Mo Farah had a brawl on his first day at school and sleeps in a bedroom bedecked with Muhammad Ali posters, so it seems clear that he has the stomach for a fight. “This kid came over and whacked me,” he recalled. “So I hit him back.” He has been rolling with the punches ever since.
The Somali-born British distance runner will invoke the spirit of the Rumble in the Jungle, his favourite Ali bout, to throw down a marker at the World Championships in Osaka, Japan, next month. The potential has been simmering for some time. Last year, he became the European cross-country champion, won a silver in the 5,000 metres at the European Championships and became the second-fastest Briton over that distance in knocking 21 seconds off his personal best.
But it is one thing to beat yourself and the best of a bygone era and quite another to join an elite core of Kenyans and Kenenisa Bekele, an Ethiopian legend. Freshly returned from injury, Farah will try to do that over 3,000 metres in the Norwich Union British Grand Prix in Sheffield tomorrow and he has already had an insight into the loneliness of a long-distance running great.
“I want to retire and say I did my best,” he said. “It’s a lot of pain and a lot of sacrifice, but that’s what you have to do. I learnt that by living with some of the Kenyans for a while. It was their life. They would run, eat and sleep, run, eat and sleep. That was it. If you want to be the best, then it is hard to have a social life, but I look at my friends who are going out and would not swap it for standing on a podium.”
This athletes’ commune was put together by Farah’s agent, Ricky Simms, and gave the 24-year-old a personal insight into the lengths he would have to go to if he wanted to join them on athletics’ top table. “I think they got annoyed with me a bit at first because I might get up a bit late,” he said. “Not any more.”
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It has taken Farah time to accept the more monastic regime of the top Africans. “I jumped off Kingston Bridge into the Thames once,” he said. Was it a drink-fuelled escapade? “Maybe, but more just a bit of madness.” Those days are long gone.
Farah seeks his inspiration from disparate sources. Ali is one, Paula Radcliffe another. “Paula has been great to me all the way through,” he said. “She knows what it takes and it means a lot when someone like that bothers to help. When I was starting out, she even gave me some money and before the European final I saw her and she said, ‘Go out and be brave.’ ” He has also trained in Australia with Craig Mottram, the bronze medal-winner at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki and another man trying to break the African monopoly on distance events. “I realised that I had to do more than these guys,” Farah said. “If I’m not working, I know Craig and the others will be.”
In Sheffield, Farah will be in at the deep end after his injury problems, but he knows the World Championships in Osaka will be a true test of his development. “I’ve never been there and it’s about judging races,” he said. “I want to make the final and then see what happens. Anything can.”
It is already an intriguing tale. Born in Mogadishu and raised in Djibouti, a country largely made up of nomadic herdsmen, he came to Britain at the age of 9. Unable to speak a word of English, he misbehaved to seek attention and dreamt of becoming an Arsenal football player.
It was when he went to compete in Florida as a 15-year-old and took a trip to Disney World that he realised he liked athletics. Last year, he liked it enough to run 13min 9.40sec for the 5,000 metres. It was a time that signalled his arrival, because David Moorcroft is the only Briton to have gone faster; the bad news is that the Africans have since lowered the world record to 12:37.35.
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This year, Farah was the best of the Europeans and eleventh overall at the World Cross Country Championships in Mombasa, Kenya. “I believe we can challenge the Africans if we train the same way,” he said. Now relocated from his base in Teddington, Middlesex, to a nearby house used by UK Athletics, Farah added: “Train hard, win easy – that’s what they say.”
It has been a long and winding road, but the kid in the playground is still punching his weight.
Report card
Ian Stewart, the Olympic 5,000 metres bronze medal-winner in 1972, gives his verdict on Mo Farah
Strengths “One of the things that Mo has done is make a major breakthrough on his cross country – he is stepping into world-class distance running. He is also a very brave runner. His attempt at the Europeans last year in the 5,000 metres was a great effort. He doesn’t mind getting out there and attacking from the front, even from a long way out, which is not an easy thing. He has all the tools he needs to do well and more. He learnt a lot from the Kenyans.”
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Areas to work on “He needs to get into the races and learn the craft of racing. When it comes to distance running, it’s more about racing than it is about time. In terms of distance running, I think there is a lot of obsession with time at the moment. You also need to learn to handle yourself at major championships, which Mo has proved by his performances at recent ones.”
Hopes for 2007 “His problem is that he has been injured for a while this season. Expectation is going to be extremely high at the World Championships and he will be playing catchup. There will be a lot of pressure. If he makes the final of the 5,000 metres, then that is a massive step forward.”
— Mo Farah will run at the Norwich Union British Grand Prix in Sheffield on Sunday; tickets are available by phone on 0870 402 8000 or online at ukathletics.net/tvevents