Mo Farah (Hussein Abdi Kahin)

Who is he?

Sir Mo Farah is a British former long-distance runner, born in Somalia. He won four Olympic and six world championship gold medals, the most global titles of any male track distance runner (Wikipedia, Mo Farah). He is the most successful British track athlete in Olympic history (same source).

A childhood under another name

He was born Hussein Abdi Kahin on 23 March 1983 (Wikipedia). In a 2022 BBC documentary he said his father was killed in the civil war when he was four. At about nine, a woman flew him from Djibouti to London with false papers under the name of another child, Mohamed Farah, and he was made to work as a domestic servant (CBS News, July 2022). He kept the name and later became a British citizen. The Home Office said no action would be taken against him (CBS News).

At first he was not allowed to go to school. At 11 or 12 he joined Feltham Community College, where a PE teacher saw his talent (Wikipedia). He joined Hounslow athletics club, and later Newham and Essex Beagles (same source). His mother and two brothers live on a farm in Somaliland (same source).

Titles

• Olympics: gold in the 5,000 m and 10,000 m at London 2012, and again at Rio 2016. He was only the second man, after Lasse Virén, to win both at back-to-back Games (Wikipedia).
• World Championships: the distance double in 2013 and 2015, and 10,000 m gold in 2011 and 2017 (same source). From 2011 to 2017 he won ten global finals in a row.
• Road: he won the 2018 Chicago Marathon in a European record of 2:05:11, and holds the world record for the one-hour run (same source).

He was made a CBE in 2013 and knighted in 2017 for services to athletics (Wikipedia).

Giving back

After a visit to Somalia in 2011 he launched the Mo Farah Foundation to help people in the Horn of Africa (Wikipedia).

In short

A runner who arrived in Britain as a child and won four Olympic gold medals. See sport in Somalia and Somalis in London.