by Mo Farah
At that time Chris was studying at Loughborough on a sports scholarship. Loughborough was famous for having world-class sports facilities, sports scientists and coaches, so to be accepted there on a scholarship was a big deal and marked Chris out as being a hot prospect in UK athletics. He used to invite me up to the uni to hang out. He lived in hall on the campus and there was always a spare room available for me to crash. I was still living with Aunt Kinsi, and getting away for a full weekend was tricky. My aunt was very protective of me. I was only permitted to stay out for the whole weekend if I had to race somewhere in Europe. Otherwise, I was supposed to be back by the end of the night. I wanted to go up and visit Chris, so I told Aunt Kinsi that my European races went on for longer than a day or two at a time. Then I secretly planned my trek up to Loughborough to visit Chris.
‘Aunt,’ I’d say. ‘I’m going to go off for a race this weekend. It’s in Poland.’
Aunt Kinsi would ask, ‘When are you back?’
‘Next week,’ I’d say. ‘We’re training for a few days after the race.’
A blatant lie. My return flight would be on the Monday, but instead of travelling straight back home from the airport, I’d catch the train to Loughborough with Chris. Then we’d spend the week on campus. We had some great fun, playing monster sessions of Pro Evolution Soccer on the PlayStation 2, checking out the student union bar in the evenings before going into town. The following Friday I’d catch a train back to Hounslow and arrive home in the early evening. My auntie would be at home waiting for me, asking me about my trip to Poland.
‘Yeah, it was good,’ I’d reply casually. Then I’d head upstairs and crash.
I travelled up to Loughborough as often as I could – which was about as often as the race calendar allowed. If there was an event being held near Loughborough – say, a cross-country race in Nottingham – I’d pop over to the campus after I’d finished my run. Along with Chris, I got to hang out with a few of the other athletes based at Loughborough, including Steve Vernon. Steve came from Manchester. He’d won the English Schools senior title in 1999, the year after Sam Haughian had won it, and the same year that I won the Intermediate race. Out of the two, Steve was the more sensible guy. Chris was more like me, a bit of a joker. Spending time with them both was really great. I got my first taste of university life. I remember thinking, ‘This definitely looks cool.’ I wanted more of the same.
I met loads of people on the athletics circuit. The circuit is unique. There’s nothing else like it. You’ll meet a lot of genuinely warm and friendly people, and make friends, even if you’re competing against some of them the next day. As everyone travels to the same meetings, you see the same faces, stay in the same hotels, compete in the same events. The circuit becomes sort of like an extended family. As well as making friends with the likes of Malcolm, Chris and Steve, I got the chance to meet some of the great names in British athletics too, including Paula Radcliffe. Meeting Paula was a special moment for me. She had been one of my role models, and the first time I met her I was a little star-struck.
Over the years, Paula has helped me out in various ways. She set up a scheme with her sponsors, Nike, to provide grants to promising young athletes to help fund their development. I was among the lucky ones to be awarded a grant of £1,000. I spent the money on driving lessons because I felt I should be less reliant on getting lifts from Alan or club members to get to Eton for training. Learning to drive made it easier for me to get to the track and make my way to race meets. Getting the money to do this was such a wonderful gesture. Paula didn’t have to do that. I was just some young up-and-coming kid. I’ll never forget how she helped me out.
When I look back on it, my life has been full of these little kindnesses. Conrad Milton helped me set up a bank account. He had a background in banking and we agreed for him to be a joint signatory so that I’d learn how to manage my money properly. I wasn’t making much in those days – mostly grants through SportsAid, and the odd bit here and there for winning some race, £100 or so. (I had a contract with Nike that covered my basic running kit.) Sir Eddie Kulukundis, a Greek ship-owner and benefactor of British athletics, stepped in to help with my passport situation. He got his solicitors on the case to help sort out my UK naturalization. Eventually, I was given a full British passport, which meant I was able to travel to meetings without having to apply for a new visa every time I visited a new country. Without these kindnesses, I would’ve found it much more of a struggle making my breakthrough in athletics.
