European 5000m record-holder and multiple major medallist receives provisional suspension from Athletics Integrity Unit
Mo Katir has been provisionally suspended for missing three anti-doping tests over a 12-month period.
The Spanish 25-year-old is the current European 5000m and indoor 3000m record-holder and has claimed world 5000m silver and 1500m bronze medals.
Katir also has a European 5000m silver medal on his CV.
He broke Jakob Ingebrigten’s European 5000m record at last year’s Monaco Diamond League with 12:45.01, bettering the Norwegian’s previous best mark of 12:48.45.
Katir’s European indoor 3000m record of 7:24.68 was set at the Pas-de-Calais meeting in Lievin last season. He finished second behind Ethiopia’s Lamecha Girma, who ran a world record of 7:23.81.
The Spaniard was registered for Meeting International Ciudad de Valencia, where he’d hoped to break the European indoor 5000m record – a mark of 12:57.08 set by Britain’s Marc Scott.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen beats Mo Katir (Getty)
Katir said that he’d appeal the charge of whereabouts failures.
“I consider that there is no violation arising from three location failures in the last twelve months,” the Spaniard said.
“In some of the location failures reported by AIU, I was available at the place, date and times provided by me.
“Over the last few months and years I have been subjected to a large number of out-of-competition doping controls in both urine and blood samples, without the slightest problem on my part.
“It is important to keep in mind that we are not dealing with a case of violating doping rules for the use of prohibited substances or methods, or even for evading out-of-competition doping controls.
“This is a simple file derived from the completion of location data on the ADAMS platform that could generate location errors (whereabouts).”
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