Peerless middle-distance runner David Rudisha says a lack of money and infrastructure has made it extremely difficult to combat sports doping in developing nations such as Kenya.
The east African track powerhouse is under mounting pressure to prove it is serious in the fight against performance-enhancing drugs or risk being excluded from the Rio Olympics.
More than 40 Kenyan athletes have tested positive to banned substances in the past three years, prompting the World Anti-Doping Agency to set an April 5 deadline for Kenya to pass legislation.
"It has been tough for our sport with the turbulence that we are going through," Olympic 800m champion and world holder Rudisha told reporters in Melbourne on Wednesday.
"This problem with doping is a big issue and I think it can also bring us together - the government and the federation need to work together with the athletes."
Rudisha said a lack of infrastructure and funding for anti-doping in developing nations exacerbated the problem.
"There are thousands and thousands of Kenyans training out there and only a few of them are on the WADA list," he said.
"You can imagine how difficult it is. So far of about 40 Kenyan athletes who have been caught doping, only a few of them are elite athletes - two or three of them.
"So if you put it into a percentage for the elite ones it's very few.
"But these upcoming and young athletes are a big problem because they are not known, nobody knows them and when they get out there and compete for a fast time they are being caught.
"But that is good because it shows that the anti-doping agencies also are doing their job."
Last month, world athletics' governing body (IAAF) provisionally suspended the chief executive of Athletics Kenya, Isaac Mwangi, for allegedly asking athletes for bribes to reduce doping bans.
Rudisha said Athletics Kenya were trying to work with WADA and the IAAF.
"We don't have labs in Kenya so we depend on international labs and most of them are there to assess those who are elite and top of the world," he said.
"So what about the others who are running locally, who are training locally? Nobody knows them.
"It's a big challenge."
WADA chief Craig Reedie told reporters in Switzerland overnight that Kenya had found the funding to set up a national anti-doping agency, but it needed to deliver it by April 5 or risk being judged non-compliant.
That fate has already befallen Russia, whose place in the athletics competition at the Rio Olympics is under a cloud.
Rudisha is racing in Saturday's IAAF World Challenge meet in Melbourne.
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