Farah’s little secret
‘Nervous look told he was hiding something’
Interviewer suspected ‘something was going on behind Mo Farah’s eyes’, but the revelation he was smuggled into Britain has stunned the track and field world.
Hindsight is the easiest of psychological weapons to wield, but, looking back on the times when I met him, there always seemed to be something going on behind Mo Farah’s eyes.
At close inspection, when out on a training run together in 2014 for an interview, the cheeky chappy carefree joker he liked to portray felt like a mask, a carefully constructed carapace hiding a secret that lurked in his psyche. The cynic would suggest that such subterfuge was deployed to keep from scrutiny details of his relationship with the coach Alberto Salazar, a man who was suspended from all athletics in 2019 due to his enthusiasm for medicinal enhancement. But whatever its cause, the uncertain, nervous look Farah maintained when being interviewed suggested he was hiding something profound.
Now we know what it was: in a new BBC documentary, he reveals that, aged nine, after his father had been killed in the civil war and his family dispersed by conflict, he was allegedly trafficked from his home in Somaliland to Britain. After being brought to London, he had spent three years in domestic servitude, kept away from school, obliged to labour for a family that deliberately prevented him from attempting to contact relatives. Mo Farah was the name on the passport used to squirrel him into Britain illegally – he was born Hussein Abdi Kahin. The Metropolitan Police now has specialist officers assessing whether to launch an investigation into the alleged abduction.
As I now realise, Mo Farah was not just an alias, he was a construct; the cheery, happy-golucky incomer made good. Britain’s greatest ever athlete was built on a fabrication.
This week’s news has come as a shock to those who helped him along the way.
‘‘I’m absolutely staggered,’’ says Brendan Foster, the former athlete who has known Farah for more than 20 years.
‘‘I just saw the grins and the silly behaviour and the way he laughed so easily. But if you think about the darkness that was in there, it is amazing that he came out – first of all with the light-hearted personality that he has, and then secondly the steely determination.’’
Indeed, the story Farah has now told of his background is as chilling as it is extraordinary. It is one of exploitation and misery, but also one of resilience and determination. To emerge from such abuse to a life of international acclaim and recordbusting achievement is remarkable.
Yet he kept it quiet for 30 years, building instead an entirely false narrative of his background.
When he first achieved success at London 2012, it was this story that became a familiar one: the lad who had come from Somaliland with his British-born father, who was studying in London, leaving some of his siblings – including his twin brother – behind in the war-torn territory in the hope that they might one day follow him. And once in Britain, he found purpose, meaning and achievement in athletics. This was the tale laid out in his autobiography Twin Ambitions, the account retold post-2012 in many a documentary and article on the making of a champion.
Yet there were always holes in it. Why had the family not been reunited in the aftermath of his success? Why was he not in touch with them? Why was his twin not there in the Olympic Stadium to watch Mo pick up the first of his four Olympic golds? Why were none of his relatives at his wedding? While most of us were too preoccupied with his meteoric rise to ask such questions, his wife, Tania Nell, did. For her, the Mo Farah story just didn’t add up. And eventually he told her what had really happened, but swore her to secrecy.
As was the case with Alan Watkinson, his PE teacher at Feltham Community College. When he eventually was allowed to attend school, it was Watkinson who spotted that the kid tearing around the playground had real sporting potential. As he helped the young lad develop his remarkable talent, Watkinson came to realise there was something not right about his background. When he found out what was really going on he quickly intervened, contacted social services to remove the boy from the people exploiting him and find him a proper foster home. But, until his contribution to the BBC documentary, Watkinson too has kept quiet.
Farah’s entire image was one of success, the smiley chap with the jet-heeled burst on the final bend and the trademark Mo-bot celebration. Victimhood was not something he wished to embrace. The past was something he had not just eradicated from his life, he had changed it completely. Besides, the misery of those early days had been mitigated by his success. Why revisit it when the new Mo seemed to be working so well for him?
That’s not to say the distress wasn’t always there in his psychological make-up. Indeed, there is a growing belief that early childhood trauma can act as a significant engine for sporting prowess.
‘‘Super elites are amazing,’’ says Professor Lew Hardy, an expert in what drives those at the very top. ‘‘But they aren’t necessarily the most well-adjusted, happy people.
If they were, they wouldn’t do what they do.’’
‘‘Trauma is undoubtedly a driver and motivator,’’ says Alan Pascoe, the former Olympic hurdler turned leading sports consultant. ‘‘You only have to look at Paralympians.’’
Even if its repercussions are always there, it takes time to come to terms with trauma. Many of those who suffered sexual abuse as children are only able publicly to acknowledge their past once in their 30s and 40s.
If nothing else Farah’s new story is one from which we in Britain can draw considerable pride. So often we hear how the system failed a child in distress. Not in Farah’s case. His teachers and coaches first rescued him from servitude then helped develop him into a world beater. Then benefactors such as Eddie Kulukundis supported his progress. He is a champion entirely made in this country. No wonder he has so often expressed his love of Britain, no wonder he radiated such happiness on the day he was knighted.
In many ways, the new Farah story is even more remarkable than the one we have for so long associated with him. It is, as Foster suggests, a ‘‘Hollywood tale’’.
There is, however, one depressing reality that remains. Imagine how many children there are out there, some in similar circumstances to those in which he found himself, being horribly exploited in modern-day slavery.
Sadly, the odds are stacked against any of them growing up into quadruple Olympic champions. The Telegraph