Mo Katir fires back against doping accusations

Place 1.
3000 Metres 7:27.64 International Stadium, Gateshead (GBR)
13 JUL 2021

Place 1.
5000 Metres 13:08.52 International Stadium, Gateshead (GBR)

23 MAY 2021

National Championships

Place 1.
5000 Metres 13:43.61
Estadio Enrique Lopez Cuenca, Nerja (ESP)
25 JUN 2022

Believe or not believe until you see the evidences by your own eyes.

CROSS COUNTRY IS NOT A PRAMETER YOU CAN BASE ON

Look here is the reality with Katir - in a 3 year stretch from 2018-2020 he ran 3.40, 3.37 and 3.36 - ages 20,21,22. He then dropped 8 seconds in a season to 3.28. That's not the same 8 seconds dropping from 3.50 to 3.42 or even 3.44 to a borderline world class 3.36 - that's 8 seconds into rare air that guys like Coe, Willis, Cram, even Daniel Komen never got into.

And I understand the rebuttal here - "well he was still young - only 22, so he was just maturing and it's not that crazy to comprehend" but it kind of is. To have the requisite talent to run this fast, it's usually becoming evident at an earlier age. Case in point Jakob who right now is only 4 tenths of a second faster than Katir lifetime, ran 3.31 at 17, 3.30 at 18, 3.28 at 19. Willis ran 3.36 at age 20 (same as Katir), 3.32 at 21 and then had to grind out almost 10 years of low 3.30 running every season until he finally broke through the barrier. Coe followed a similar pattern having run 3.32 at age 22 and had to wait 7 years of obviously quality performances before he broke the 3.30 barrier.

So this progression of Katir isn't normal and is more in line with a guy like Rashid Ramzi who went from running 3.39 to 3.30 in a season - funnily enough from the age of 22 to 23, exactly the same ages that Katir experienced his seismic jump. I guess we don't need any briefing on how Ramiz achieved that do we?

Throw into the mix that this jump happened during a period of time where we know for a fact that athlete isolation was at an all-time high because the world thought humanity was coming to an end, and there is a lot of anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that points to a high level of suspicion.

Also the way the human mind processes and rationalizes past actions is very complex. Maybe Katir right now is clean as a whistle. Maybe he has been for the past 2 seasons? Maybe that's enough in his mind to be able to claim he's clean and everyone else can go f--- themselves, I don't know.

I personally find his jump/rise to prominence hard to believe but that's just me and I could be wrong. Either way I find him just as believable as many others out there so good for him I guess.

The 3.000 and 5.000 was in 2021. My examples was from 2022. A very scratchy, uneven season - with a couple of exceptions of course.

cases like this with a blood passport are open shut.

worldathletics.org

Florence GRIFFITH-JOYNER | Profile | World Athletics

Link:worldathletics.org/athletes/united-sta...

joyner met charlie francis and ben johnson, and was suddenly 5 meters better, at the tail end of her career

a 11.0 100 sprinter to 10.5 AFTER the prime years with elite training...

without extenuating circumstance.

note that a jump after college in events like 1500 and 5000 are not necessarily a good indicator or PED, because college races are slow, and it's hard to get that drafting all the way, which turns the 336 into a 333 straight away, and a 332 if the traning is better

He obviously changed SOMETHING .. but I don’t believe there’s a drug in the world that’ll bring an elite athlete’s 1500m time from 3:36 down to 3:28 in 12 months.

I have no dog in this argument at all … nor really a position either way .. but I think simply posting his times like that and pretending “drugs” is any kind of complete explanation is every bit as ridiculous as saying “pushups”.

Do you think it was pushups that enabled Ramzi to improve a similar amount at exactly the same age?

100% agreed. Why are there so many Katir defenders here?

Why is he so slow if he takes PEDs.

He has a very good stride

It should be noted that 2020 was the worst COVID year and many competitions were cancelled. It is not surprising that he only ran a second faster than his previous pr that year and that he had a large drop the next year. Even that out over two years and it's not as outrageous, especially at 22. Wheating dropped 8 seconds in one race at 22. He had a pr of 3:38 with a very fast close around 25. Then he goes to Monaco in his first Euro 1500m and runs 3:30. He was not doping.

