Mohamed Katirworld runner-up in the 5,000 meters, is not yet focused on the Paris Olympic Games because thinking about the future causes “stress” and showing his intention to attend the Glasgow Indoor World Championships in March if he “fights for the podium.”
Katir, at 25 years old, is the great Spanish reference in the middle distance thanks to his victories in the last two seasons, with a silver medal in the 5,000 meters at the last World Cup in Budapest, the continental runner-up in Munich 2022 and the gold at the Games Europeans by country in 2023, in Krakow, in the 1,500.
On the asphalt he also performs at a high level, as seen in the victory he achieved in San Silvestre Vallecana in 2021, with a time of 27:45, or the two second places in the 2022 and 2023 editions, both maintaining a good rivalry with athletes of the stature of Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei and Ethiopian Berihu Aregawi.
For 2024, the main goal is the Olympic Games in Paris, although he has not yet begun to think about them.
“I still don’t have the Games mindset. Thinking about the future gives me a lot of stress and I prefer to be calm. “I think about my health, training, without stress, and when summer comes I will be ready,” said the athlete from From EFE, who plans to start competing indoors this January to test himself for at the Indoor World Cup in Glasgow (Scotland) March.
“I plan to run some indoor rallies like last year and it depends on how I look I will decide, although I have it in my mind. If I am ready to fight for the podium I want to go to the World Championship, but if not I will rest and be with “I have my battery charged for what’s coming. I have not set a date to decide if I’m going to the World Cup,” he says.
His goal, in any case, is to continue with the same 2023 plan under the orders of his coach Gabi Lorente. “Looking to the future, whatever comes up because the year is full of great competitions“. This refers to the outdoor season, which will have as its high point the European Championship in Rome in June and then the Paris Games.
What is not in doubt is Katir’s ambition. On the track and on the asphalt he showed his courage by talking to the best in the world, the elite group of athletes of which he was already a part. And outside of competition, self-confidence is also huge.
“Defeats are what connect me to myself the most. I see my weaknesses and my mistakes to deal with them in the future and correct them. For the future, based on the previous tests I have conducted, I think I can go under 27 minutes in ten kilometers,” he pointed out.
No Spaniard has ever achieved that distance mark. The closest was Katir’s own 27:19 at the 2022 San Silvestre Vallecana, a race whose records could not be approved as a record due to the favorable slope of part of the route.
Source: La Verdad
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