Sir Mo Farah

Britain’s most successful athlete, Sir Mo Farah, CBE, was born in Somaliland in 1983 but came to live in England when he was eight years old. His running talent was spotted early on and one of his first ambitions was to play professional football for Arsenal.

Farah has the distinction of winning Olympic Gold medals in two events ~ the 5,000 metres and the 10,000 metres ~ at two successive Games, those being the 2012 and the 2016. He has run all distances from 800m to the marathon (IAAF, 2018). The photo above shows his trademark winning gesture of the ‘M’ for Mo (Mohamed). In 2017 he was voted the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year.

He ‘retired’ from track events in 2017 to concentrate on road races, but has said that he may compete in the 10,000 metres again in the 2020 Olympics. This amazing athlete could win it for a record-breaking third successive time and add to his very long list of titles.

(Image: Dept. of Digital, Culture, Media & Sports at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)