by Mo Farah
About the Author
MO FARAH was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1983. As a young child he spent time in Djibouti before moving to England at the age of eight. Mo initially struggled with the language barrier, but his PE teacher at Feltham Community College, Alan Watkinson, quickly spotted his potential as a runner and encouraged him to join Borough of Hounslow Athletics Club. After attending St Mary’s Endurance Performance and Coaching Centre in Twickenham, Mo became a professional athlete. At the 2012 London Olympic Games he won gold in the 10,000m – Britain’s first gold in this event. He followed this up with a stunning victory in the 5000m to become, in the words of Dave Moorcroft, ‘the greatest male distance runner that Britain has ever seen.’ Mo was appointed CBE in the Honours List in 2013. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Tania, and their three daughters Rhianna, Aisha and Amani.
TWIN AMBITIONS
My Autobiography
Mo Farah
with T. J. Andrews
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Mo Farah 2013
The right of Mo Farah to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781444779592
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
For Rhianna, Aisha and Amani
CONTENTS
About the Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue: The Loudest Noise in the World
1. Twin Beginnings
2. The Mechanic
3. Holland, England
4. An Education, Part I
5. An Arsenal Kit
6. Dreamland
7. An Education, Part II
8. Going Back
9. Eat, Sleep, Train, Rest
10. The Camp
11. Going It Alone
12. Unfinished Business
13. The Project
14. This Is It
15. Twin Rewards
16. Only the Ending is Different
Career Statistics
Index
Picture Section
Photographic Acknowledgements
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THERE are so many people I wish to thank. My beautiful daughters, Rhianna, Aisha and Amani, and my wife Tania: you mean the world to me. I am forever grateful for the love of my family: my twin brother, Hassan, my mum Aisha and my dad Muktar, my brothers Ahmed, Wahib and Mahad, my aunt Kinsi and my cousin Mahad.
I’d also like to thank Alan Watkinson, my old PE teacher at school and the guy who made it all happen for me. My thanks to my coaches down the years: Alex McGee, Conrad Milton, Alan Storey and Alberto Salazar. Success is never down to any one person. Every coach I’ve worked with has played their part in everything I’ve achieved. Without them, I might not have gone as far as I have done.
Thanks must go to my support team: my agent Ricky Simms and Marion Steininger at PACE; Neil Black, my physio; and Barry Fudge, my doctor, for all their support and helping me along the way. My in-laws, Bob and Nadia, who helped out with the girls when my career kept me away from my family.
Thanks also to my publisher, Roddy Bloomfield, editor Kate Miles and the rest of the team at Hodder & Stoughton for helping me to put my story on the page.
Finally, my thanks to Allah, for putting me on this Earth, and for giving me the talent to run.
PROLOGUE
THE LOUDEST NOISE IN THE WORLD
11 August 2012. 7.41 p.m. Olympic Stadium, London.
THREE laps to go in the final of the 5000 metres, on a warm summer’s evening in Stratford, east London, and I am 180 seconds from history.
I’ve been here before. Seven days ago, in fact, on Super Saturday, when first Jessica Ennis, then Greg Rutherford and then me won three Olympic gold medals in less than an hour, adding to the two golds won earlier in the day by the rowing team at Eton Dorney and the women’s pursuit team at the velodrome. The feeling is different now. Going into the 10,000 metres final I had so much pressure on me it felt like I was lugging around two big bags of sugar over my shoulders. People were desperate for me to win that race. When I crossed that white line as the winner, this immediate sense of relief washed over me. Now the pressure is off. I’m running free. I have one gold medal in the bag. Whatever happens out here tonight, I’m an Olympic champion. No one can take that away from me.
Don’t get me wrong. I still want to win – more than anything. But this time I’m able to go out there and race and actually enjoy it: the competition, the stadium, the occasion. And the crowd. The pulsating, deafening roar of the British fans.
I’m in second place. Ahead of me is Dejen Gebremeskel, the Ethiopian runner. At the start of the race I’d figured he was one of my main threats going onto the home straight. But Gebremeskel has kicked on early, moving out to the front and pushing the pace. Big surprise. But for me, that’s perfect. He’s gone early for a good reason: he thinks that I must still be feeling the effects of the 10,000 metres in my legs. Figures I must be tired. That if he pushes the pace quite early on, he can wear me out on the last couple of laps, taking me out of the equation when it comes down to the sprint finish. If I was in Gebremeskel’s shoes, I’d be thinking the same thing. I’ve done more running than anyone else in the field, with the exception of the Ugandan, Moses Kipsiro, and my training partner, Galen Rupp. But Gebremeskel hasn’t taken into account my secret weapon: the crowd.
Everyone is roaring me on. The noise is unbelievable. Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. The crowd is giving me a massive boost. I think about how many people are crammed inside the stadium – how many millions more are watching on TV at home, cheering me on. Willing me to win. None of the other guys out there on the track are getting this kind of support. Everyone is rooting for me. The noise gets louder and louder. The crowd is lifting me. Pushing me on through the pain, towards the finish line.
