Farah: I’m running London...
Britain’s golden boy of the track insists he can give world record-holder Kipchoge a real run for his money on streets of the capital
A TEENAGE Mo Farah is stepping off a bus in Hounslow with his friends when his own image flickers on to a large TV screen in a shop window. Played out in front of him is the first of a hat-trick of victories in the mini-London Marathon earlier that day.
From the junior runners, footage quickly cuts to the elite race and he recalls: “I remember thinking, ‘How can anyone possibly run such a long way?’. It now seems strange that I’m doing those same 26.2 miles.”
The switch by Farah to marathon had, at first, been a tentative step to see if he could turn his skills from track to road. After a failed foray in 2014, in 2018 he exceeded expectations with a podium finish at the London Marathon, before winning in Chicago just a month ago.
In the wake of such results, he has markedly shifted his own opinion of what is possible at his home marathon in five months’ time, to which he officially committed this morning.
“I definitely want to win it,” he says. “It’s one of the biggest things for any athlete, particularly as a London athlete. If you’d asked me a couple of years ago, I would have told you I was just happy to compete or finish on the podium.
“Now I want to mix it with the best. There’s no question of doubt in my mind that I’ll win the London Marathon — i t ’s just a question of when and how.”
The one major obstacle to that quest is world record-holder Eliud Kipchoge, who has won 10 of the 11 marathons in which he has raced (it took a world record from compatriot Dennis Kimetto in Berlin in 2014 to inflict his only defeat) and looks a certainty to line up in London once more.
But Farah adds: “I have a lot of respect for Eliud, but do I fear him? No. And do I think I can beat him? Yes. He’s run faster than me and he’s a better athlete than me at the moment. Right now, he’s beyond anyone else.
“In that way, I’d compare him to Anthony Joshua, in that he’s the top of the heavyweight boxing division, but it only takes one great fight to knock him down.”
So, if Kipchoge is Joshua in Farah’s o w n c r o s s - s p o r t a n a l o g y, is the Londoner more in the mould of a Deontay Wilder or Tyson Fury?
“I’m definitely a Tyson Fury,” he says, warming to the theme. “You don’t know what you’re going to get. On the day, when it matters, I feel I can put on the best show.”
Farah makes no secret of the fact that the London Marathon is his No1 goal for next season, despite previously hinting at other ambitions in 2019: namely a potential surprise return to the track, from which he retired last year, in the 10,000metres at the World Championships in Doha.
Such a foray would mean other track warm-up events, to the extent he admits he could yet return to the London Stadium, scene of both his first Olympic golden double in 2012 and his last world title in 2017.
“To be honest, I’ve not discussed that