“In 2022 I want an international medal.” Mohamed Katir (23 years old) closed the year with an impressive victory at San Silvestre Vallecana, the first by a Spaniard since Chema MartÃnez in 2003. The athlete based in Mula (Murcia) since he was 5 years old flew through the streets of Madrid to take down rivals and win with 27:45, the best Spanish mark in the race, surpassing the 27:56 mark of Toni AbadÃa. Both and De la Ossa (27:58) are the only nationals who have dropped by 28 minutes.
Katir has completed an idyllic 2021 in results, smashing three Spanish records in 33 days. First it was the 5,000 meter (12: 50.79 in Florence), then 1,500 (3: 28.76 in Monaco) and then the 3,000 meter (7: 27.64) in Gateshead. A feat that only had to add a medal in a great championship. He was fourth in the Indoor European Championship in Torun (Poland) and eighth in the 5,000 final of the Tokyo Games. For this reason, the long-distance runner with a prodigious high stride at Playas de Castellón has set himself a challenge to bite metal in 2022, a year with two world championships (Belgrade indoors in March and Oregon outdoors in July) and a European (Munich in August).
His hair in the wind and intimidates rivals for an athlete with a wide range of possibilities from 800 to 10,000. “I am a humble boy, always with my feet on the ground, from a working class family, which taught me to look at the world from another perspective,” he defined himself for AS. Born in Morocco, to a Moroccan father and an Egyptian mother, he is humble, shy and reserved, and a great lover of poetry (he writes poems regularly), rap and jazz.