AP Exclusive: How a tainted Kenyan runner won small US races

For them, the 5K through the grounds of a Kentucky whiskey distillery, raising funds for that night's Independence Day fireworks, was strictly fun.

Stragglers in the 2015 Great Buffalo Chase were still catching their breath as Lilian Mariita bashfully climbed onto the second step of the winners' podium, $2,500 the richer.

Lab techs found steroids in Mariita's urine sample.

The 27-year-old's racing career is over, and now she is back at square one: in Nyaramba, the muddy tea-plantation village in western Kenya she thought she'd escaped in 2011, when she left for the promise of a new life pounding American roads.

With Mariita caught, track's global governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, says it is also zeroing in on her agent, former elite Russian athlete Larisa Mikhaylova, and the Kenyan and Ethiopian runners she manages out of Kentucky.

In exchange for a cut of their prizes, she enters runners into far-flung U.S. road races, from Florida in the south to Michigan in the north, that are small enough to be winnable but still large enough to offer modest cash rewards to top finishers.

An added bonus for anyone thinking of cheating at lower-tier recreational runs is that they often don't have funds for expensive drug-testing.

Mikhaylova's runners have a remarkable success rate — and a string of positive drug tests, nearly all at races in Mexico.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Mikhaylova insisted she was blameless, saying she registers athletes only for U.S. races and that runners were freelancing when they competed in Mexico.

[...] their failed tests placed her business on the radar of anti-doping investigators and some U.S. race directors told AP they'll no longer accept any of her runners.

The ultimate goal of this investigation is to stop her working, to stop her being an active agent, to stop her being involved in the sport.

Jynocel Basweti, the father of Mariita's daughter, tested positive at a Mexican marathon for a steroid used in veterinary medicine.

Nixon Kiplagat Cherutich was busted for a byproduct of the steroid nandrolone, also in Mexico.

The East African distance running powerhouse won 11 athletics medals at the 2012 London Olympics, but has also since suffered the ignominy of having 38 runners banned for doping violations.

The sluggish response of Kenyan authorities is generating mounting pressure for action from the IAAF and the World Anti-Doping Agency, and from Kenyan athletes concerned they might be turned away from overseas races, including the Rio de Janeiro Games in August.

Probes into allegations of corruption at the Kenyan athletics federation also have gutted its leadership, with the IAAF's ethics board suspending much of the organization's top brass.

Efforts to combat Kenyan doping are further complicated by the fact that the majority of its runners compete, and often live, offshore, making their movements and behavior harder to police.

The rest tested positive at overseas races — from Beijing to Peru — testifying to the powerful lure of cash prizes that can put kids through school, buy land or livestock and turn mud huts into brick-and-mortar houses back in Kenya.

The culture of doping has taken a particularly strong grip on second- and third-tier Kenyan runners who mostly race abroad, aren't regularly tested and won't compete in Rio.

In 2014, Mariita churned through 24 races in 13 states, including three weekends in March, April and October when she raced on consecutive days, according to the Association of Road Racing Statisticians.

The detected drug was EPO, the same endurance-boosting injectable hormone that Lance Armstrong used as a shortcut to cycling fame.

USADA asked for the full battery of tests, including expensive carbon isotope ratio analysis that tells naturally produced testosterone apart from synthetic versions of the hormone taken by dopers to build muscle and speed recovery.