Twin Ambitions - My Autobiography

by Mo Farah

  ‘At last,’ I thought, ‘I can start putting my feet up.’

  If I was hoping for peace and quiet, it didn’t work out that way. The media attention surrounding me and my family was ridiculous. I remember Paula’s husband, Gary, saying to me after I’d won gold, ‘You know what? Your life is going to change now.’ At the time I didn’t believe him. I just laughed and said, ‘No way, how are things gonna change? I’m still me.’ But Gary was right. Things went nuts. My phone was going off constantly. If someone couldn’t get hold of me, then they were trying to get hold of my family.

  The experiences I’d had with the media before paled in comparison to London 2012. The interest in me exploded after Super Saturday. To a large degree I was shielded from it, but during the week between my first and second golds, things went crazy. Somehow the paparazzi had discovered where Tania and Rhianna were staying. The media turned up in force and camped outside our home. Then the media somehow caught wind of the story of my twin. When that story broke, the media frenzy went into overdrive. One guy in particular hounded Tania day and night with emails and texts and voicemails. When he eventually got through and asked about Hassan, Tania denied everything, hoping to delay the story for just a few more days so I’d be free to concentrate on the 5000 metres. Her only concern was trying to protect me from any distractions. If anyone had asked about my brother after the Olympics, there would’ve been no problem. But there was still a gold medal at stake and any distractions could have proved fatal to my medal hopes.

  When the story about Hassan broke in the Mail on Sunday all the papers were eager to find out more. The Daily Mail went a few steps too far as far as I was concerned. I was worried that they were trying to take advantage of Hassan when they tried to sign him up to a contract that would have involved him handing over stories and pictures of our childhood. I had nothing to hide but I felt they were trying to create a rift between me and Hassan in their efforts to get their story. Paying one brother to talk about the other didn’t seem right to me. The contract would have made him a rich man by Somali standards and there were plenty of people in Somaliland whose eyes would have lit up at the thought of trying to get a share. A local man even pretended to be Hassan and signed the contract in the hope of getting the money. I don’t think the Daily Mail realised what they might be letting Hassan in for, but I was really upset that my family were being hounded by the British press, just because of their connection with me.

  For a while after the Olympics, we couldn’t do anything. People were coming up to me in the street and congratulating me, asking for their picture to be taken with me on their mobile. Others would just start doing the Mobot. They weren’t being rude or anything. I just found it a bit overwhelming. And it wasn’t just me: my family were the centre of attention too. People had seen Tania and Rhianna on TV, hugging me at the side of the track, and Tania was especially recognizable given that she was heavily pregnant at the time. One day she and Rhianna went out to Tesco to do a bit of shopping and found this guy waiting outside taking pictures of them both.

  This one photographer followed us everywhere. All day, every day. He’d park his car outside our house at the crack of dawn, sit there and wait for one of us to emerge. Then he’d follow us. It got to the point where we could recognize him. Tania once tried to evade the guy and almost ended up causing an accident as a result. Obviously, the photographer was just doing his job, but it doesn’t make it any more pleasant to be hounded like that. In the end it was simpler for us to stay indoors all day with the curtains drawn. This was during a really hot time of year, but we couldn’t even open our doors or windows for fear that someone would catch a glimpse of us or the twins and take a picture.

  We worked around the attention as best we could. There’s a curry house in Teddington that I love eating at and I’ve been going there for years. They don’t usually do deliveries, but they knew me, so I’d ring up and ask them if they’d mind delivering the food to our house rather than us having to go outside. We were only down the road from them and the guys were happy to help. When I needed formal wear for media appearances, Tania would go out and do my shopping for me, braving the photographer outside. If I went to do my own shopping, I’d never have made it to the shops – everywhere I went this huge crowd of people instantly swarmed over me. Normal life went out of the window. I was still Mo, but I was no longer the Mo who could walk down the street and buy a pint of milk without being mobbed. Obviously, I’m grateful for all the success I’ve had and I wouldn’t change it for the world, but it was hard to adjust to.

