“Mo Farah has told his life story countless times: how he came to the UK as a child, accompanied by his brother and his mother, to join his father, who was already there. Only everything is wrong, reports The Daily Telegraph. In a documentary which will be broadcast on Wednesday July 13 by the BBC, the athletics champion chose to free himself from a weight. “To stop suppressing the truth.”
Born in Somaliland shortly before the territory’s declaration of independence from Somalia, the athletics champion is actually called Hussein Abdi Kahin. “The name Mohamed Farah was stolen from another child in order to create a fake passport”, explains the British daily. His parents, on the other hand, have never lived in the UK. “My father died in the civil war when I was 4 years old”, loose the man with four Olympic titles in “The Real Mo Farah” (“The real Mo Farah”). From neighboring Djibouti, where his mother had sent him to seek refuge with his twin brother, Hassan, “[il a] been illegally taken to the UK” by a stranger at the age of 9.
Once on British soil, the young man lived with the woman and her husband, “who mistreated him”before being “saved by his sports teacher, in whom he confided and who had spotted his talent”, recount The Daily Telegraph. “It was through him that Mo Farah later managed to obtain British citizenship under his assumed name.” Then to experience a dazzling career, crowned by an ennoblement from the hands of the queen in 2017.
With this document “exceptional”, as it qualifies The Daily Telegraph, “I take a big risk”, concedes the athlete facing the camera. “It’s a secret I’ve kept since my childhood. I’m not who you think I am.”