• 5,000 meters Katir, eighth, pays for the sin of youth

  • Results Times of 5,000

He left the track barefoot, wearing a white and a black sock.

His head was drooping, as if his body weighed.

But when he entered the tunnel that led to the mixed zone,

Mohamed Katir El Haouzi

raised his head and smiled.

He did not want to give the image of a defeated record holder in front of the cameras that awaited him.

Quite the opposite.

Katir swore and perjured that she was happy.

"Well, I have been an Olympic diploma. Not bad. At 23 I entered an Olympic 5,000-meter final and I finished eighth. That is why I am very happy," said the athlete.

"I am still very young. I have a lot to improve to be able to fight the Africans, who have gone very hard today. But I am sure that when I gain experience I will be the best."

With every microphone or recorder that stopped, he always repeated the same word: madness.

"It's crazy what I'm living";

"It has been crazy to get here";

"It was crazy to enter the Olympic final";

"I've been unlucky because it's been crazy how the others have run."

Three Ugandans, a Kenyan and an Ethiopian started very fast. Stride after stride, they left Katir behind, who lost at the top of the group with 500 meters to go to finish the race. The legs of the Spanish did not hold. The Ugandan

Joshua Cheptegei

took the gold (12: 58.15 minutes), followed by the Canadian

Ahmed Mohamed

(12: 58.61) and the American

Paul Chelimo

(12: 59.05). Katir managed to gain strength in the last meters to take at least the Olympic diploma (13:06, 60).

An eighth place that would not be bad for a beginner if it were not for the expectations that an athlete had created that few months ago very few knew.

A mediofondista who practically went from winning popular races to get some money, to fighting for a medal in the Olympic Games.

He arrived in Tokyo with three historical records that he broke in 33 days:

Fermín Cacho's

1,500

,

Isaac Viciosa's

3,000, and

Alemayehu Bezabeh's

5,000

.

"Next time I will do better. I am very young and for the following competitions I will be much more prepared," said Katir before leaving the mixed zone.

Firefighter, police, Civil Guard ...

From a field in Murcia to the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.

From Alcazarquivir to some Olympic Juices.

From being sixth in the San Silvestre Vallecana to running a final in the 5,000 meters.

A Muleño with Moroccan and Egyptian blood.

A reader of Antonio Machado who writes poetry and who has made his first steps as a model.

Katir always goes by the diminutive of Mo. He wants to be a firefighter.

Or National Police.

Or Civil Guard.

In each interview he gives he says something different.

It is still not clear to him.

The City Council of Mula, a Murcian municipality of 16,000 inhabitants, had hung a banner on the balcony of the town hall that reads "Mohamed Katir, Muleño pride."

Because Katir has been asked and cross-examined about her homeland over and over again. She has never doubted: first of all, Mula, her town, where her family lives and her friends are. Then Spain, the country where he has been since he was five years old. Because of his childhood in Alcazarquivir, in the north of Morocco, he does not remember anything other than the smudges that someone may have who spent the first five years of his life in a place to which he has never returned.

Despite all that, Katir did not get Spanish nationality until 2019. In youth, she ran and won races. But, as often happens in these cases, until the Spanish Athletics Federation saw the real potential of that kid who won from 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 meters tests, to a national cross championship, it did not pressure the Superior Sports Council to start processing nationality. Katir, as a promise of Spanish athletics, was luckier than his father

Mohamed El Haouzi

, who came to Spain by boat in the 90s.

Mohamed father ended up in Huesca.

A couple of years later his wife, born in Egypt, arrived with the boy Katir, who tried soccer.

But he had to move with his family to the south, to Mula, to begin to excel in the careers at school.

Then he was lucky that

Cristóbal Carlos Ramírez

, his coach,

saw him in 2011

until October 2020.

Katir insists that she has finished the 5,000 meters happily.

But the record man was one of the favorites.

Many had already given him the medal before running.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

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