  Photographers were also responsible for reports that Tania supposedly had a go at me after I won the 5000 metres, but the situation was completely misconstrued. After she had come on to the track after Rhianna at the end of the 10,000 metres, it turned out that the organizers frowned on that sort of thing because of security concerns. My family didn’t know this at the time, of course. In fact, one or two officials had actually waved Tania onto the track after Rhianna had rushed ahead to hug me on Super Saturday. It wasn’t exactly a case of my wife and daughter breaching security, but their spontaneous reaction had unpleasant repercussions.

  Come the evening of the 5000 metres, they took their seats halfway up the home straight and watched the race. As I started doing my victory lap, they made their way down to the front row so that I’d see them both as I came around the home straight. As soon as they reached the front row, Tania noticed three officials glancing in her direction, talking into their radios. At this point I was about 100 metres away from my family, stopping every few strides to sign autographs and have my picture taken. Tania overheard this one security official talking into his radio. Quick as a flash, the official ran towards me. As soon as I got to Tania and Rhianna, I started to say a couple of words when the official cut in, ‘Keep moving, Mo! Keep moving! You can’t talk to them now!’

  I looked at the guy. ‘I just want a minute with my family.’ It was supposed to be a family celebratory moment for the three of us, and it was ruined by one track official.

  ‘No, you can’t,’ the official snapped. ‘Keep moving.’

  Tania gave the official a look. When the photographs were printed in the papers the next day, they’d been taken at such an angle that Tania appeared to be having a go at me rather than arguing with the official at my side.

  In the middle of all this media attention, I’d arranged for Hassan and my mum to come over to the UK. We kept their arrival very quiet. If word got out that my family was over from Hargeisa, I worried that reporters would start hassling us for an interview, and follow us around. Thankfully, no one found out. We had a great laugh. It was the first time my brother had visited England and I took Hassan up to central London with my mum to see all the main tourist attractions: Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the River Thames. Back at my home Hassan and me had these epic sessions on FIFA. I was like, ‘For real, you play FIFA back home?’ Hassan grinned. ‘Of course.’ Turns out there’s a café in Hargeisa where all the kids go to rent a PlayStation or an Xbox for an hour or two.

  While he was in England, Hassan was soon up to his mischievous tricks again. On a trip up to central London we went into Nike Town on Oxford Street. Suddenly loads of people started flocking over to me. Tania and Hassan were in another part of the store when my brother decided to play a joke. Hassan sauntered up to this woman, pretending to be me and offering to have a picture taken with her son. Hassan still looks a lot like me from a distance, but up close you can sort of tell the difference – especially around the waist! The mum and her son fell for it at first. It was only as the pair of them walked away from Hassan and they looked at the picture on their phone that they realized it wasn’t me.

  Hassan was also there the day Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, came over to my house for a cup of tea. Outside of my immediate family, no one knew that my mum and twin brother were staying with me in London, so Hassan was hiding in the next room while I chatted with the Mayor. I’m sure Boris can keep a secret,
but I didn’t want to take any chances.

  As a double Olympic champion, new doors opened up to me. I was showered with gifts: phones, kit, baby clothes for the twins. I was loving it. We had exposure that most athletes can only dream of. I got to attend the GQ Awards at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden along with Sir Chris Hoy, Louis Smith, Jo Cundy and the rest of Team GB to accept the Team of the Year award from Seb Coe. I also presented Robbie Williams with the Icon award at the same ceremony, and got to meet him afterwards.

