80 Facts About Mo Farah

Sir Mohamed Muktar Jama Mo Farah was born on Hussein Abdi Kahin; 23 March 1983 and is a British long-distance runner.

Mo Farah completed the 'distance double' at the 2013 and 2015 World Championships in Athletics.

Mo Farah was the first man to defend both distance titles in both major global competitions; a feat described as the 'quadruple-double'.

Mo Farah won the 2018 Chicago Marathon in a time of 2:05:11, a European record.

Mo Farah's running style has been described as bouncy and tactical, which he has attempted to alter for a more efficient and energy-saving stride pattern, especially in the longer distances.

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Mo Farah adopted the name as his own thereafter, becoming a British citizen.

Mo Farah ran for Newham and Essex Beagles athletics club, training at St Mary's University College, Twickenham from 2001 to 2011.

Mo Farah was the first British athlete to win two gold medals at the same world championships.

Mo Farah has won the European Athlete of the Year award and the British Athletics Writers Association British Athlete of the Year award more than any other athlete, three times and six times respectively.

Mo Farah was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2013 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to athletics.

Mo Farah has said that his father died in a civil war when he was aged four, and that he became separated from his mother.

Mo Farah was flown from the country by a woman he had never met, and then made to look after another family's children.

Mo Farah obtained British citizenship in July 2000 under the name Mohamed Farah.

Mo Farah's ambition was to become a car mechanic or play as a right winger for Arsenal football club.

Mo Farah joined the Borough of Hounslow Athletics Club in west London.

Mo Farah represented Hounslow at cross-country in the 1994 London Youth Games as an under-13.

That year, Mo Farah became one of the first two athletes in the newly formed Endurance Performance Centre at St Mary's.

Mo Farah lived and trained at the college, and took some modules in an access course before becoming a full-time athlete as his career progressed.

Mo Farah represented the UK at 5000 m in the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan.

Mo Farah attributed his good form to a spell of winter training at altitude in Ethiopia and Kenya.

Mo Farah competed at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics: he was in the leading pack early on in the 5000 metres race and eventually finished seventh – the best by a European runner.

Mo Farah was one of the favourites to upset Serhiy Lebid's dominance at the 2009 European Cross Country Championships.

Mo Farah was overtaken by Bezabeh in the latter stages of the race, leaving the Briton with a second consecutive silver medal at the competition.

Mo Farah did not manage to attend the medal ceremony as he collapsed immediately after the race and needed medical attention.

Mo Farah was the favourite to win and surged ahead to build a comfortable lead.

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Mo Farah again required post-race medical attention and subsequent tests revealed he had low levels of iron and magnesium.

Mo Farah was prescribed supplements for the condition and his high altitude training plans in Kenya were unaffected.

Mo Farah won by a margin of over forty seconds ahead of second placed Abdellatif Meftah.

In December 2010, Mo Farah was named track-and-field athlete of the year by the British Olympic Association.

In February 2011, Mo Farah announced that he would be relocating to Portland, Oregon to work with new coach Alberto Salazar, train alongside Galen Rupp, and avoid the attention of the British tabloids.

Mo Farah stated that he would observe his Ramadan fast later in the year.

On 11 August 2012, Mo Farah made it a long-distance double, winning the 5000 metres in a time of 13:41.

On 19 July 2013, at the Herculis meeting in Monaco, Mo Farah broke the European 1500 m record with a time of 3:28.

Mo Farah was the first British athlete to win two individual gold medals at a World Championships.

In December 2013, Mo Farah was the second favourite, behind Wimbledon tennis champion Andy Murray, to become the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

Mo Farah was a finalist for the 2013 IAAF World Athlete of the year award.

Mo Farah began 2014 preparing for the year's London Marathon, his first such run.

Mo Farah described running the event as a longstanding ambition of his, particularly to do so in London.

Mo Farah was due to compete at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Mo Farah later appeared in Zurich at the 2014 European Athletics Championships.

On 7 September 2014, Mo Farah competed in the Great North Run, a British half marathon.

On 21 February 2015, Mo Farah broke the indoor two-mile world record at the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix.

Mo Farah ran a time of 59 minutes, 32 seconds, surpassing the record set 14 years previously by Spain's Fabian Roncero.

Mo Farah repeated his long-distance gold medal double at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics.