Every athlete has five gears. That night, in the cauldron of the Olympic Stadium, I like to think the crowd gave me a sixth gear. They played a huge part in what I went on to achieve.
With two laps to go, I pull clear of Gebremeskel. The crowd goes ballistic. I’m getting closer, closer, closer to the line. The crowd is getting louder, louder, louder. Then I hit the bell. I’m still in the lead. One of the other guys tries to surge ahead of me. I hold him off. As I go round the track on that last lap, the entire crowd rises to its feet, section by section. It’s almost like a Mexican wave is chasing me around the stadium. I will never feel something like that again in my entire life. I can’t describe how loud it is. Without a doubt, it’s the loudest noise I have ever heard in my life. The crowd physically lifts me towards the finish. I remember Cathy Freeman describing the atmosphere at the 400 metres final in Sydney in 2000, the euphoria of the crowd almost carrying her across the line. As I head down that home straight in the lead, I start to understand what she meant.
Two hundred metres to go now. I’m still out in front. Somehow the crowd is growing
even louder. Gebremeskel tries it on going into the home straight but I hold him off and cross the finish line in first place.
For a few moments I can’t believe what has happened. ‘Oh my God,’ I think. ‘Oh my God, I’ve done it.’ I keep repeating it to myself, over and over: ‘I’ve done it. I’ve won.’ All around me the crowd is going wild. Suddenly it hits me: I am a double Olympic champion. I have gone where no British distance runner has gone before.
I sink to my knees. The roar of the crowd booming in my ears. Getting here has taken a lot of hard work and sacrifices. I’ve had to come a long, long way and go through so many highs and lows. Looking back, it’s been an amazing journey.
1
TWIN BEGINNINGS
PEOPLE often ask me what it’s like to have a twin brother. I tell them: there’s this special connection that the two of you have. Like an intuition. You instinctively feel what the other person is going through – even if you live thousands of miles apart, like Hassan and me. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have a twin, but whenever Hassan is upset, or not feeling well, I’ll somehow sense it. The same is true for Hassan when it comes to sensing how I feel. He’ll just know when something isn’t right with me. Then he’ll pick up the phone and call me, ask how I am. Or I’ll call him. From the moment we were born, on 23 March 1983, we were best friends.
We come from solid farming stock. My family has always been based in the north of the country, going back generations. My great-great-grandparents on my dad’s side were farmers in a remote village called Gogesa, in the Woqooyi Galbeed region of northwest Somalia, not far from the border with Ethiopia. It’s a rural area with fertile land, so farming is the main occupation for the local people, and if you drive through Gogesa, you’ll see farms and open countryside full of grazing animals. My great-great-grandparents owned cows and sheep and camels and farmed the land. After they died, my great-grandfather, Farah, inherited the farm. He was well known locally because part of the farmland he owned contained a natural spring that pumped fresh water to the surface. Water was scarce in the region at the time, and soon many locals were collecting water from the spring. My great-grandfather was the guy with the water.
His daughter, Amina, my ayeeyo (grandma) on my dad’s side of the family, spent time in Djibouti as a young woman. Djibouti is a tiny country that shares borders with Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. To the north you’ve got the Red Sea, and on the other side of the water is the Arabian peninsula, with Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia. A number of people from places like Gogesa made the same journey across the border as Grandma Amina. As a former French colony, Djibouti offered better prospects than an agricultural village. There were more jobs in Djibouti City, better education, and a higher standard of living. Even as a kid, I remember having this idea of Djibouti as a place where people wore nice clothes and earned good salaries. For much of the year, my grandma lived and worked in Djibouti City. When Djibouti got too hot in the summer, Grandma would travel back to Gogesa for the holidays. The details are a bit sketchy – this is all such a long time ago – but I believe that when my great-grandfather died, the farm was sold up and my grandma moved permanently to Djibouti. They pretty much settled there. Grandma was still living in Djibouti with my grandad, Jama, by the time I was born.
My parents met while my dad was on a trip back to Somalia from the UK, where he was studying and working. They later settled down to married life and shortly after, me and Hassan were born. Hassan came out first. Twenty-nine years later, my wife Tania also gave birth to twin girls. Hassan even married a twin. You could say that twins are in our blood. My brother was named Hassan Muktar Jama Farah. I took on the name Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah.
I should explain something about our names. Everyone in Somalia belongs to a clan. Our clan was the Isaaq, the biggest clan in the north of the country. Your family name and your clan are linked together as a way of identifying not only who you are, but where you come from and what clan you belong to. Take my name. Mohamed is my given name. After your first name comes your father’s first name (Muktar). Third is your grandfather’s first name (Jama). The fourth part of your name is your great-grandfather’s name (Farah). If someone stopped me in the street and asked, ‘What’s your name?’ I would tell them, ‘Mohamed Muktar Jama Farah, nice to meet you.’ And then they would say, ‘Ah, I used to know your grandad, Jama! I remember your dad, Muktar, as a little boy!’ Usually it was the oldest guy in the village asking the questions. They could trace my ancestry that far back, they’d know what clan I belonged to and the names of distant relatives.