  On a more serious note, I was invited to a summit meeting at 10 Downing Street to discuss world hunger with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, along with the football legend Pele and my running hero Haile Gebrselassie. It was a valuable opportunity to highlight the importance of tackling starvation and malnutrition, and the good work we were doing through my Foundation. Following the Olympics, the Mo Farah Foundation has continued to grow. The Olympics gave us a huge boost in terms of profile and donations, which in turn enabled us to expand. Thanks to everyone’s generosity, by the end of 2012 we had built fifty water wells in Somalia, supplied food to more than 20,000 people, set up medical clinics, built water canals and much more. We now have six full-time members of staff at the Foundation’s office in Twickenham. It is very close to my heart and I’m looking forward to dedicating more time and energy to it once I hang up my spikes.

  In 2013, in conjunction with the elite sports training programmes at my old uni, St Mary’s, and also at Brunel University in Uxbridge, the Foundation launched the Mo Farah Academy, which will provide scholarships for promising young athletes who have the potential to compete internationally. Both universities have a great track record of sporting success, and the Academy will provide financial and practical support for talented young athletes, especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. It will also give them access to world-class coaching and advice in order to help them fulfil their potential on the track. I was lucky enough to be given a scholarship through London Marathon, and now through my Foundation I’m in a position where I can help other young athletes who are at the start of their careers in athletics. Through the Academy, I hope to be able to play a part in bringing on the next generation of British sporting talent. It’s another way of me giving something back.

  My training suffered a bit in the wake of London 2012. To run 100-plus miles a week and do all this extra stuff on top – TV, newspaper and magazine interviews, signing autographs and having my picture taken all the time – I couldn’t juggle it all. I know what my body needs, and in order to be at my best, I have to recover properly after training – eating well and getting plenty of rest. This simply wasn’t possible after the Olympics. I ate a lot of takeaways and Nandos, and I ended up putting on several kilograms. Once the twins were born, our sleep patterns just went out the window. For the first few weeks, I couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep. But once we got back to Portland, it was business as usual. We moved into a new home and got a part-time nanny to help look after Aisha and Amani. It was a relief to be back in the US. No one in the city knew who I was. There was no media circus, no photographers following our every move. Here I was just another guy. I was like, ‘Wow! This is brilliant. Not one person recognizes me!’ I don’t expect anyone to know who I am over there. It’s not like the US is short of its own track-and-field heroes.

  Coming back to the UK can be difficult, especially if I’m having to spend a large amount of time in training. As an athlete, it’s easy for people to forget the fact that if I didn’t do what I do – running 120 miles week in, week out, getting the right amount of rest – I couldn’t be at the level that I am. It’s almost impossible for me to spend a lot of time in England and train properly, because of the attention on me. I’ll go for a coffee and get stopped and asked to have a picture taken. I’ll go to a restaurant, same thing. Not in a bad way, and I’ll never turn down a request from a fan, but it just means it takes a lot more time and effort on my part to get anything done. Being able to get away from that is important. In Portland, I could walk around naked if I wanted to and no one would care.

  Looking after twins is harder than I thought it would be. You have to change twice as many nappies, buy twice as many clothes. The girls would cry at the same time, or I’d comfort a wailing Aisha and then Amani would start crying. Fitting my runs in was difficult. I made a big effort to spend as much time as possible with the twins in those first couple of months, knowing that before the year was out I’d have to fly to the training camp in Iten. I’d get my long run out of the way nice and early so I could help out more around the house and spend more time with the girls.

  I insisted on having the twins sleep on my chest. You can blame Bono for that one. I met him shortly after the Olympics. Bono has two girls and he told me that it’s really good to have your daughters sleep on your chest. Apparently, it helps strengthen the bond between father and daughters. When I heard this I thought, ‘I’m gonna give it a try.’ I had the twins sleeping on my bare chest throughout the day. It got to the stage where they wouldn’t sleep in their cribs because they were so used to napping on their dad’s chest.

