Mo Katir admits whereabouts failures -- banned 2 years and will miss '24 Olympics

That didn't take long. Just nine days after he was provisionally suspended for whereabouts failures, Katir admitted to the failures and his 2-year ban was confirmed by the AIU.

Katir had claimed last week he would appeal as he felt there was an issue with the second failure, but he did not appeal and instead accepted the ban.

As far as whereabouts excuses go, Katir's aren't very believable and the AIU poked holes in them pretty easily.

First missed test (2/28/23): Testers showed up to his house that evening (outside his 60-minute window) but he was in Lisbon. Katir claimed his fiancee was feeling unwell and he had to book a flight to visit her that day in Lisbon. Except the flight receipts showed he had actually booked the flight two days earlier.

Second missed test (4/3/23): Testers showed up to Katir's house during his 60-minute window, but he was in Font Romeu. Katir claimed his whereabouts app wasn't working since March 28 and he wasn't able to update his location properly. But records show he was able to log in and update on March 29 and didn't make any attempts to log in after that. And then after the testers showed up to his house on April 3, he was able to log in and successfully update his location.

Third missed test (10/10/23): Testers showed up to his house during his 60-minute window in the evening and Katir's father claimed he was training 30 minutes away and unreachable by phone. Katir claims he thought his window had been earlier in the day.

The third explanation seems particularly egregious. You're sitting on two missed tests and you set your 60-minute window incorrectly? Either the dude was completely careless or he was doping.

Full decision here:

Right, so there's really no excuse for this.

What will happen to his silver medal? Can they take that from him?

So Kitty admitted to the violation and accepted the consequences, waiving his right to a hearing. AIU must not have been wrong in this case. Ever. So unfortunate how some posters went down in flames with this one.

Read the decision.
Failure #1: He went to Portugal, didn’t update it and then lied about it

Failure #2: He went to France, claims he had problems with the app etc. He failed to follow the email sent to him that instructed him to correspond with the AIU. He also lied it seems about the problems with the app and his attempts to log in.

Failure #3: He inexplicably changed his hours for months on end to a time when he trains and thus missed one. Didn’t seem to have much of an alibi for this…

Let's take a look at the plausibility of these offences:

1st Whereabouts Failure: February 28, 2023 (Filing Failure)
Circumstance: Katir traveled to Portugal without updating his Whereabouts information beforehand.
Believability: Sure, quite believable. Plans can change quickly, and it's understandable that Katir might have focused on arranging the trip rather than meticulously updating his location data.

2nd Whereabouts Failure: April 3, 2023 (Missed Test/Filing Failure)
Circumstance: Katir claimed to have faced technical difficulties updating his Whereabouts on ADAMS and resorted to emailing the ADAMS address instead.
Believability: Doubtful. Athletes are routinely informed to contact the AIU via email as the alternative in case of technical issues with ADAMS, not ADAMS themselves. Further, the AIU investigations showed no system outage in that period and no login attempts by Katir, making the excuse of technical difficulties flimsy.

3rd Whereabouts Failure: October 10, 2023 (Missed Test/Filing Failure)
Circumstance: Katir present at his specified location but training elsewhere; he then changed his Whereabouts time slot after the DCO left.
Believability: Highly suspicious. It seems extremely unlikely that an elite athlete would repeatedly forget their stated testing time slot. Further, changing the information after the missed test calls into question the reason for the discrepancy and makes the athlete appear negligent at best, and raises concerns about deliberate evasion.

My overall Impressions:
While the first failure seems like a plausible oversight, the pattern of subsequent issues strongly suggests deliberate attempts to avoid testing.
The explanations provided by Katir (technical difficulties, forgetting the stated time slot) appear weak and are contradicted by further investigations.
These circumstances significantly erode the believability of the Katir's claims of innocence.

NO, he wasn't caught doping.

Correct, I agree with your judgement dear Jonathan!!!

In fact, Mo was lucky to get away for fraud on the 1st missed test already. If I were AIU he would be banned based on the 1st missed test!

So I would say Mo is a proven doper despite what rekrunner would say otherwise!

I think he's making a smart choice here. They've got him bang to rights, so admit the charges and be back to two years.

He fights this and inevitably loses, he's looking at a 4 year ban.

It was also particularly aggravating of Mo's guilt when he precisely wanted to appeal at first to prove some vague innocence and the reneging on that appeal further aggravated and escalated his guilt to the next level lol!!! It's called flip-flop or semantical flip-flop or otherwise!!!! Reminds me of rekrunner lol!!!

We the people at LRC we are all about TRANSCENDENT (NON-SUBJECTIVE) FAITH AND INTEGRITY above CONDESCENDING OBJECTIVE FACTS AND EVIDENCES!!! And that means GOD OVER SATAN, amen!

fixed it for you

These are the most damning circumstances ever, short of actually failing/evading a test. This must feel like a punch in the stomach for Luis Grijalva, seeing as his results are only DQed from 2 months after he stole a medal from him.

Six days after finishing runner-up to Nuguse in the 15 at the World Indoor Tour. That loss must have stung. Back to the drawing board (which can be perceived to have been sauce).

Well that was just rekrunner with his 5 - 10 rekbots. Just ignore that troll.

The last one we should just call out as a hare-brained scheme.

Let’s lay it out:

-He inexplicably changed his testing window for October 1-EOY to a time he admits he regularly trained in the evening

-At first opportunity, he misses the test

-As if it was the plan all along he after-the-fact changes his testing window (for that day) on the same day of the missed test thinking that will clear him as they won’t be able to see the difference

-The AIU easily catches this bait-and-switch by looking at their logs and he drops all further attempts to defend himself

While I can’t say for sure if he was doping the first two times he missed a test , that last missed test scheme is so transparently stupid it feels like it had to emerge from someone who was completely intent on doping/deception.

To make matters worse, Worlds was just between dodged test #2 and dodged test #3. Hard to imagine a more obvious situation. Should really be silver for Jacob and bronze for Luis!

What I'm 99% hearing is that epo has a 6-day life cycle as far as being detectable. The tested individuals are warned in advance of when a test will be, giving them options and outs. Another out is the missed test loophole. Pro athletes should not be missing any tests. Unless of course they have something to hide. Huge red flag for one missed test. Three or more? Give me a break.

Yeah Jacob Krop had a pretty tough season and got silver the year before. While I feel bad for him as he summoned an outstanding kick, Luis is the real sad one to me. Im unsure, the Ethiopians will ever let it become a kickers race again. And he got tough 4ths 2 years in a row.

Spot on!!!

I'm happy enough with your analysis but as you know I peg myself to extremely high RF moral or moral RF standards of integrity and ethics, I do not tolerate one tiny speck or might I say atom of moral discrepancy in space-time. For this reason, the 1st test is enough evasion of testing which in turn is also enough proof of doping hence doping. If I set the rules and run the planet earth, these will be my infallible standards!!!