Katir is a great runner and a pure fighter. I like watching his races, hopefully he can improve further and destroys Jakob soon.

He is a good actor. Better than Cheptegei smiling when running low 26.

If you agree that doping improves performances quite significantly, you have to accept that everybody under 3'30/7'30/12'50 is on it. Otherwise, they would all destroy WR by doping. WR holder had to be dopers, every single time for decades (with maybe some exceptions for unpopular and uncompetitive events until recently), and close contenders also. Otherwise world records would be easily beatable. It as simple as that.

To be at the very top of pretty much any sport, you have to be the most talented, the most dedicated and the most efficient PED user. How could you be the best without one of those, while thousands of super talented athletes all over the world are doping, trying hard but slower.

If anything, his answer to accusation is a confirmation. Immature and egocentric behavior makes it even more likely that he is cheating and lying to achieve success.

OK, so Coe was dirty but Katir is clean.

Wheating was already a 1:45.0/3:38 man at age 20. At age 20 Katir was 3:41 and ran his 1:51.8 800m pb at age 21.

He went from 7th in the Spanish Championships to missing the European record by 0.08 seconds in the space of just 10 months.

IMO Nuguse is more suspicious than Katir.

A 4:06 / 9:06 HS guy is now a 3:47 / 7:28 world beater? GTFO. If you're going to point the doping finger, let's not ignore the anomalies in our own country.

Katir’s improvement is no more suspicious than Woody Kincaid’s huge improvement in 2019 during a contract year

I think what has to be said about Katir is the goalposts moved. Everyone at the time said: “wait until his rocket fuel in 2021 (pre-AIU RTP etc.) wears off.” Well, the truth is the guy is now the same guy he was in 2021, and possibly better. So this is no longer rocket fuel, it would have to be the garden variety doping everyone is accused of. Which again is fine, the guy did improve a lot. There are better rationalizations for his improvement than Ramzi ever had. He DID come from a situation with low resources, and then was able to upgrade as far as coaching (in vogue threshold training), facilities (training same high altitude place as Jakob) and so on. This was not a guy who was given a huge amount of support until 2020-21. I personally don’t know if he’s doping or not, but he has outlasted what many thought would occur with him when he burst onto the scene.

Kitty learnt a lesson from the 1250 race, and that's "appearance is everything!" He made that first sub-13 look easy whilst Ingebrigtsen lay sprawled on the track. The second one, the theatrics were played very well. Oscar-worthy.

No it’s not😂he sounds like a teenager

I just don't get comments like this. Anyone with shady connections is suspicious as hell (does Katir have these; legitimate question?). Anyone with a positive test is of course more than suspicious (Katir doesn't have this). And maybe you're of the view that 3:28 is inherently a suspicious time.

But how do you expect that someone gets down to 3:28? It's basically impossible to become an elite runner without a year or two where you drop out of the sky. For instance, even 3:50 takes a lot of training and a tremendous amount of talent. Some runners hit that at age 16, but most don't, even most elites. Then you either have a massive drop to 3:36 or a massive drop from 3:36 to 3:28 (or sometimes both). Or you have a long progression of dropping time every year throughout your 20s, which is quite rare and some people also find suspicious.

Said another way, isn't Katir's drop from 3:52 to 3:40 in one (pre-pandemic year) also suspicious? It's a significantly bigger percentage drop than 3:36 to 3:28. Maybe he started doping in 2018, then had a large natural improvement a couple of years later. Maybe he started doping in 2018 and increased his regime in 2021, while also making unrelated improvements in those same years. Or maybe improvement curves are just a lousy way to tell what's going on since all elite athletes make massive drops at one point or another.

Actually, I'd love to see someone do a study on this. Take the top 100 or 500 1500m runners, and see if the ones caught doping have any patterns in their year-to-year progressions. I'd bet that there's actually very little there, but would be very interested to find out either way.