  Leaving for Kenya that winter was hard. I missed the girls in the camp. Big time. Tania would message me pictures and videos of them every day. Just a couple of simple snaps of the twins sitting down and eating gave me a huge lift. It’s important for me to have that relationship with my kids that I never had with my dad. But it’s hard when you have to spend a long time away from your family. It’s hard when you miss your kid’s first steps because you’re in camp, and your wife sends you a video clip of your little girl walking for the first time and you think, ‘I wish I’d been there.’ Only parents can understand that feeling.

  It’s not just about finding time for my twins. It’s about finding time for Rhianna too. Whenever I’m back home with the family, whether we’re in Oregon or London or wherever, we’ll have a father–daughter day, just Rhianna and me. We’ll go out and ride bikes or run around the track, just doing stuff and spending time together. From an early age Rhianna started calling me ‘Dad’. I’ve looked after her and been there for her since she was three years old, raising her as one of my own. That’s how I see Rhianna. There’s never been even the slightest element of doubt in my mind about that. I don’t like it when people refer to Rhianna as my stepdaughter. That’s not how I see it, or Rhianna or Tania for that matter. As far as I’m concerned, Rhianna is my first child. It’s just a technicality that she isn’t my biological daughter. She carries the Farah name, she’s as good as my own blood, and I love her just the same.

  The truth is that I want to be there at the crucial times for all my girls, but my job makes that very difficult.

  It’s taken a phenomenal amount of dedication to get to where I am today. For the last eight years I’ve been running on average 100 miles a week. Latterly, it’s been more like 120 miles a week. Every week. No excuses. That’s how much training I’ve had to put in to become an elite runner. That’s what it takes to go from being the fastest kid in Year Nine at school to winning gold. The guy you see on TV, smiling and joking around, that’s only half the story.

  Tania tells me that I have this ability to switch off rather than let something bother me. She’ll look at me and say, ‘How do you do that?’ I try not to let things get to me. I don’t stay awake at night, staring at the ceiling and thinking about what I did wrong or if I should have done this instead of that. It’s the same when I’m running. I block out every distraction. I forget everything else. I am no longer the chilled-out, smiling father. I’m the guy who wants to win.

  One of my favourite quotes is from the basketball coach Taras Brown: ‘Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.’ He used to make the young Kevin Durant (now a star player in the NBA) repeatedly write down this quote on a piece of paper before he was allowed to play a game. The first time I set eyes on that quote I instantly felt it summed up my own attitude to running. I believe that talent can get you a certain
distance – maybe halfway to where you want to be. Then you start thinking, ‘Hey, I don’t need to put in that much effort.’ Wrong. Unless you work hard, your talent will slowly start to slide away. You might not see it at first, but one day you’ll be doing a race when someone with less talent suddenly shoots past you on the home straight.

  Winning double gold at the Olympics has been the defining moment of my career. But as soon as London was over, I looked in the mirror and told myself, ‘I want more.’ That’s just how I am. When I win a race, I’m happy for a little bit. Then I forget about it and focus on the next thing. In 2012 it was all about the Olympics. And in 2013 I had my sights set on the World Championships in Moscow – and the chance to avenge my silver in the 10,000 metres final in Daegu.

  16

  ONLY THE ENDING IS DIFFERENT

  2012 had been such a massive high for me that I found it hard to motivate myself at the start of the following year – at least to begin with. As an athlete, one of the hardest things is letting go of a win. When you win a title or a medal, you celebrate, but then you have to let go and move on. That’s hard when you’ve spent years training for it. And in the wake of the Olympics I found that my motivation wasn’t quite there in terms of winning further championships. As usual, I took myself off to Kenya for my high-altitude training, a time I always regard as the beginning of my season. As soon as I arrived in Iten, I said to myself, ‘Right, that’s it. I’m not doing any more media appearances now.’ I stopped doing any TV and press interviews. I threw all my energy into preparing for 2013. I had one eye on the World Championships in Moscow that August. It was critical for me to get off to a good start – beginning with the 3000 metres indoors at the British Grand Prix on 16 February. I eased ahead of Florian Carvalho to win the race in 7:42.00. A good, solid start.