Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography

by Mo Farah

  We were within hours of booking that flight and finalizing our plans to leave Canada, when out of the blue I got a call from Alberto. As luck would have it, Alberto knew a guy in the FBI. This guy happened to be a huge running fan and he’d heard of me. Alberto had said to the guy, ‘Look, I understand what you’re doing and why you have to do it, but this guy is different. He’s an exceptional case. He’s my athlete. He’s come here to train with me, and he’s going to be one of the best runners in the world. Please take that into consideration.’ Fortunately for us, Alberto’s contact in the FBI was sympathetic to our case. As a running fan he recognized that I wasn’t just some random Somali guy looking to set up shop in the US. Alberto personally vouching for me did the trick. We got a call from him to say that everything had been sorted. Shortly after that the Consulate General rang us up and said, ‘Come down to our offices and bring your passports with you.’ Within five days, we had our passports stamped. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief. As a family we’d gone through every emotion in the world during those two weeks, holed up in a hotel room in Toronto, not knowing where I could train or when Rhianna could start school. At last, we were ready to go back to the US and begin our lives there for real.

  By the time we returned to Portland, Rhianna had missed about four months of school. That’s a significant amount of time for a child of her age. This was frustrating for me and Tania as parents: Rhianna wasn’t getting any education and she was missing out on making friends and socializing with other kids the same age. So when her first day at school finally arrived, it was a big, big event in the Farah household. It felt like all three of us were going to school that day. As soon as we woke up that morning I started taking loads and loads of pictures: Rhianna having breakfast, Rhianna packing her bag. The school was right around the corner from our house and we filmed her every step of the way, walking from our front door to the school entrance. It was a special day for us. We were all on cloud nine. For me and Tania, it was one big celebration – our daughter having her first day at school and making new friends. As parents we were so happy for her.

  To begin with, training under Alberto was tough. He had me doing fast and short reps on the track instead of the longer, slower reps that I’d been used to in the UK. I’d never done anything that short and fast before. For the first couple of weeks I’d drive home feeling utterly knackered – so tired, in fact, I could muster just about enough energy to drag myself out of the car, stagger up the drive and put the key in the front door. As soon as the door cracked open I’d literally collapse on the ground and crawl through the front door on my hands and knees. Alberto was pushing me to breaking point, to the extent that my body simply couldn’t handle it – in a good way, of course.

  Besides the track and the sessions on the underwater treadmill (a regular treadmill submerged in a big hot tub, which we used for the second run of the day to take the pressure off our legs) and the use of anti-gravity treadmills (where the treadmill is sealed inside a chamber to allow you to do overspeed training, running faster and with less resistance), Alberto’s attention to detail is painstaking. He’s obsessed with making sure that every little thing is just so.

  I’ll give you one example. In 2010 I was a good runner – good enough to win the Europeans – but my core wasn’t stable enough. If you look at my races from that year, I’m rocking and rolling slightly. Alberto’s thinking is that running side-to-side is a waste of energy and loses you valuable seconds over the course of a 5000 or 10,000 metre race, so he spent a lot of time teaching me to run fully straight rather than leaning to one side. He taught me how to improve my running stride. Before Alberto, my arms used to come up too high, which made me less aerodynamic. He showed me how to run more efficiently by having my arms only come up to the point where my fingertips were level with my chin before I’d bring them back down. He worked more on my lean at the end of a race. Little things like this, when you add them all up, make a big difference to your time.

  A lot of my training was done alongside Galen. He showed me the ropes in those early days at the campus and we soon struck up a good friendship – and a healthy rivalry. Galen always used to beat me in training. In fact, he still does. There’s no conflict between friendship and rivalry as far as I’m concerned. You can be good friends with someone off the track, but as soon as that gun goes, it’s every man for himself. When the race starts, I’m not taking any prisoners. Galen is the same. We might be competing in the same event, but if he was having a hard day I’d help him out and vice versa. When we weren’t training, we’d play FIFA or chat about music and stuff.

