Cathal Dennehy: Catch him if you can - Katir case tells us something of athletics culture
Mohamed Medal Spain Tim Katir Via Clayton/corbis The 5000m Athletics Championships His Of Men's During Silver At Action In Images World Picture: In The Getty Win Final 2023
The athletes always know. They know what makes sense, what feels right, and what simply does not. They know who has the talent to be up front, contending for world titles, and who got there through a devious act of deception.
With Mohamed Katir, the athletes knew. So did the coaches and managers and any clear-eyed fans. Maybe not with 100% certainty – it’s always an educated guess – but stick a gun to their head, ask them to guess if he was clean or dirty, and the vast majority would have gone one way. Because ever since 2021, when Katir made a breakthrough that was almost comical, reducing his 1500m personal best from 3:36 to a Spanish record of 3:28.76, little made sense about his career.
And this year we learned why.
In February, the two-time world medallist was banned for two years by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) after racking up three anti-doping whereabouts failures in a 12-month period. The first of his strikes was a filing failure. In February last year, a doping control officer showed up to test him at his listed whereabouts location in Murcia, Spain, with Katir’s father answering and saying his son was actually in Lisbon, visiting his fiancée. Katir claimed he’d booked a flight to go see her as she’d been feeling unwell and forgot to update his whereabouts, but records showed he’d actually booked that flight two days later than claimed.
For his second strike, in April last year, drug testers showed up at his house but Katir was actually on a training camp in France. He said he’d tried to update his whereabouts but experienced issues with the online system. He sent an email to the system’s support team with the address where he could be found and got a response telling him to update the AIU. Whether by accident or design, Katir never did that.
A reminder: three such offences in a 12-month period means a two-year ban from the sport. As such you’d think at this point – at least if Katir was clean – he’d have been fastidious about following the rules, given he was one of Spain’s best hopes for an Olympic medal in athletics and was putting his six-figure salary in jeopardy if he racked up one more strike.
But alas, in October last year, a drug tester showed up to his house during the hour he’d assigned to be there, 7:20-8:20pm. His dad answered, telling the tester Katir was training 30 minutes away and couldn’t be reached by phone. Katir claimed he thought he’d set his one-hour window from 7-8am, not in the evening, and after the missed test he changed the testing window to that time.
But by then it was too late: that was three strikes, a two-year ban, and it was to the Paris Olympics. The response from the athletics world was, on the whole, a tongue-in-cheek paraphrasing of that line from Casablanca about being “shocked, shocked!” to find doping might have been going on here.
Because no one with their finger close to distance running’s pulse was surprised.
Katir always claimed his breakthrough was believable and wasn’t shy in firing back at sceptics. In response to someone commenting under an Instagram post about a race he won last year stating “No way Katir is clean,” the Spaniard replied: "What hurts friend? While you criticize me that this is normal it is the nature of men when there is another man better than him they envy him, ask your wife if Katir is handsome or not. Surely your wife would be delighted to be with a winner not a loser."
The irony here was that despite breaking whereabouts rules multiple times last year, Katir was not a winner at the World Championships. Still, he got awfully close.
When news of his ban was announced, I thought back to a story a colleague told me from the Monaco Diamond League in 2021. Katir had a lot of strong races throughout the year but that Spanish 1500m record of 3:28.76 was when his progression truly jumped the shark. He finished second to world 1500m champion Timothy Cheruiyot and beat Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who just a few weeks later would win the Olympic title in Tokyo.
Where had Katir’s apparent world-beating talent been hiding for so many years? That night in Monaco, people knew the deal. Ingebrigtsen’s father and then-coach, Gjert, was said to be apoplectic with rage and he wasn’t shy about voicing his cynicism, which drew a disappointed, defensive response from one of Katir’s team.
As it turned out, Katir flopped at the Tokyo Olympics, finishing eighth in the 5000m. But the following year he won 1500m bronze at the World Champs in Oregon, then in 2023 he fought Ingebrigtsen all the way to the line, winning silver behind the Norwegian in the world 5000m final in Budapest. Ahead of the Paris Olympics, Ingebrigtsen was asked about Katir’s case and the Norwegian kept it short and sweet. “Giving cheaters recognition is a mistake,” he said. “That I will not do.” His use of that word – cheaters – spoke volumes, given so many athletes who run into whereabouts issues claim they were simply careless, unintentional mistakes. But few believed that was the case for Katir.
That sense was only strengthened yesterday, the AIU announcing Katir has been given a more severe ban of four years due to tampering with evidence regarding his first filing failure. The tribunal concluded there was “no doubt that: a) The Athlete put forward a false version of events and altered documents. b) He did so in order to persuade WA (World Athletics) that his Filing Failure on 28 February 2023 should not be treated as a Whereabouts Failure.” At an event in New York in February, I asked world 1500m champion Josh Kerr about Katir’s case and the British star put it simply: “All we have to do is follow the rules and he didn’t do that.” When I asked about the whereabouts system, Kerr said it was “there to protect the athletes doing things the right way”.
One of those most affected by Katir’s performances was Guatemala’s Luis Grijalva, who finished fourth in last year’s world 5000m final – denied a medal which will unfortunately never come his way. In May, I asked Grijalva about Katir and he said the case was “upsetting”.
“If you want to compete on the world stage, then you have to submit your whereabouts,” he added. “It sucks for the sport but also at the same time, it’s good for the sport. If you’re making a lot of money, you have two medals, you’re driving a Mercedes, whatever, then obviously submit your whereabouts and don’t try to cheat the system. That’s all.”
Katir did cheat the system and thanks to the AIU, he’s been found out. He will be banned until February 2028. While his case is a reminder that issues linger in athletics, the anger from his rivals should tell us something positive about the landscape and culture in the sport, and how many of the world’s best view athletes like Katir. Because since 2021, in their heart of hearts, they knew. And in 2024, thankfully, they’ve now had it confirmed.