Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography

by Mo Farah

  When I looked back at my race, I realized that I’d made a fatal mistake. Tactically, I called it wrong. In my honest opinion, I kicked too early. I should have saved my kick for 400 metres instead of going at 500. At the point when I kicked, I wasn’t even thinking about Jeilan. I didn’t have a clue about this guy. He hadn’t competed at any of the previous races I’d been in, so I hadn’t had a chance to see him and what he was capable of. I wasn’t the only one who made that mistake: none of the commentators considered him a realistic shot for the title in Daegu. I hadn’t done my homework on him, and I ended up paying a high price.

  I had three days until the qualifying heats for the 5000 metres. Mentally I was fatigued, dejected – almost depressed. Thankfully Rhianna and Tania were in Daegu with me during the competition, and having them there helped take my mind off the result. For a couple of hours after the race I had athletes coming up to me and saying things like, ‘Unlucky, mate,’ or ‘Maybe next time, Mo.’ That’s the problem with staying in the village during an Olympic Games or World Championships. You’re surrounded by athletes and if you lose, you’re reminded of your failure constantly. I’m sure all the people coming up to me had good intentions and were trying to cheer me up. But I didn’t want to be constantly reminded of the fact that I had just lost a massive race. I needed to get out of that environment. So I decamped to the hotel where Tania and Rhianna were staying, outside the village. I just stayed in the hotel room with my wife and daughter, watching movies and trying to take my mind off the result. Psychologically that helped a lot. I wasn’t allowed to dwell on losing the 10,000 metres. Rhianna and Tania took me out of that bubble. I was able to do normal things, watch TV and put my feet up, forget about everything else. Those three days were crucial for me in terms of recovering for my next race. If I hadn’t had that downtime with my family, I might not have been able to overcome the mental pain of losing in the 10,000 metres.

  Three days later I returned to the stadium to compete in the qualifying heats for the 5000 metres. I wanted to put things right after the 10,000. Now, more than ever, I had to win. Running a 5000 race so soon after putting in a big effort at the longer distance is hard. It normally takes my body seven to ten days to recover fully from the effects of running a 10,000 metres race. In the Olympics and World Championships, you’re lucky to get half that recovery time. The only thing to do is rest as much as possible and give your body the best chance to recover.

  Qualifying went well. I finished my heat comfortably second behind Merga, then I spent the next three days resting before the final. I had a lot to think about.

  Analysing my race in the 10,000, it seemed to me that I’d been tactically spot on before those last two laps. I needed to relax, forget about losing to Jeilan and concentrate on running a good race in the 5000 – only this time I’d play it right going into the last 600 or 700 metres. Again, there was some strong competition on that start line. Bernard Lagat was there, along with Dejen Gebremeskel of Ethiopia and Eliud Kipchoge. Merga was there, of course, and Isiah Koech. For me, Lagat was the big threat. I’d beaten him in the 5000 in Monaco, but this time I wouldn’t be underestimating anyone.

  Before the race Alberto gave me a pep talk. One thing I’ve always done, and which I did in the 10,000 metres and didn’t help me at all, was that in the closing stages of the race, the last hundred metres or so, I have this tendency to over-stride. I have a naturally long stride, and rather than run like a sprinter on the last stretch of a race, with a short and choppy stride, I’ll over-stride. Watch a replay of the 10,000 metres and you’ll see that Jeilan’s legs are moving much faster than mine as he overtakes me heading towards the finish. Alberto noticed I had a long stride early on in our training sessions and repeatedly drummed the message into my head: ‘Chop your stride, chop your stride. When you come to the last hundred, run like a sprinter. Don’t run like a long-distance runner. Sprint!’

  Alberto had one other important piece of advice for me. ‘When the bell sounds on that final lap and you’re going round for the last time,’ he said, ‘hold the inside lane. Do not let anyone take the inside lane. If someone else takes it on that last lap, the race is over. You will not come back from that. Whatever you do, hold off the other guys.’