  For three months I worked hard in training. In fact, I did some of the best work I’d ever done, and started seeing the results almost immediately. In March, I’d already shown a glimpse of what was possible by winning the New York half-marathon. It was the first half-marathon I’d ever competed in and it’s fair to say that nobody expected great things from me going into that race. I was quietly confident about my chances of winning, but I was only the third favourite for the race. Everyone expected Gebre Gebremariam to win. Gebremariam was a World Cross Country champion, having won the title in Jordan two years earlier. In 2010 he’d won the New York Marathon in a time of 2:08.14. He was in great shape at the time of the half-marathon and my chances of beating him were generally considered to be slim.

  For the first few miles I ran a conservative race. I didn’t want to go full-on in my first half-marathon. Then Galen went down like a ton of bricks right in front of me, almost taking me out with him. I narrowly avoided a collision by hurdling over Galen at the last moment. For a split second I thought I was out of the race. But I recovered my stride and carried on running, managing to keep pace with the lead pack without ever pushing on. Some of the other runners were pushing the pace hard and had I been a less experienced runner I might have been tempted to go with them. But I called on my experience and resisted the temptation to push with them. 13.1 miles is a long way and you don’t want to go too hard, too early. As the race progressed, several other runners dropped off, leaving a pack of five of us racing towards the end. With 400 metres to go, it was a straight duel between me and Gebremariam. Then Gebremariam made his move. For a moment he eased forward and I thought he was about to pull clear of me. I didn’t panic. I stayed level on his shoulder until the last 200 metres. Then I put my foot down. In the process Gebremariam tried to block me off, moving to the left to stop me going in front of him. I had to take a big detour in order to get round the guy – while sprinting at full speed. Over the last 100 metres I opened up a 2-metre gap on Gebremariam. I held him off and crossed the line in first place.

  The New York half-marathon was a big win for me. My performance made all the big marathon race organizers sit up and take notice. They started to think, ‘This guy could be a serious threat at the full marathon distance.’ I also clocked the fastest time ever for a British man at the distance. It would have been a new British record – by about thirty seconds – but because a section of the course was ever-so-slightly downhill, they were unable to ratify the result. Still, a win on my first-ever half-marathon was a great result. And Galen managed to salvage his race after falling over to finish third, making it a great day for both of us, and Alberto, as head of the Oregon Project, who could celebrate having two guys on the podium.

  In June I travelled down to Eugene, a city about 100 miles due south of Portland, to compete in the Prefontaine Classic Diamond League meeting, held at Hayward Field on the University of Oregon campus, the same track where ‘Pre’ had broken the American 5000 metres record. The ‘Pre Classic’ is considered one of, if not the biggest track meet of the year, anywhere in the world. It’s specifically a Nike meet, and all the top athletes in the world are involved, in every discipline: the sprinters, the long jumpers, the discus throwers and the distance runners. Basically, the cream of the crop is there. And that goes for the 10,000 metres too. Anyone who was anyone was in that race: Imane Merga, Moses Masai, Zersenay Tadese a
nd Mark Kiptoo. There was absolutely nobody absent from the line-up. In athletics we call it ‘fully loaded’: it’s the term we use for a race with the strongest possible field with nobody missing. Going into the 10,000 metres, on paper I was probably halfway down the list in terms of where people expected me to finish – Tania included. A lot of people had said to me before the race, ‘You’d do well to come about fifth. If you’re in the top five, that’s a great result for you, mate.’ I guess that was a fairly realistic prediction. Compared to the other guys in the race I hadn’t come close to them; I’d never beaten any of them before. I hadn’t even clocked any quick times that were seriously threatening them.

