We Noticed: Marathon World Record Holder Tests Positive, Strava Drops Action Against Garmin, World Triathlon Adds Hyrox, Photos from Mallorca and more …

Athletes re-enter the water at Challenge Peguera Mallorca. More photos from the race below. Photo: Jose Luis Hourcade

It’s been a busy week on the anti-doping front – in addition to today’s news that Imogen Simmonds agreed to a “no fault finding” for her positive test, we’ve got a few more doping stories to highlight, along with some legal news, World Triathlon’s addition of a few new sport to its umbrella, Strava’s dropping of it’s surprising lawsuit and a few more tidbits for you from the endurance world!

Chepng’etich Banned for Three Years

The woman who shattered the marathon world record last October and became the first woman to run under 2:10 (2:09:56), Ruth Chepng’etich, has been banned for three years by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU).

The former world marathon champion (2019 in Qatar) and three-time Chicago champ admitted “to Anti-Doping Rule Violations regarding the presence and use of Hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) … and since she accepted the proposed sanction … was granted an automatic one-year reduction of the four years due to the Early Admission and Acceptance of Sanction provision …”

Chepnt’etich, 31, tested positive for HCTZ, a banned diuretic, in a test done in March. When interviewed in April she had no explanation for the positive result, but in July she told the AIU investigators that “she had taken ill two days before the positive test and she had taken her housemaid’s medication as treatment, without taking any steps to verify if it contained a prohibited substance.”

The AIU’s statement deems that “new explanation to be hardly credible,” and, in fact, it made things worse for Chepng’etich. Normally a positive test for HCTZ would warrant a two-year suspension, but because the “recklessness described by Chepng’etich in taking her housemaid’s medication as being indirect intent, for which an increased four-year sanction applies.”

For now none of the Kenyan’s results will be affected, including that world-best time from Chicago last year.

“The case regarding the positive test for HCTZ has been resolved, but the AIU will continue to investigate the suspicious material recovered from Chepng’etich’s phone to determine if any other violations have occurred,” said AIU Head Brett Clothier. “In the meantime, all Chepng’etich’s achievements and records pre-dating the 14 March 2025 sample stand.”

Iraq’s Baqer Idrees Accepts Two-Year Ban

A release yesterday by the International Testing Agency (ITA) announced that Baqer Idrees will be suspended for two years after testing positive for prednisone and prednisolone. What’s crazy about this news is that the positive sample was taken at the 2023 Asia Triathlon Sprint Championships held in Saudi Arabia in November of that year. Idrees raced at the Africa Triathlon Cup Sharm El Sheikh, where he finished 35th, and at the 2025 Asia Triathlon Duathlon Championships Manama, finishing 21st. According to yesterday’s announcement, those results will now be nullified.

“The athlete did not challenge the ADRV and agreed with the consequences proposed by the ITA, namely a period of ineligibility of two years from 8 September 2025 until 7 September 2027 and disqualification of competitive results from 11 November 2023 onwards,” according to the ITA.

We’re not sure why it took so long for all this to come out, but the ITA made it clear in its statement that it “will not comment further on this case,” so we’ll have to assume the long time frame was due to procedural issues.

Strava Drops Lawsuit Against Garmin

Well, that wasn’t long lived. Earlier this month Strava launched a lawsuit against Garmin, alleging the GPS-enabled product behemoth had infringed on some of Strava’s patents including heat map routing and Strava Live Segments. At the time Strava asked the court to stop sales of any Garmin products that would enable those patent infringements. (Yes, that basically would include all the watches and bike computers.)

The suit led to lots of consternation among avid Strava users, and was “baffling” to many tech experts, who couldn’t see any good reason for Strava to be making this move. As Ray Maker (OK, you all know him as DC Rainmaker) put it:

The case was baffling to many in the industry, both from a technical and legal standpoint. From a technical standpoint, it didn’t appear to hold very much water, especially on the heat map side. And on the segments side, it was seen as a potentially risky way for Strava to get their patents invalidated.

