He left the barefoot, with a white sock and another black.
He walked, as if his body weighed.
But when he got into the tunnel he carried to the mixed zone, Mohamed Katir the Haouzi raised his head and smiled.
He did not want to give the image of a defeated plus summark in front of the cameras that expected him.
Quite the opposite.
Katir sworn and perhaps he was happy.
“Well, I’ve been an Olympic diploma, it’s not bad, I’ve been entered into an Olympic Final of 5,000 meters and I’ve been eighth. That’s why I’m very happy,” said the athlete.
“I am still very young, I have a lot to improve in order to fight with Africans, who have gone very hard today, but I am sure that when I take experience I will be the best.”
With each microphone or recorder that stopped, it 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 have had bad luck because it has been crazy how the others have run.”
Three Ugandans, a Kenyan and an Ethiopian started very fast.
Starch running back, they were leaving Katir behind, who lost to the group head in the absence of 500 meters to finish the race.
Spanish legs did not hold.
The Ugandés Joshua Chepttegei hung 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 take out strength in the last meters to take at least the Olympic Diploma (13: 06.60).
An eighth since it would not be bad for a debutant if it was not for the expectations that an athlete had created a few months ago they knew.
A midfieldist who spent practically winning popular careers to get some money, fight for a medal in Olympic Games.
He reached Tokyo with three historical records that he beat in 33 days: the 1,500 from Fermín Cacho, that of Vicious Isaac in 3,000 and the 5,000 from Alexehu Bezabeh.
“Next time I’ll do it better, I’m very young and for the following competitions I will be much more prepared,” Katir let go before leaving the mixed zone.
Of a distampader of Murcia to the Olympic Stadium of Tokyo.
Of Alcazarquivir to Olympic juices.
To be sixth in the San Silvestre Vallecana to run an end in the 5,000 meters.
A muleño with Moroccan and Egyptian blood.
A reader of Antonio Machado who writes poetry and who has made the pinitos of him as a model.
Katir always presents with the diminutive of Mo. He wants to be a fireman.
Or national police.
Or civil guard.
In each interview that he grants he says a different thing.
He still does not have it clear.
The City Hall of Mula, a Murcian municipality of 16,000 inhabitants, had hung on the balcony of the consistory a banner in which “Mohamed Katir, Muleño Pride” is read.
Because Katir has asked him and repeated for his homeland again and again.
She has never hesitated: the first of all, mule, the people of him, where the family lives and are the friends of him.
After, Spain, the country in which she has been from the age of five.
Because of her childhood in Alcazarquivir, in northern Morocco, she does not remember anything other than the blots that someone who passed the first five years of her life in a place she has never returned.
Despite all that, Katir did not get Spanish nationality until 2019. In youth ran and won races.
But, as often happens in these cases, until the Spanish Federation of Athletics did not see the real potential of that kid who won from evidence of 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 meters, until a Cross National Championship, did not press the Superior Sports Council
To start processing nationality.
Katir, as a promise of Spanish athletics, had more luck than her father Mohamed the Haouzi, who arrived in Spain in the Patra in the 90s.
Mohamed Father ended up in Huesca.
A couple of years later, the woman of him arrived, born in Egypt, with the Katir child, who tried it in football.
But he had to move with him to him to the south, to Mula, to start up in the careers at school.
Then he was lucky enough to see him in 2011 Cristóbal Carlos Ramírez, his coach until October 2020.
Katir insists that he has finished happy the 5,000 meters.
But the man of the records was one of the favorites.
Many had already given him the medal before running.