  If you listen to the commentary for the race, my name isn’t even mentioned until twenty-two minutes in. The commentator also happened to be the head of marketing for athletics worldwide at Nike. He knew everything there was to know about athletics, and had a pretty good idea about who stood a chance of winning the race and who didn’t. Sure, I’d won the European titles, but on the world stage nobody is that fussed about the European Championships. It’s all about how you perform at the Worlds and the Olympics. That’s where it’s at. And no one in their right mind expected me to finish top five at the Pre Classic. It was only after I started to creep up on the leading pack and I came into the camera shot that the commentator and everyone else in the stadium started to take notice of me. At that point I was neck-and-neck with Merga. He’d been the hot favourite for the race. Beforehand everyone had predicted that Merga would win. With 200 metres to go, I suddenly found this kick. It came from nowhere. I shot away from Merga, kicked on and won the race.

  For me to win that 10,000 metres race was absolutely phenomenal. Nobody had seen it coming. All around Hayward Field, jaws hit the floor. The crowd went absolutely nuts. It was a local crowd and they were excited to see a British guy beating the Africans at their own game. In addition, the fans knew I was training and based in Oregon, working with Alberto, and they viewed me as one of their own. In the other races that evening, the crowd showed their respect, but the noise was nothing like that generated when I crossed the finish line. They went ballistic for me. That race was the turning point of my career on the world stage – the race where I went from being an outsider for the top five to becoming a world-beater. All of a sudden, I was a threat.

  My victory at the Pre Classic tasted extra sweet because I had also set a new British and European record of 26:46.57 in the process. Chris Thompson, one of my main rivals as a junior, had said at the beginning of the year that he was going to go for the British 10,000 metres record. Over the course of the year, this friendly competition unfolded between me and Chris as to who could break that record first. In previous years we’d both edged closer and closer to it, shaving a second off each other’s time with every race. Chris would run 27:28. I would then come back and run 27:27. Then Chris would clock 27:26. And so on. It was almost as if we were competing with each other to seize that record. It was a big target for both of us. To not only win the 10,000 metres in such a strong field, but to break the record in the process, which I’d been trying to do for two years, and to pip Chris Thompson to it as well – it was an all-round amazing feeling and fully vindicated my decision to switch coaches and work with Alberto.

  In July I broke another British record competing in the 5000 metres at the Diamond League meeting in Monaco, where I ran 12:53.11 – a new personal best and almost four seconds faster than my time in Zurich. That time was good enough to elevate me to second place on the all-time European list for the event (behind only the Moroccan-born Belgian runner Mohammed Mourhit). It was also the fastest 5000 anyone had run in 2011. More importantly, I had beaten Bernard Lagat. To this day, Lagat is considered one of the all-time greats of middle-distance running. In his prime he was the best in the world, twice a gold medallist at the World Championships. Lagat was in great shape going into Monaco and for me to beat him was a massive shock and a significant boost ahead of Daegu. I had already asserted my credentials at the 10,000 metres at the Pre Classic. Now I was making my presence felt at the 5000 metres too, and against different competitors (some guys compete in the 5000 metres but not the 10,000 metres, including Lagat). Going into Monaco, you would have been laughed at if you’d put your money on me to win. With another win under my belt, my confidence skyrocketed. After the Pre Classic and Monaco, I now had the feeling that I could beat everyone. So far that year I had won every 5000 metres race I’d entered. I went into the World Championships determined to win.

  Building up to the Worlds, there had been some talk in the press, a few people publicly questioning my decision to relocate to Portland. ‘He’s just won the European Championships,’ they said. ‘Why risk it all now so close to the Olympics, when everything seems to be going so well?’ It was an easy argument to make, but it ignored the fact that before 2011 I’d consistently placed behind the leading distance runners in the world. I owed it to myself to ask: ‘Will I get to the very top of my sport by continuing on the same path, by doing the same things?’ The obvious answer was no. My results in the Eugene and Monaco meetings told me that I’d made the right choice. I was going into the World Championships at Daegu in South Korea in the form of my life.

  Unlike the Worlds at Osaka and Berlin, where I simply wanted to do well, this time I knew I could do well. I wasn’t finishing sixth or seventh any more. I was winning races. Training had been great. Now it was time to make it happen on the big stage. I was still known as a European athlete; everybody on the European circuit knew my name. But I still had it all to prove on the world stage, mixing it with the likes of the Bekele brothers. I told myself, ‘There’s no way I’m going home without a medal.’