But more critically, the case brought enormous risks for Strava. Garmin is Strava’s most important partner, and the single biggest 3rd party source of customer revenue (meaning, Garmin customers are the most significant slice of paid Strava subscriptions). Further, Garmin’s data (paid subscriber or otherwise), fuels massive portions of Strava’s platform from a route standpoint. If Garmin were to shut off that connection, it would almost immediately spell the end of Strava (in astonishingly quick succession).

In a Reddit post after the lawsuit was launched, Strava’s chief product officer, Matt Salazar, said that his company launched the action after Strava was told by Garmin that it would have to comply with the company’s watermarking requirement.

On July 1st, Garmin announced new developer guidelines for all of its API partners, including Strava, that required the Garmin logo to be present on every single activity post, screen, graph, image, sharing card etc.

Salazar suggested that Strava was pushing back because its executives considered this new requirement “blatant advertising” and they feel that “we believe you should be able to freely transfer or upload data without requiring logos to be displayed alongside it or have that data be used as an advertisement to sell more watches.”

(Is it me, or is it slightly ironic that Strava is talking about this being “your data” and privacy issues?)

According to Maker, Garmin “almost never loses patent battles,” and one would guess its legal team pointed that out, along with lots of other reasons that this case should be dropped. Strava voluntarily dismissed the action on Wednesday, Oct. 22. How the relationship will move forward between the two companies remains unclear. While Strava is certainly the most popular player in the arena (if the workout didn’t appear on Strava, did you really do it?), there are similar apps that Garmin could happily promote – Komoot, for example – so it really doesn’t make a lot of sense for Strava to be “poking the bear.”

World Triathlon Adds Hyrox and Swimrun

At last weekend’s World Triathlon Congress the sport’s governing body approved two new disciplines – Fitness Racing (better known as HYROX) and Swimrun – which “will now operate officially under the World Triathlon umbrella.”

“Both were approved by the overwhelming majority of Members and will see TRI becoming a leader in these innovative sporting environments,” World Triathlon announced. “World Triathlon’s partnership with the PTO and current cooperation with the T100 Series have already provided examples of the desire to identify new opportunities ahead, work with private organisers and focus on becoming a more commercially driven organisation, ready and willing to engage with all stakeholders to drive the growth of triathlon and multisport disciplines around the world.”

The move is likely to benefit the new sports and World Triathlon. Being aligned with a world governing body will now enable both sports to go after a spot in the Olympics, while World Triathlon now gets access to a lot more participants and potential sponsors.

New Event Announcements

IRONMAN continues its steady addition to the 2026 race calendar. This week there are a couple of new 70.3 races to add to the mix:

• IRONMAN 70.3 Leipzig (Germany) will take place on Aug. 23, 2026
• IRONMAN 70.3 Curitiba-Paraná is set for March 8, 2026

Challenge Family Offers Student Rates

Student rates of 25 percent off will be offered to athletes aged 17 to 23 at Challenge Family races. According to the release:

The new student discount programme aims to lower barriers to entry for young people interested in triathlon. Challenge Family notes that it is aiming to support… ‘the next generation of athletes in discovering their passion for endurance sports. With this initiative, Challenge Family continues its mission to make triathlon participation more inclusive and globally accessible.’

“We want to encourage more young people to experience the unique energy and community of Challenge Family races,” said Jort Vlam, Challenge Family CEO.

The discount will be available at “selected Challenge Family races around the world” – athletes will need to provide proof that they are students when registering.

Challenge Peguera Mallorca Photos

Speaking of Challenge Family, photographer Jose-Luis Hourcade was on hand to get some great shots from Challenge Peguera-Mallorca last weekend. (It sure looks like a beautiful race.)

Italy’s Michele Sarzilla (3:39:34) took the men’s race, while Switzerland’s Cathia Schär (4:09:09) won the women’s. Here’s a sample of Hourcade’s shots from last weekend:

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