  Just like the 10,000, the 5000 metres final got off to a slow start. I tucked in amid the pack and began working my way through. Winding it up, bit by bit, inch by inch. With three laps to go, I had drawn level in the lead group alongside Merga and Abera Kuma, another Ethiopian. Those last three laps were the most important laps in my career to date. Now to finish the job.

  Lagat had started out specializing in the 1500 and 3000 metres before stepping up to the 5000. That meant he was capable of some serious speed. Gebremeskel, too, had a strong sprint finish on him. Kick too early and either of those guys had the tools to punish me. With two laps left, I hit the front. I wasn’t kicking on yet. Just winding it up. The bell sounded. Then I remembered the advice Alberto had given me prior to the race: Hold the inside lane. At the sound of the bell, I had the inside lane. I was determined to hold onto it, no matter what. Lagat desperately tried to get to inside of me. We were practically elbowing each other, fighting for that inside spot. Lagat was trying and trying. I still managed to hold him off. That’s what cost Lagat the race and won it for me: holding the line. If you think about it, the inside lane is the shortest distance around the track. If you’re further out, you’ve got to run a longer distance around each lap. On the last lap, that’s going to cost you. I kept recycling the same thought over and over inside my head: Hold him off, hold him off. I had that phrase on repeat. With 200 metres to go, it was a sprint to the finish line. I focused on not over-striding, just as Alberto had told me. Everything came down to this moment. I was pushing and digging. Working it. I’d come so close to gold once, I wasn’t going to let it get away from me a second time. Lagat tried his best to catch me, but I had the edge on that home straight and I crossed the line in first place. I’d done it!

  World Champion!

  I pumped my fists in the air. All the pent-up frustrations of losing the 10,000 metres, the sacrifices I’d had to make and the hard work I’d done to get to this point – it all came out. I got down on my knees and kissed the ground in celebration. I couldn’t even stand up. I just rolled onto my back. Looking up, I saw Lagat kneeling beside me. He gave me his hand and helped me to my feet.

  ‘Enjoy it,’ he said above the din of the crowd. ‘This is your moment. Just enjoy it.’

  If it wasn’t for Alberto, I believe I would have lost the race. His instructions were the difference between me winning and losing. Without a doubt, Alberto telling me to hold that inside lane was the best bit of advice anyone had ever given me. Before moving to Alberto I’d possessed the athletic ability to win races. Now I had someone to process the tactical side of running a race. That was huge. To this day, holding that line has become one of my trademark moves.

  After that race Dave Moorcroft described me as ‘the greatest male distance runner Britain has ever seen’. Coming from someone who had held the British record for so long, those words meant a lot. Ivan Gazidis texted me after the race, telling me how proud everyone at Arsenal was of what I’d achieved out there in Daegu. He’d also sent me a text after the 10,000 metres, telling me not to worry, to keep my head up and that the whole club was still proud of me. He had also noticed that I’d been running in special bespoke spikes bearing the Arsenal club logo and colours. I’d personally requested the spikes from Nike and they struck a chord with Ivan, who invited me down to the club again as an honorary guest. This time, though, I was going down there as a world champion.

  With my season over, I had a couple of weeks off training and I decided to take Tania and Rhianna on a trip to Somaliland to visit my mum and brother. Bob had used his travel contacts to book us on a flight to Hargeisa via Dubai. At least, that’s where we thought we were headed. The computer system had told Bob that the final destination was Hargeisa. He had a confirma
tion slip that said ‘Hargeisa’ on it. Our tickets said ‘Hargeisa’. We landed in Berbera, on the Somaliland coast, two and a bit hours’ drive up from Hargeisa, fully expecting to catch a connecting flight to the capital – without realising that there was no landing strip in Hargeisa because the airport had been closed for reconstruction. (It still is.) Fortunately, my mum, my brother Hassan and pretty much the entire extended family and the village were already aware that we wouldn’t be taking a connection to Hargeisa and had arranged for several cars to come to Berbera, pick us up and take us back to Hargeisa. We got off the plane at Berbera to be greeted by this huge convoy of cars. It seemed like the entire village had gathered at the airport. The local Somali media was out in force, along with the local mayor and the sports minister. At the front of this huge crowd of people were my mum and my brother. It was so wonderful to see them again, and to finally introduce them to Rhianna and Tania. Rhianna especially – she’d waited a long time to meet them both, repeatedly asking me: ‘Dad, when am I going to get to see your brother? Dad, where’s your mum? Why can’t we visit them?’ It’s tricky for a child to grasp that your family lives far away, that you can only visit them when you’re able to take the time off from training.