  This time, I simply had to win.

  I went into Daegu as one of the hot favourites. With that expectation came a degree of pressure. Now people were expecting me to do well. On the evening of 28 August 2011, I entered the Daegu Stadium to take my place in the 10,000 metres final. Of my rivals for the title, Tadese and Merga were ranked in the top three in the world, but I’d already beaten them once that season at the ‘Pre’ Classic. Sileshi Sihine, nicknamed ‘Mr Silver’ because he’d taken silver twice in the 10,000 at Athens and Beijing, and three times in the World Championships, was another runner I had to watch out for. Kenenisa Bekele was there too, although he’d been struggling with injuries for some time and hadn’t run a race for nearly two years. Galen was also there, our friendship on hold while we prepared to race. There were several other runners I didn’t know much about: Yuki Sato of Japan, Juan Carlos Romero of Mexico, and an unknown Ethiopian runner named Ibrahim Jeilan.

  As a professional athlete, it’s my job to do background research on the guys I’m up against. Before a race I’ll watch videos of my main rivals, figuring out whether their strength is in sprinting or endurance. I’ll look for any weaknesses too – every athlete has one, even me, although I’m not about to give that away. I do enough research so that by the time I line up at the start of the race, I’ll know what every single runner on that start line is capable of. And as I took my place on the line that day, I knew the main threat would come from Imane Merga, the World Cross Country holder. He’d won the 5000 metres at the Diamond League meeting in Rome earlier that season. Tadese, Sihine, Bekele – they were definitely threats. A big race like that, you can usually pick the winner from one of four or five favourites.

  I lined up next to Galen on the start line and gave a quick wave to the British fans in the crowd. The race had a two-tiered start. A little bell rang to silence the crowd. I took a deep breath. BOOM!

  As usual, I started at the back of the field and began working my way up to the leading pack. The first lap, the pace was in the mid-60s. Fine by me. I was happy to let it go along at this rate, knowing that I could go really hard on the last two or three laps and produce 55 or 56 seconds across the last 400 metres. Soon the lead group was reduced to Galen, me and the Africans: Tadese, Merga, Mathathi and Jeilan. At the halfway point
Bekele was spent and he had to drop out. Tadese nudged out in front. The pace in the big races is often quite slow; everyone is running it tactically, and some runners are afraid of what the other guys will do. I was working hard, but the pace wasn’t fast enough to split up the rest of the field. Then I started winding it up. I surged past Tegenkamp. With two laps to go, the pace picked up and runners started falling away. Now I moved up into fourth place. Still winding, still pushing. Waiting for the moment to attack. All of a sudden, Tadese slipped back. He was out of the picture.

  ‘Now,’ I thought. ‘Now’s the time to kick.’

  With 500 metres to go, I bolted past Merga to take the lead. The clang of the bell told me we were coming into the last lap – 400 metres to go. I was having to dig really, really hard – harder than I’ve ever had to dig before. But it worked. I opened up this big gap between myself and the chasing pack. I must have been 10 metres in front of Merga and the rest. The finish line was in sight. At that point I thought I’d done enough to win the gold.

  Out of nowhere, this guy just tore past me.

  Jeilan.

  In the blink of an eye, the young Ethiopian had wiped out the big gap I’d worked so hard to build and took the lead. I had to dig even deeper now. I dug hard. I worked hard. I gave it everything I could to try and catch Jeilan, sensing that gold slipping through my fingers, like sand. It was too late. I’d kicked on too soon. I was helpless as Jeilan sprinted ahead and won the race. As I made it over the line I slumped to my knees in disbelief. ‘I’ve lost.’ That thought kept repeating inside my head. ‘I can’t believe I’ve lost.’ At the very moment when I felt like I had the 10,000 metres gold in the bag, Jeilan had beaten me. I had clocked a time of 27:14.07. Jeilan ran it in 27:13.81. There was less than three-tenths of a second in it. Gutting.