A DAY after writing another chapter in his amazing life story with a victory in the 5,000 metres that brought him a fourth Olympic medal, Mo Farah confirmed yesterday he would end his track career at the world championships in London next year before turning his attentions to the road.
At 33, it is partly self-preservation. But also to escape the relentless grind of travelling from city to city and spending prolonged periods on the road or in isolation at training camps abroad while his wife and four young children remain behind.
“For me when I line up I’m in a tunnel, I close everything and that tunnel all you can see is just ahead you cant look beyond,” he said. “That’s what drives me and that’s why I’ve become successful and win medals. But the day you feel like you cant see straight ahead of you, you can see corners and stuff, that’s when you have to hang it up.
“At the minute I’m still in that tunnel. And I want to continue, but it is hard. The light turns off sometimes, because you miss your kids, you miss your family, you want a normal life. Sometimes it is hard. That’s the only thing that really gets me down or makes me think twice about what I do, but is been worth it. You cant replace this, its one moment, you’ve got to take the most of that opportunity and that’s what I’ve done.”
Farah replicated the historic double-double of the Flying Finn Lasse Viren by winning the 5000 and 10000 metres at consecutive Games. Few remember now that when he went to his first Olympics in Beijing eight years ago, he failed even to reach the final, forcing him into a radical switch that took him to Oregon and the occasionally controversial coach Alberto Salazar.
Now he is feted as a global superstar of the sport. “2012 changed me who I am not as a person but in terms of level of going out in the street and doing stuff. To have four years of that, everything and come back again to do it is pretty amazing.
“I used to dream of becoming Olympic champion once but then twice, and come back again and again is pretty amazing. I remember seeing Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat in Sydney and wondering if I could become Olympic champion at the time.
“I was in school at the time. I had a poster in my room of that moment printed in one of the papers and had it on my wall and thinking ‘I want to be Olympic champion’.”
Now he is, four times over, and lauded despite the occasional cloud that seems to follow Farah due to the company he keeps and a sense of growing frustration that he not more cherished in the land where he grew up after leaving Somalia as a boy.
But he said: “I enjoy what I do and you can’t take that away from me. I enjoy having pain and putting the miles in and continuing to work hard and to keep going. That’s who I am. In my career I want to continue winning medals and making my nation proud. That’s what I do.”
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