  What should have been a roughly two-hour drive from Berbera down to Hargeisa turned into a four-hour tour of the country. The word got out across the coast that I was coming to town. People literally lined the streets every step of the way of our journey. A lot of them wore T-shirts that had ‘MO FARAH’ on the front above a picture of me holding the Union Jack. That was a poignant sight. It was as if the local people were saying: ‘You’re one of our own,’ while accepting the fact that I’m British now. They don’t resent the fact that I fly the flag for another country. To them, that didn’t matter. We stopped several times along the way to Hargeisa, getting out and saying hello to the fans, having my pictures taken. Tania was amazed at the reception I got. She said to me it seemed to her as if Michael Jackson was in town. It was that level of hysteria and attention.

  Everywhere we went, people were inviting us into their houses for dinner. It was a humbling moment. Queues would form outside my mum’s front door as people waited to greet me. And Tania and Rhianna could see the love people had for me there. Tania’s suitcase had gone missing when we landed at Berbera, which meant she had nothing but the clothes on her back. In any other country that might not be a disaster, but in Somalia women are expected to dress a certain way – to cover up head to toe. And it wasn’t as if she could pop down to the local shopping mall to pick up some clothes. There is nothing like that in Somaliland. Thankfully Hoda, Hassan’s wife, stepped in and lent Tania her wardrobe for the week. That gesture is typical of Somali culture – people welcome you into their family as one of their own.

  It was wonderful for my mum and Hassan to finally meet my wife and daughter. Even better, there was a good vibe between them. Obviously, there was the language barrier, but we all managed to have a good laugh. More often than not I would be there to translate, but on the occasions when I wasn’t in the room or happened to be out, Tania and my mum and Hassan would use sign language. Tania knew a couple of Somali words, and Hassan knew a couple of English words, so between them they managed to get by. Tania couldn’t help but warm to Hassan. As for my mum, she’s the kind of person who, once you get to know her, really opens up. Mum couldn’t speak a word of English but she still had Tania cracking up. Tania said to me, ‘Your mum is a real joker. Now I know where you get it from.’

  As for me and Hassan, we were soon up to our old tricks. We insisted on wearing the same clothes for the entire time we were there. I had brought two of everything with me to Hargeisa for that exact reason: one pair for me, one for Hassan. It was like reliving our childhood all over again. Hassan also shaved his head in honour of me, so we now had the same bald head. He even went as far as to grow a goatee similar to the one I had at the time. We were almost identical, aside from the fact that Hassan had a little bit more weight on him than me. If we’d shared the same physique, we would’ve been nearly impossible to tell apart. In fact, there was one particular evening when Tania was waiting outside the hotel. I’d popped back inside to fetch something from the room. It was quite dark outside owing to the poor lighting and Hassan happened to emerge before me. Tania spotted Hassan and started chatting away to him as if he was me. For a few moments she genuinely believed she was talking to me. She only realized it was Hassan when he started laughing. We have different laughs; it’s one of the few ways you can tell us apart.

  I got to meet Hassan’s kids too. He had five of them (he has six now). We have that thing where his family is my family, his kids are my kids. Even after all those years apart, we still share that closeness. I’ve always done what I can to support Hassan and his family, and he’s always there for me, for all of us. We’re one big family really.