It’s been written that I was born and raised in Somalia. Strictly speaking, this isn’t true. While I was born in Mogadishu, the capital in the south of the country, I spent the early part of my childhood growing up in Somaliland, the area to the north of the country and although it’s not recognized by the UN, to all intents and purposes, Somaliland is an independent country and claims ownership of land roughly the size of England. Somaliland has its own currency – the Somaliland shilling – its own police force, and its own capital, Hargeisa. It even has its own flag (horizontal green, white and red stripes with Arabic script across the top bar). It also has its own national anthem, ‘Samo ku waar’, which translates as ‘Long life with peace’.
Historically, people from Somaliland and those from the south of the country have struggled to get along. The tensions were inflamed by Siad Barre, the former military dictator who ruled Somalia. When he was deposed in 1991, the government in Somaliland declared independence, although it escaped much of the violence and chaos that engulfed the south of the country in the years that followed. I remember my childhood as a mostly happy time. For the first four years of my life we lived in Gebilay, a small town about an hour’s drive west from Hargeisa and forty minutes from the border with Ethiopia. The land in that region is mostly desert scrub, though there are some hilly green areas and the occasional forest. In the distance you can see vast mountain ranges lined up along the horizon. The scenery is beautiful. The people are warm and welcoming.
Two years after I was born, my mum gave birth to another baby boy, Wahib. A fourth son, Ahmed, followed when I’d reached the grand old age of four and Wahib was two. Looking after four children was a full-time job for my mum, but she was only doing what Somali culture expected of her. Somalis are a strong, resilient people, and very conservative. The culture is big on tradition. The values haven’t changed much in hundreds of years. The men work, the women cook and clean. I’m not saying this is the way things should be. It’s just that people in Somaliland grow up in a conservative environment and this is all they know.
People have described my childhood as poverty-stricken and surrounded by bullets and bombs. That’s not really true. In the memories I have of Gebilay, there were no soldiers in the streets, no bombs going off. Whatever violence was going on at the time, as children we weren’t exposed to it. Most of the problems were taking place far to the south. Around the time I was living in Gebilay, the government in Mogadishu was about to collapse. But we lived far from trouble. Although as it turned out, we had a lucky escape.
One day my mum sat Hassan and me down and told us both that the five of us, including Wahib and Ahmed, would shortly be leaving Gebilay to go and live with our grandma, Amina, and our grandad, Jama, in Djibouti. Our dad wouldn’t be following us, however. He had to return to England – for his studies and his work, I believe. I accepted this decision without protest. Of course, every young kid wants their dad around. But I had seen very little of him while growing up in Gebilay. He always seemed to be away working and we didn’t have a chance to build that bond. Besides, Hassan, my best friend as well as my twin, would be coming with me. That reassured me. Plus, I couldn’t wait to see Grandma and Grandad. Living with them would be fun, I thought. I was sad about having to leave Gebilay. But mostly I was just excited about spending time with my grandparents, exploring a new country and getting up to no good with Hassan.
I wasn’t
aware of it at the time, but a year after we moved out of Gebilay, Somali forces under Siad Barre bombed Hargeisa and Berbera. The cities were flattened. Water wells were blown up. Grazing grounds were burned. Tens of thousands of people died in the bombings. Many more fled to Kenya and Ethiopia. It hadn’t been the reason for our move, but we had a lucky escape all the same. If we hadn’t moved out of Gebilay, we might have been caught up in the violence that followed. If you visit Hargeisa today, there’s a war memorial in the middle of the city: a Russian fighter jet, like the ones that bombed Somaliland.
Grandma Amina and Grandad Jama had already been living in Djibouti for a number of years when we moved in with them. My grandparents had done okay for themselves in Djibouti City. My grandfather had a decent job working in a local bank. They had a good standard of living compared to Gebilay. Grandma looked after the family at home. Life wasn’t a walk in the park, but it wasn’t the struggle that some people have tried to make out. I guess by Western standards my grandparents might have appeared poor, but to us kids, we looked at Djibouti as a big step up from life in rural Somaliland.
Almost everyone in Djibouti lives in the capital. As soon as you get there, you can see why. It’s this huge, frenetic place, with traffic and noise everywhere. Men pushing wagons through the streets selling fresh loaves of bread and honking their bicycle horns. There are goats and camels everywhere. In the distance you can hear the athan, the call to prayer sung by the muezzin: ‘Allah Akbar! God is great!’
Our grandparents lived in a stone house on the outskirts. Each part of the city is named using a number scale: Quarante-Deux-Trois (40–2–3), Quarante-Deux-Quatre (40–2–4), and so on – a legacy of French colonialism, which continued until 1977. When I was a kid, our house seemed huge. I remember arriving at the house and thinking that Grandma and Grandad lived in a mansion. When I returned to Djibouti many years later, I revisited my old home. I couldn’t believe it when I found the right address. I was like, ‘Seriously, we lived here?!?’ The house seemed so much smaller than I’d remembered it.