Running News Daily

Spanish Olympian given four-year ban for falsifying whereabouts documents

Spanish Olympian and two-time world championship medalist Mohamed Katir was handed a four-year ban by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) on Friday for falsifying travel documents in support of his explanation for his three whereabouts failures in 2023.

Instead of accepting wrongdoing and taking on the two-year whereabouts ban, the 26-year-old middle-distance runner falsified travel documents (a travel itinerary, boarding pass and booking confirmation) in an attempt to mislead investigators as they probed the integrity of his explanation for a whereabouts failure that occurred on Feb. 28, 2023. The result was an even longer ban than what he was already facing.

The four-year ban will run concurrently with Katir’s ongoing whereabouts sanction, extending his ban from the sport until February 2028. This means he will be forced to miss both the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo and the 2027 World Athletics Championships in Beijing. 

According to the AIU, the world 5,000m silver medallist missed three tests between Feb. 28, 2023 and Oct. 10, 2023 (missing three doping tests in a 12-month window results in an anti-doping rule violation, or ADRV).

Katir’s whereabouts failures

On Feb. 28, 2023, a Doping Control Officer (DCO) went to the address in Murcia, Spain, indicated in the Athlete’s Whereabouts information; upon arrival, the DCO was told that Katir was in Lisbon and would not be returning until March 2. 

Katir missed another test on April 3, when a DCO showed up at his home in Murcia again. When they arrived, Katir was training in France, and had failed to update his whereabouts. Katir told the AIU he tried to update his information, but the system was not working. He was charged with his second violation when he failed to send an email providing evidence of technical issues.

His third violation occurred on Oct. 10, when a DCO went to the specified location during a 60-minute time slot between 7:20 p.m. and 8:20 p.m. When the DCO arrived, Katir was away at training, and later insisted there was a mistake in his whereabouts, and claimed he never changed the time slot from his usual 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. window.

Katir is a two-time world championship medallist in the men’s 1,500m and 5,000m events. He won silver in the 5,000m behind Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen at the 2023 World Athletics Championships in Budapest.

AIU head Brett Clothier said the ruling underscored the seriousness of tampering: “Gone are the days in athletics when explanations offered in anti-doping cases are just accepted at face value,” he stressed. “The vast majority of our elite athletes respect the strict rules and processes of the sport and they should take heart at the action being taken to ensure a level playing field.”