  I’d brought home a video playlist to show my mum all my best runs over the last few years. The first race was from the 2010 European Championships. I’m there at the end of the 10,000 metres race, holding my head in my hands, in agony from having to dig deep. Mum abruptly looked away and started crying. At first I thought she was crying because she was so proud of what I’d done, but then she turned to me with tears in her eyes and said, ‘Can you not get a normal job?’

  ‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘Hooyo! Mum, this is what I do!’

  ‘It’s too painful,’ she replied. ‘Watching you running around the track like that. You’re going to kill yourself! When are you going to stop?’ She tutted and shook her head in that way mums do. ‘I mean, look at you. So skinny! You need to eat, put some fat on you. Why don’t you stop running?’

  We stayed in Somaliland for ten days. I felt it was especially important for Rhianna to establish a connection with my family. At the same time, I wanted my daughter to appreciate the things she had, to understand that you have to earn what you want in this life. In Somaliland she could see people doing without things that we take for granted in Britain, but they did so without complaining and feeling sorry for themselves – for them, it’s just how life is. Nonetheless, Tania and Rhianna were shocked by the hardships they witnessed.

  One day during my stay there Hassan took us to visit an orphanage in Hargeisa. East Africa was in the middle of what was being called ‘the worst drought in sixty years’ and the UN had declared a famine in Somalia. Tens of thousands of people had died of starvation resulting from the drought, and millions more were affected in Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia, leaving many thousands of children in the region without parents. What we saw at the orphanage was heart-breaking: twenty infants to a room, three newborns having to share a single crib. The living conditions were appalling. It was very dirty and unhygienic and the orphanage had a total of around 150 kids from newborn babies right up to the age of twelve. Seeing the conditions those children were living in inspired both Tania and me to do something about it. We couldn’t just leave and not do anything. What we had seen at the orphanage stayed in both our consciences for a long time after that. To this day we still think back to the children in that orphanage. You’re not human if you see that scenario, walk away and go back to your life and don’t give it a moment’s thought, knowing that there are kids out there, living like that.

  Leaving Somaliland that year was hard. On the plane leaving for home I was close to tears, knowing that I wouldn’t see my family again for a while. Tania and Rhianna could see that I was on the verge of crying and tried to cheer me up by taking the piss, saying things like, ‘Look! Daddy’s about to cry for the first time ever!’ It’s part of how we deal with things in our family. If one of us is feeling a bit down, the others will start ribbing and trying to lighten up the mood.

  When we returned home we set up the Mo Farah Foundation, with the aim of providing life-saving aid and equipment to some of the 9.5 million people facing starvation and disease in East Africa. We’d pondered setting up a charity for a couple of years. Now I was in a position where I
had some influence to help generate donations and support. Setting up the Foundation wasn’t easy. We basically had to start from scratch. I was obviously putting a lot of my time and energy into training, so Tania stepped in and did a lot of work on the admin side, registering the Foundation as a charity and making sure all the documents and paperwork were in order. Neither of us had any experience of charities, and we were pretty much having to learn on our feet. As you might expect with handling public money, there’s a lot of red tape around setting up a charity. It’s heavily regulated and it takes time and resources to get established.

  A short while after setting up the Foundation we heard the tragic news that Adnan, the teenage son of friends of ours, was suffering from an aggressive form of cancer and had been given just weeks to live. Adnan had previously been in remission, so it was very distressing to hear that his cancer had come back. We were in Portland at the time and Tania and I badly wanted to do something for him. We knew Adnan was a big football fan so we asked Ivan Gazidis if he could procure a couple of tickets for Adnan and his dad to go and watch a game in London. Arsenal went one better than that and gave them a whole box for the day, laying on the VIP treatment for Adnan and his dad. Thomas Vermaelen, the club captain, and Kieran Gibbs came up to say hello to him at half-time. Sadly Adnan was at death’s door and in a very fragile state, but it was lovely of the club to help out in that way.