Everything around Mo Katir (25) is a mystery, this guy is a kind of ascetic who lives and trains in the mountains.
Katir runs and sleeps and runs again and continues sleeping in the heights of the Sierra Nevada, and sometimes she is inspired and writes poems, she is inspired by nature, the chirping of a bird, the dance of the branches when the wind shakes them.
Katir wants nothing more, nothing more than the advice of her coach, Gabi Lorente, the coach who also trains Mariano García and sends him the jobs via whatsapp or email.
The man, Katir, receives them, processes them, interprets them, executes them and even shares them on social networks. There he does exhibit himself: he shows his powers in vertiginous series at altitude, he is portrayed accelerating with Mohamed Attaoui, another athlete who had crossed the strait as a child and now runs through Spain (Attaoui had stayed in the semifinals of the 800) .
That is the life of Katir, that nobody bothers him, that the press leaves him alone.
"I'm a runner," he says.
“I am a runner”, Katir had left saying the other Sunday, the day he had gotten off the final of the 1,500.
What a disappointment, then.
I am a runner.
He had long passed before the press, a confused and furious ascetic, and from there his entourage had had to get to work.
–Mo: not everything is running. You also have to interact –his agents and the federation officials had told him.
True, you have to transcend.
For in transcendence are glory, fame and money.
And this is how Katir, an athlete with expectations, bronze in the 1,500 of the Eugene 2022 World Championship, silver in the 5,000 of the European Championship in Munich a month later, had spent the last days in Budapest: calming down, looking for his peace and his tempo. , diving inside to get the best of himself.
"Yes, in reality I'm not like that, but I needed to be alone with my head to smile again," he would say a couple of days later, calmer and more comforted, after overcoming the semifinals of the 5,000.
Three days he has been conspiring, pacing in his room at the Margarita Island spa, reviewing the way to break everything.
Break Jakob Ingebrigtsen, or the ever-fearful Ethiopians Aregawi, Gebrhiwet and Kejelcha, or Grijalva, the fabulous Guatemalan.
Access to the podium.
Even gold.
–I thought I was going to win, 'hold on, hold on', he told me on the straight. But Ingebrigtsen is the best – he said at last this Sunday in the mixed zone, with silver around his neck, just 14 hundredths behind the Norwegian, with bloody knees, that's how pointed the athletes' nails are. But above all, this is a triumph of the power of the mind. Although I was exhausted by my elimination in 1,500, I always thought that this could happen.
(...)
The race is chess.
The Kenyans throw Ismael Kipkurui ahead and the man crosses the km in 2m46s, six seconds ahead of the rest, in whose tail Ingebrigtsen naps, always running calmly.
Katir is not so calm, he advances a few steps and goes around the head and looks for allies.
Aregawi and Ismail move, and the distance is still six seconds after the second km, what nerves, but then Kipkurui stops and six laps from the end the Ethiopians move and Katir and Ingebrigtsen settle in the middle of the group: Ingebrigtsen makes , Katir contemplates him, and in the 3,000 step, in 8m13s, Aregawi really shoots.
All the chips are on the board, and now Katir ignores Ingebrigtsen, the Norwegian who is looking for his second world gold of 5,000 (he has two world silvers of 1,500), moves forward and begins to go his way: he feels really privileged.
The fourth km is run in 2m37s, the group sharpens and Ouassim Oumaiz, the other Spaniard in the final, finishes last, and Katir also sharpens, who is now rearing his head. The Budapest audience is excited as they watch the pack regroup, an accordion of eight men embracing and stretching, all roaring as the bell jingles.
Katir declares war!
–I wanted exactly that, to get to the last 400 as fresh as possible, and attack there and no one would pass. And that's why I launched that acceleration," he says, and the chronicler does the math: the last lap was run in 52s73, and the outcome gives Katir his silver, how the fight on the straight, and the Spanish team the fifth podium, so many As in Stuttgart'93, these have been their best World Cups ever: Spain has been third in the medal table.
