Mohamed Katir v. World Athletics; World Athletics v. Katir

Mohamed Katir, born in Ksar el-Kebir, Morocco, and raised in Mula, Spain from age five, competes internationally for Spain and holds a world 1500m bronze (2022) and 5000m silver (2023). He missed three doping tests within a 12-month period and, on 16 February 2024, admitted the violation and accepted a two-year ban due to expire 6 February 2026. During the investigation into one of those missed tests — a whereabouts failure recorded on 28 February 2023 — investigators found Katir had altered his travel itinerary, boarding pass, and booking confirmation to make it appear he had been travelling on the relevant date, in an attempt to persuade World Athletics the missed test should not count as a failure at all.

The AIU's Disciplinary Tribunal found Katir had committed a separate anti-doping violation for tampering, imposing a four-year period of ineligibility on 11 December 2024, running concurrently with his existing two-year ban and, crediting 308 days already served, set to expire 7 February 2028. Katir admitted the tampering itself but appealed the four-year length of the sanction to CAS; the AIU cross-appealed seeking to extend it by a further year, to five years, citing the severity and concealed nature of the deception.

CAS dismissed both appeals on 19 September 2025, confirming the Disciplinary Tribunal's original decision. On the length of the ban, the Tribunal's reasoning — which CAS left undisturbed — rested on three specific findings: the deception itself had no actual impact, since it did not succeed in avoiding the whereabouts failure being recorded; Katir had admitted to the tampering rather than contesting it; and the charge related to his first whereabouts failure, not a repeated pattern. The AIU separately sought retroactive disqualification of Katir's 2023 competition results; CAS declined, since he had not been found to have gained any competitive advantage from the tampering, meaning his 2022 and 2023 World Championship medals stand.

Because the four-year ban runs concurrently with, rather than after, the two-year ban, and both expire in February 2026 and February 2028 respectively, Katir will be excluded from the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo and the 2027 World Championships in Beijing, but remains eligible — narrowly, given the ban's expiry falls shortly before the Games — for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics.