Since graduating from Louisville in 2008, Wesley Korir has competed in 10 marathons, never finishing outside of the top six. His crowning achievement came in 2012 when he won the Boston Marathon in 2:12:40.

The following year, Korir was elected to Kenyan Parliament representing the Cherangany Constituency. The initiatives he has tackled include clean water projects, working with dairy farmers to improve their yield and helping Kenya become a more self-sufficient nation rather than one reliant on outside aid.

Recently, Korir has championed another cause: ridding Kenyan athletics of its corruption and doping issues. We spoke with Korir before his Boston Marathon tune-up at the NYC Half about the challenges facing Kenya.

How difficult is it to balance your training as an elite athlete with your work in Kenyan parliament?

For the last two years since I have been in Kenyan parliament, it has been a challenge to balance the training. But right now, I am managing well and finding the time. I fly to Nairobi and need to be in parliament on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday so my goal has been to do a hard workout on Friday and a hard workout on Monday and then do a long run on the weekend.

When you are in Nairobi for parliament, what does a typical day for you look like?

A typical day for me in Nairobi is getting up at 6 o’clock in the morning and going for a run for one hour. I come back, shower, eat breakfast, get in the car and drive to the city. When I am in parliament, I go to the committee meetings. Then at about 5 in the evening I go to the gym and do some lifting or run on the treadmill before going home and having dinner and going to sleep.

Can you talk about your work in parliament and some of the initiatives that you are working on right now and are passionate about?

Obviously, I am passionate about athletics. One thing that I have been working on hard is getting the doping issue resolved. That is why I am proposing a bill right now in parliament to criminalize doping in Kenya. Any act of doping, whether it is involving an athlete, a coach, an agent, or a doctor will be a criminal and will have to go to jail. That is what I have been working on a lot.

When news broke in that Rita Jeptoo had tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, was doping already a hot-button issue in Kenya or was that the case that brought the problem to the national forefront?

I think when Rita Jeptoo was caught, the problem was already there but it brought the most attention. A lot of people had been caught before so we knew that doping was an issue in Kenya. The federation knew that doping was an issue in Kenya and the government knew that doping was an issue in Kenya, but they wanted to sweep it under the rug.

Until then, no big athletes were caught. The only athletes who got caught were small fish. But once the big fish was caught, Rita Jeptoo unfortunately, it became impossible to turn a blind eye to the issue. That to me, really, was a blessing in disguise because once Rita was caught people could see what has been going on for a long, long time.

How great of a factor has the corruption within Athletics Kenya been to the proliferation of doping in the country?

There is a definite problem with Athletics Kenya. For years, they have been living and operating in denial. The doping problem in Kenya didn’t begin yesterday. The doping issue in Kenya didn’t start with Rita Jeptoo. It started a long time ago. Isaiah Kiplagat and his team have always lived in denial, pretending there is no problem, always saying that there is no problem, but they are the ones with the problem because they didn’t deal with the issue when it first arose and now athletes are victims of the circumstances. At AK, they have done nothing. All they have done is corruption and infighting rather than fighting for the athletes.

In addition to making doping a criminal offense, are wholesale changes within Athletics Kenya necessary to help combat this issue?

Isaiah Kiplagat needs to go. He needed to go a long time ago. But the key with AK is to look at the goals of AK. As athletes, we need to fight for the goal changing of AK. The institution of AK is messed up. The institution has allowed Isaiah Kiplagat to be in the leadership for all of these years as a roadblock to change. We can’t get anything out of Kiplagat so we have to get Kiplagat out.

Kiplagat needs to go, like yesterday. What we need to do is prepare for a better transition, for when Kiplagat goes, who comes in. The institution has allowed Kiplagat to line his pockets and do what he has done for years and that needs to be changed so that we don’t have the same problems when the new regime comes in.

Does the Kenyan government have any influence when it comes to oversight of Athletics Kenya?

They don’t, and that’s the problem. They don’t have an office for it in the government. [AK] is independent and self-financed. The only time the government comes in is when they are funding teams to go to the Olympics. The AK has operated largely out of government control. That is why as athletes, we started PAAK (Professional Athletes Association of Kenya).

The goal of PAAK is to have oversight on what Athletics Kenya is doing because for years they have been doing things without anyone having anyone accounting for what they do. But now athletes have come together with an understanding of the issues to have oversight of what the AK does.

What we need now are the people who sponsor and are funding Athletics Kenya, like Nike, to make sure that the dollars that are put into AK go where they are supposed to go. Otherwise, it will only go into one person’s pocket, Isaiah Kiplagat.

To date, how much traction has PAAK gotten and have you been able to call Isaiah Kiplagat to the carpet on some of these corruption allegations?

Yes, I think it is working. Since PAAK was formed, the athletes have really been able to push AK to really do the right thing. But PAAK has a long way to go. I think PAAK needs to generate money because athletes have been funding it themselves. The government needs to register it so we can become the official oversight committee of AK. Also, we need to work with the government to make sure that once we have oversight of the AK, the government will be able to prosecute any wrongdoers in AK. What we want out of AK is for them to do their job and do it well. No matter who comes in, PAAK has to be very strong for AK to do its job well. Otherwise we will have the same problems over and again.

The bill you are introducing to criminalize doping, how do you assess it’s chances of passing and how quickly could that happen?

Right now, I think the chances of it passing are very high because of the Rita Jeptoo fallout. Some people have come out and said that maybe doping is too hard to criminalize, but it is never too hard.

The government has evidence and AK has evidence of doctors who are giving athletes the drugs. EPO is not something you take as an athlete. It is an injection. So when you criminalize doping, the doctors would know they can go to jail and lose their jobs and would have no incentive to give an athlete ‘medicine’ when they ask for it.

Also, there is no incentive for athletes not to dope. There is no fear. Right now, the position and mentality is like this: Look at Rita Jeptoo. How many marathons and prize money has she won? A lot. How much money was taken away from her? Only the last two races, maybe one race. The only money she lost was the World Marathon Majors $500,000 and the winnings for Chicago. But she still has all of her Boston money and all her money from the shoe company. Athletes look at that and say, ‘Okay. I’ll dope to win one or two big marathons and make money. Even if I get caught once, I’ll still be rich.’

Unless we establish that, once you get caught, not only will you lose money, but you will go to jail, there will be no deterrent, there will be no fear. Dopers need to see that they are criminals. Why is it that when somebody steals, when somebody kills, people know they are headed to jail? Because from the time they were young, they were taught that stealing and murdering is a crime.

Just like when a young kid grows up and knows when you kill, you go to jail, they need to know that when you dope, you go to jail. That is the only way to create an atmosphere of knowing that doping is a crime. Not only will you be banned for two years, but you are going to jail and you will never be allowed to represent the country in any race outside of Kenya again. Your life as an athlete is done.

At this critical juncture, how important is it for athletes like yourself who are competing clean to continue to have strong performances to not only prove that it is possible but to also stamp out the perception and suspicion that all Kenyans must be doping?

We need to keep working hard. I tell other athletes all the time that if you’re clean, work hard. We need to continue performing. We need to continue winning marathons. If we stop this doping issue that has come into Kenya and all of a sudden we start losing, then the world can shake a finger at us and say, ‘They were only good because they were all doping.’ For me, as a fighter for clean sport, I have to run hard, I have to finish strong, I have to win marathons because I want people to believe that Kenyans can always do well without doping.