The multi-time Olympic gold medalist at the age of nine was forced to do housework and take care of the children in exchange for food. “For years I kept holding it in, but you can’t hold it in forever.”
The confession of the Olympic gold medalist and world champion in long distances breaks hearts, Mo Fara for the difficulties he went through in the first years of his life.
The runner said he was brought to Britain from Djibouti at the age of nine and forced to do housework and look after children in exchange for food, he told the BBC.
The 39-year-old, who was born in Somalia, added that his name had been changed to Muhammad Farah by Hussein Abdi Kahin on the forged travel documents that brought him to Britain, by a woman he had never met before.
Once he arrived in the UK, the woman took him to her home in Hounslow, west London, and tore up a piece of paper with his relatives’ contact details. Her family did not allow him to go to school until the age of 12.
“For years I kept holding it in, but you can’t hold it in forever,” he told the BBC documentary, which will be broadcast this week, adding: “I often locked myself in the bathroom and cried. The only thing I could do to escape this living situation was to get out and run.”
PE teacher Alan Watkinson contacted social services and helped him find a foster family in the Somali community after Farah told him what he was going through.
“I felt like a big weight was lifted off my shoulders and I felt like myself again. That’s when Mo came out – the real Mo,” Farah said, adding: “I had no idea there were so many people going through the exact same thing I went through. It just goes to show how lucky I was. What really saved me, what made me different, was that I could run.”
Farah said his career could be over in May after finishing second in the 10,000m in London and ruled out taking part in this month’s World Championships.
The famous champion, who won the gold medal in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters in the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games, will however run in the Marathon – for the first time since 2019 – and specifically in the London race, next October.
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