I also took on an agent. Conrad soon recognized that I was at a level where I needed professional management and he introduced me to an agent by the name of Kim McDonald. Kim had founded his management company in the 1980s and was famous for representing some of the leading athletes at that time, including Sonia O’Sullivan, Daniel Komen, Moses Kiptanui and Noah Ngeny. Over coffee in Teddington, Kim and I discussed my future in athletics. He explained that he recognized that I had immense talent and told me that he’d be more than happy to take me on and help nurture my career – to help me fulfil my potential. I was over the moon. Now that I had an agent, I felt I was on my way to becoming a professional athlete.
Year by year I was getting faster. I was constantly striving to improve my times at each distance – on reps of 400, 600 and 800 metres, on the road relays and the cross country races. My fastest laps were consistently getting faster, but it wasn’t always a smooth progression. There were hiccups along the way. I suffered a disappointment at the World Cross Country Championships in Portugal in early 2000, when I finished way down the field in twenty-fifth – the lowest I’d ever placed in a race up to that point. People congratulated me for being the highest-placed European to finish behind a supremely talented pack of Kenyans and Ethiopians. I didn’t see it that way. All I could think was, ‘I lost.’
Alan had come to watch me compete in Portugal. As I walked away from the track and made my way over to him, this older man I didn’t recognize came over to me and patted me on the back.
‘Well done, Mo,’ this guy said. ‘That was really good.’
I smiled politely and nodded, although I didn’t know who this guy was. ‘Yeah, thanks,’ I said, not wanting to stop and talk, just wanting to go away and process my defeat. ‘Wish I’d won, though.’
After the man had left, Alan turned to me and lowered his voice.
‘Do you know who that was, Mo?’ he asked.
I shrugged. ‘Not a clue.’
‘That was Steve Cram!’
I frowned. ‘Who?’
Alan quickly set me straight. As soon as I got home from Portugal, I borrowed a bunch of videos of Steve’s old races and watched them all. After that, I found myself bumping into him all the time and we’d get chatting about this or that. I sought out his opinion on various things. I’ve got a lot of time for Steve. He’s one of the most honest guys on the circuit. You need that, as an athlete. Someone who isn’t afraid to tell you how it is. Otherwise, how else are you supposed to improve?
In August 2000 I finished second in the junior 5000 metres in Mannheim, Germany. Two months later I made the finals of the same event at the World Junior Athletics Championships in Chile. Of course, there were the usual injury spells and learning curves, but I was pleased with my progress and confident I could get even better.
In July 2001 I competed in the European Athletics Junior Championships in Grosetto, Italy. My form was good going into the race and I was expected to win the 5000 metres. Because the officials read out the lap times in Italian, Conrad arranged to stand at the side of the track, calling out my lap times in English so I knew how fast I was going. It was a close race. This guy from Portugal, Bruno Saramago, gave me a good run for my money. He had a good engine and, as Conrad called out the lap times, I realized that I had to change tack and go for a kick finish rather than trying to burn the guy off, because no matter how much I pushed the pace I couldn’t drop him. BOOM! I kicked on and pulled clear of Saramago on the last lap to win the race. I w
asn’t simply winning now; I was also learning about the tactical side of running, learning to adapt to racing in major championships.
Throughout this period of training and competing I found time to spend with Tania. We used to hang out with Abdi Ali and one of Tania’s girlfriends. The four of us would meet up at the corner of our road, hop on a bus and head to the high street, where we’d do a whole lot of nothing. Just talking, having fun, joking around. Over time, Tania and me became very close friends. She was really sweet and, as well as being beautiful, she was a good person. I felt that I could talk to her about anything. Tania seemed to understand me in a way that no one else truly did.
