Hussein Abdi Kahin. This is the real name of the Olympic champion Mo Farah who in an interview with the BBC revealed one after another aspects of his past unknown until today.
Starting from the beginning. The story told so far of his arrival in Great Britain does not coincide with what actually happened. The 39-year-old young man from Djibouti would not have entered the country with his parents with refugee status. The British middle-distance runner and marathon runner, three times Olympic champion of the 5,000 meters and 10,000 meters in London and Rio, said he was flown from the East African country by a woman he had never met and then forced to take himself. looking after children of another family. Farah previously explained that he arrived in the UK from Somalia with his parents with refugee status. But in a BBC and Red Bull Studios documentary he stated that his parents had never been to the UK. His mother and two brothers live on their family farm in Somaliland while his father Abdi died when Farah was just 4 years old killed by a stray bug.
The athlete said he was about eight or nine when he was taken away from home to be with his family in Djibouti. He was then flown to the UK by a woman he had never met and was unrelated to, who told him that he would be taken to Europe to live there with relatives. The woman was carrying fake travel documents showing her photo next to the name ‘Mohamed Farah’. When they arrived in the UK, Farah said, the woman took him to her flat in Hounslow, west London, and took a piece of paper with her relatives’ contact details. “Right in front of me, he tore it up and put it in the trash. At that moment I knew I was in trouble,” explained the Olympic champion.
Since then he has been forced to do housework, with the woman threatening him: “If you ever want to see your family again, don’t say anything.” She forced him to clean up and look after his children and prevented him from go to school until the age of 12. But even when he was allowed to study, he was “estranged, emotionally and culturally,” he testified.
A few years later, Farah revealed to his physical education teacher, Alan Watkinson, his true identity, told him about his past and the family he was forced to work for. The man contacted social services, helping the future champion to be placed in the care of another Somali family.
What saved him was sport: “The only thing I could do to get away from that situation was to go out and run”, underlined Sir Mo, six-time world champion and awarded in 2016 by the queen of the title of knight.