On 26 March, Mo Farah received a bronze medal in the 2016 IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Cardiff, finishing in 59:59, less than one second ahead of Abayneh Ayele.

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On 5 June 2016, Mo Farah broke the 34-year-old British 3000 metre record set by Moorcroft by winning the Diamond League in Birmingham, a win he dedicated to the recently deceased boxer Muhammad Ali.

In July 2016 Mo Farah set the concurrent world-leading time in the 5000m in winning the Diamond League in London.

Rupp slowed after Mo Farah's fall to check his condition and finished in fifth place with a time of 27:08.

Mo Farah announced that he would switch from track events to the marathon after the 2017 World Championships in Athletics.

Mo Farah won his final two track events, in the Diamond league, in Birmingham and Zurich.

On 10 September 2017, Mo Farah won the Great North Run for a record fourth consecutive time.

In March 2018, in preparation for the London Marathon, Mo Farah won the inaugural London Big Half Marathon, his first race in six months.

On 22 April 2018, Mo Farah came third in the London Marathon in a time of 2:06:22, comfortably beating the British record of 2:07:13 set by Steve Jones in 1985.

On 9 September 2018 Mo Farah won the Great North Run for a record-extending fifth consecutive time.

At the Chicago Marathon Mo Farah claimed his inaugural gold medal in the marathon distance and in the process set a new European record of 2 hours 5 minutes and 11 seconds, an improvement by 37 seconds.

In February 2019, Mo Farah announced he planned to run again in the London Big Half Marathon in March 2019.

On 8 September 2019, Mo Farah won the 2019 Great North Run for a record sixth consecutive time in a new Personal best of 59:07.

Mo Farah stated he would put his marathon career on hold while he returned to track oriented training.

Mo Farah spent several weeks at altitude training in Ethiopia, before competing at the Djibouti International Half Marathon.

On 25 June 2021, Mo Farah failed to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games managing to run only a 27:47.

Mo Farah adopted the move following a television appearance in May 2012 opposite sports presenter Clare Balding, on the panel game show A League of Their Own.

The host James Corden suggested to the panelists that they should think of a new dance to mark Mo Farah's winning celebration, and Balding subsequently came up with the "M" gesture called "Mobot".

Mo Farah has since used the pose as part of a charity to raise funds for his foundation.

Shortly after, Mo Farah says he was brought to the UK by a woman he did not know, and told to use the name Mohamed Mo Farah, taken from another child.

Aged 12, Mo Farah was allowed to start school and he later confided in his PE teacher, who contacted social services who arranged for Mo Farah to be fostered by another family.

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Mo Farah and his wife have twin daughters called Aisha and Amani, born in August 2012.

From 2011 to 2017, Mo Farah lived with his family in Portland, Oregon, US so that he could train full-time with the Nike Oregon Project.

Mo Farah is a Muslim, and is an active supporter of the Muslim Writers Awards.

Mo Farah has indicated a desire to become a fitness coach at the Emirates Stadium in Holloway once he retires so as to improve its conditioning record.

Olympic memorabilia featuring and signed by Mo Farah has been auctioned off to raise funds for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games .

Mo Farah often used money transfer operators to send remittances to family, and some of the world's largest organisations and charities, including the UN and his own foundation, likewise paid staff and channelled funds through these services.

Mo Farah has expressed support for research into brain tumours.

Mo Farah has endorsement deals with a number of companies, including PACE Sports Management, Nike, Lucozade, Quorn, Bupa and Virgin Media.

In December 2013, Mo Farah signed a marketing deal with Quorn, part of a multimillion-pound campaign aimed at doubling the firm's sales.

Mo Farah led television advertisements for Quorn's vegetarian forms of protein, with the campaign scheduled to last throughout the following year.

In March 2018, Mo Farah posted a video on Instagram depicting what he alleges to be racial harassment at Munich Airport.

In November 2020, it was announced that Mo Farah would take part in the twentieth series of I'm a Celebrity.

Mo Farah became the eighth celebrity to be eliminated on 2 December 2020 alongside AJ Pritchard.

In July 2017, the Russian hacking group Fancy Bears leaked a database from International Association of Athletics Federations that reportedly showed that Mo Farah was once recorded "atypical" values on his Athlete Biological Passport in 2016.

However, Mo Farah was cleared of wrongdoing by April 2016 after a separate leaked spreadsheet said his records had been "now flagged as normal with the last sample".