Katir is currently serving two, concurrent competition bans in relation to anti-doping rule violations due to expire in February 2026 and February 2028 respectively.
Biography
Born in Ksar el-Kebir, Morocco, Mohamed Katir was raised in Mula, Murcia, Spain since he was 5 years old.[2][3][4] While Katir had previously run as a Spaniard in youth competitions and won a Spanish national cross championship,[5] he acquired Spanish citizenship in October 2019, after a 4-year long process.[6]
In May 2021, Katir won his first Diamond League event, securing victory in the 5000 metres at the Grand Prix Gateshead in United Kingdom.[1] In June and July, he broke three long-standing Spanish national records in just a 33-day span at the Diamond League meetings. First on 10 June, he ran a new 5000 m record of 12:50.79 at the Golden Gala in Florence, Italy.[7] Less than a month later, at the Herculis meet in Monaco, he set Spanish record in the 1500 metres, finishing second behind only 2019 world champion Timothy Cheruiyot who set a personal best in the race. Katir's 3:28.76 ranked him as the 10th fastest of all time, just eight hundreds of a second off the European record.[8][9] Four days after that, he won the 3000 metres in Gateshead, United Kingdom with a time of 7:27.64, breaking Haile Gebrselassie meet record in the process. His time ranked him as 15th of all time at that distance.[10] At the end of the year, Katir won the San Silvestre Vallecana10 kilometres road race in Madrid, setting yet another national best mark and becoming the first domestic winner of this race since 2003.[11]
On 15 February 2023, Katir set the European indoor 3000 m record at the Meeting Hauts-de-France Pas-de-Calais in Liévin (in a race where Lamecha Girma set a world record) with a time of 7:24.68, slicing more than six seconds off the previous mark held by Adel Mechaal since 2022. His time surpassed the European outdoor 3000 m record of 7:26.62 and was inside the previous world indoor record of 7:24.90 set by Daniel Komen in 1998.[12][13]
Doping violations
On 7 February 2024 it was announced that Katir had been provisionally suspended by the AIU for whereabouts failures due to missing three doping tests in a twelve month period.[14] On 16 February 2024 he admitted the rules violations and is now serving a two year competition ban due to expire on 6 February 2026.[15][16][17][18]
In December 2024 Katir was given a further four-year suspension for an anti-doping rule violation, to run concurrently with his existing ban and expire on 6 February 2028, for breaching tampering rules.[19] He admitted that he had falsified travel documents submitted during the investigation into his first whereabouts failure in February 2023.[20][21]
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