as well ... I spent a lot of my life savings just trying to survive. I was providing for myself and my wife at the time ... we already knew we were going to go through a divorce period. It was a nasty divorce proceeding.
“Some things led to another and a lot of stress was placed on me. I made some bad decisions in a really dark time.”
In 2016, Robertson told Newstalk ZB that he had faced death threats for speaking out against doping in Kenya.
“I have been close to [doping],” he said. “I can’t name people or countries because I had some death threats a few months ago just for even mentioning the topic around the area. I don’t want to get killed for doing what is right or speaking up but I feel Twitter and social media are a place I can do that.
“The more athletes who speak out on the topic, I feel they will put pressure on these big governing bodies or federations to crack down on it and actually do something about it.
“One of [the threats] was from a Kenyan. He said he was going to put a tractor tyre on me and set me on fire. That was just one of them,” Robertson said at the time.
He added that he was approached early in his career to use performance-enhancing drugs.
“I was approached once in 2007 by someone in Kenya but, as you can see in my results over the years, I was nowhere. As a youth growing up in New Zealand with sportsmanship and general morals, you can’t consider that. It’s not something normal for us,” he said in 2016.
“[The approach happened] really early on. It was kind of weird. I had never experienced anything like that before. He just came to us and gave us his card and said he was a doctor who specialised in sports performance. We said, ‘What type of performance?’ And he said, ‘Everything that will make you run faster.’ He gave us his card and left quickly.
“It wouldn’t be this open any more because of the topic and especially the crackdown. People can get arrested now.
“I’m sure it’s all done behind closed doors now. I don’t see a lot of it any more, just the tell-tale or giveaway signs [in other athletes].”
The next step in their evolution is increasing the precision in the final third.