I spent time around her family, got to know Bob and Nadia and her brother Colin. I’d go round the house and Tania would plait my hair. (I had hair in those days, believe it or not.) On one occasion Tania was plaiting my hair in the back garden and her grandmother on her mum’s side of the family was over from Singapore to see the family. I’d been abroad shortly before, competing at a meet – I can’t remember which one – and I had brought back a gift for Tania. It wasn’t just some random key chain or tacky souvenir. It was something quite special, although neither of us can recall exactly what it was. At that point Tania didn’t know how I felt about her, but her grandmother is sharp-eyed. She saw the chemistry between us and picked up on it immediately. Tania later discovered that, after I left the house, her grandmother pulled her mum to one side and said, ‘That kid has a thing for my granddaughter. He likes her.’
After a while I finally plucked up the courage and told Tania that I had feelings for her. I wasn’t too pushy about it. I simply had to tell her how I felt. Tania was really good about it. She explained that she didn’t see us in quite the same way as me, but she wanted us to stay as good friends. I was like, ‘Okay. That’s cool.’ I took it on the chin. These things happen for a reason and looking back, I think if we had hooked up for real at that point, things might not have turned out as well as they have done. We were both young and immature – especially me. I was still very much a kid at heart. I didn’t have that sense of responsibility. Had we got together then, with me being the way I was, it would probably have fizzled out. It’s better that we skipped those years and revisited that scenario in later life. How I felt didn’t change our friendship. We still talked a lot and continued spending time together. That’s just how it was.
At the age of eighteen I was at a crossroads. I was itching to move out of the cramped bedroom I shared with my cousin Mahad and explore more of the world. I was running in different countries and meeting new people. I was ready to move on and live my own life. My time at Isleworth was coming to an end. I wanted to continue training, but at the same time I had to find some way of supporting myself. This is the toughest part of a young athlete’s career. Figuring out a way to juggle your training commitments with the need to earn a living. At the back of my head I thought, ‘Unless something really big happens, I’m going to have to get a full-time job.’
As luck would have it, something really big did happen.
For a few months I’d been seriously considering joining the army. An officer from the local regiment had given a talk to sixth-formers at Isleworth about the benefits of life in the military. To me, it sounded like a good idea. Some of my friends had relatives in the army, and they couldn’t speak highly enough of it. Importantly, they claimed that if I joined up, I’d be given time off to compete in athletics competitions. Apparently, the army was generous when it came to stuff like that. I didn’t consider the implications of military service. I just thought, if I enlist with the army, I’ll be able to train and compete, and get paid and have somewhere to live at the same time. It seemed like a good way of solving the problem of how to balance my training and the need to make money. I thought about it some more, and by the spring of 2001, I had pretty much made up my mind that I was going to enlist once I left Isleworth.
That same year the World Cross Country Championships were being held in Belgium. I was determined to do better than my performance in Portugal, but I finished even lower down the rankings. Fifty-ninth. I wasn’t even the highest-placed European this time. Guys from Belgium, Spain and Italy – they had all beaten me. That young Ethiopian, Bekele, won again. A clear gap was starting to emerge between the Kenyans and Ethiopians and the rest of the field, a gap I wanted to close. After the race I got chatting to one of the coaches attached to the senior GB endurance team. His name was Alan Storey. I’d heard of him on the circuit and seen him a few times at different competitions when I was competing for Great Britain as a junior. Alan was the Head of Endurance for UK Athletics. He said a few words to me, then the conversation turned to my plans for the future.
‘What are you doing next, when you leave Isleworth?’ Alan asked.
‘I’m going to join the army,’ I said.
Alan looked shocked. ‘No, no, don’t do that!’
‘Well, then, what am I gonna do?’ I asked. ‘I just want to run.’
Alan said, ‘You won’t believe this, but we’ve just opened a high-performance sports centre down the road from you. It’s at St Mary’s University [in Twickenham]. It’s a training base for gifted young athletes such as yourself, who have the potential to win medals. I’m in charge of the set-up there. We run a scholarship scheme. What would you say if I had a word, see about getting you on the scheme?’
