Sir Mo Farah reveals he was a child slave

Farah championing a cause - 25th July 2022

Olympic champion Sir Mo Farah was brought to the UK illegally as a child and forced to work as a domestic servant, he has revealed.

The gold medalist was given the name Mohamed Farah when he was brought to the UK, aged nine, and forced to look after another family's children. "For years I just kept blocking it out, but you can only block it out for so long."

The long-distance runner previously said he came to the UK from Somaliland with his parents as a refugee. However, a new BBC documentary reveals his parents have never been to the UK. His father Abdi passed away during civil unrest in Somaliland when Farah was only four.

Sir Mo says he was about eight or nine years old when he was told he was being taken to Europe to live with relatives - something he says he was "excited" about. When they arrived in the UK the paper with the phone numbers of his relatives was torn up and he had to do housework and childcare "if I wanted food in my mouth", he remembers.

He wasn't allowed to attend school until he was about 12. School staff were told Sir Mo was a refugee from Somaliland. His old form tutor said he came to school "unkempt and uncared for", that he spoke very little English and was an "emotionally and culturally alienated" child.

It was his PE teacher, Alan Watkinson who noticed a transformation in the young boy when he hit the athletics track. "The only language he seemed to understand was the language of PE and sport," he says.

Sir Mo says he wants to tell his story to challenge public perceptions of trafficking and slavery. "I had no idea there was so many people who are going through exactly the same thing that I did. It just shows how lucky I was," he says. "What really saved me, what made me different, was that I could run."