As Alan told me more about this Endurance Performance and Coaching Centre (EPACC), I started to get excited. This was exactly the opportunity I’d been looking for. The scholarship Alan Storey had mentioned was a joint venture between UKA and London Marathon to produce endurance athletes. Since the glory days of Dave Bedford, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram, British distance running had been in a terrible state. As part of the deal, London Marathon would pay my board and fees and I’d live on campus, literally on the doorstep of the training centre. Even better, Alan Storey would become my new coach. I told Alan I’d love to go there. He went away and made a few calls. There were still one or two hurdles to overcome. My grades weren’t good enough for St Mary’s. We reached an agreement where I had to continue studying at college in Richmond in order to keep my scholarship at the university.
A couple of months later it was official: I had a place at St Mary’s, and a scholarship thanks to London Marathon. I was one of the first athletes to train at the centre. And if it hadn’t been for that chat with Alan Storey, I would’ve joined the army.
7
AN EDUCATION, PART II
LIVING on campus at St Mary’s was amazing. And for a while, at least, I went a little nuts. I suddenly had this sense of freedom. Now I could go out whenever I wanted – do whatever I liked. In my mind, as long as I was making it to training with Alan Storey and running in competitions, I didn’t see any problem with staying out late or going to fancy-dress parties (I dressed up as Tarzan). In the end, I would have a serious decision to make. But at the start, I just wanted to have fun.
At the time I was one of only two athletes on the elite endurance programme at St Mary’s. The other was James McIlroy. James was a couple of years older than me. Although he began competing for Ireland, James switched nationality to run for Great Britain, and by the time he joined St Mary’s, he had a reputation as one of the rising stars of middle-distance running. We both trained under Alan Storey, and from what I saw of James, he had unbelievable talent. He had that extra element of commitment that I was lacking; James took training seriously, he paid attention to his diet, sticking to vegetables and salads and high-protein foods, while I scoffed down jacket potatoes and beans on toast in the campus refectory, or grabbed frozen ready meals from the Tesco up the road.
We lived in a plain brown-brick building on the campus. Typical student digs, lots of posters up on the walls reminding people to clean up after themselves. Our dorm was directly opposite the athletics field, although we didn’t do much in the way of training at St Mary’s: the athletics track had been laid upside down. (In fairness the prob
lem was later fixed and the track is perfect now.) Running on that meant you might as well be running on concrete. To get around that problem I did the majority of my training over at the Thames Valley track with Windsor Slough Eton & Hounslow. I’d roll out of bed, get into my battered old Ford Fiesta and drive up to the club, training with Benedict Whitby and Sam Haughian and the rest.
As the endurance specialist for UK Athletics, Alan oversaw my training. He was a fairly short, stocky man with thin-rimmed glasses and a reputation as one of the world’s best distance running coaches. He was something of a guru. His background was different from the likes of Alex McGee and Conrad Milton. Alan had worked at Durham University, looking after several established distance runners before taking over as the National Marathon Coach and training two runners to victory in the London Marathon. After that, he had spent time in Asia and worked as an adviser to women’s athletics in China. His star athlete at the time was Sonia O’Sullivan, the Irish distance runner who’d won gold in the 5000 metres at the World Championships in Gothenburg in 1995. She’d won silver in the same event at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Alan had been a major factor in what Sonia achieved.
Neil Black was also part of the set-up at St Mary’s. Neil, nicknamed Blackie, was my physio back then. Blackie is my physio to this day, although he now combines sorting out my body with his day job as the performance director for UKA. I’m not sure which is more demanding! Like Alan Storey, Blackie is world-class at his job. He treated several top athletes, including Christian Malcolm, Marlon Devonish and Kelly Holmes, and we were lucky to have him at St Mary’s. From day one, Blackie has been very good to me. He knows my body better than anyone; he’s one of those guys who will stop at nothing to get to the root of a problem. Quite simply, he’s the best physio an athlete could ask for.
