British distance running legend looks back on his career as he prepares to tackle his final marathon in London
“This is it,” said Mo Farah as he faces up to the final marathon of his career. Unlike times past, when gold medal followed gold medal and the distance running world followed his lead, he knows his body just can’t stand up to what his mind is still willing it to do.
The TCS London Marathon on Sunday (April 23) will represent the end of a journey which began with victory as a teenager in the Mini London Marathon and has seen the now 40-year-old accrue four Olympic and six world titles on the track in between.
This outing won’t be Farah’s last race – he has plans to toe at least a couple of other start lines before the year is out, though he has no aspirations to qualify for the World Championships – but it will be his sixth and final outing over 26.2 miles.
At the pre-event press conference, he admitted he will be emotional at ending his marathon career in the city which hosted his greatest triumph on that unforgettable Olympic Super Saturday of 2012 and in front of a public audience which will roar his every step. “When you know it’s the end of the road, you always get emotional,” he said. “I think it will get to me. Maybe after the race there will be tears.”
The last couple of injury-interrupted years highlighted how fast the clock has been ticking on his career and it was a reflective Farah who spoke with the media just a couple of hundred metres away from Sunday’s finish line.
“You take it for granted over the years,” he said about being at the top of his game. “Each year, you just continue to do it. You are almost like a robot – you just do this year then you do the same thing again and your body allows you. I took that for granted.
“I realised over the past couple of years that I have to be grateful for the career I’ve had. I think the bit that now I appreciate more than anything is the last two months’ training in Ethiopia, just knowing I could do two sessions a week or three sessions a week [without breaking down].”
Mo Farah (London Marathon Events)
That would suggest Farah is not about to threaten his British record of 2:05:11 which brought him victory at the 2018 Chicago Marathon. However, he did claim that recent training sessions have seen him finishing “neck and neck” with Bashir Abdi, who clocked a world-leading time of 2:03:47 in winning Rotterdam last weekend.
The marathon has been a tough nut to crack for Farah, who first tackled the distance in 2014 and last did so in 2019. “It hasn’t gone as well as I’d wanted, to be honest,” is his assessment.
Asked to look back on his career as a whole, he added: “I wouldn’t have done anything differently. I think every part has been a journey that you never know and you took that journey and you kept going and kept grafting. If I look back, there’s nothing I would have changed.”
Not even his association with Alberto Salazar, a man who was suspended for four years due to doping violations in 2019 and subsequently banned for life for sexual and emotional misconduct? Farah was part of the now defunct Nike Oregon Project, which was led by the American, between 2011 and 2017. He has not spoken with his former coach since then and said: “That was always hard and you have to put that past you and you can only control things that you can control. I knew life wasn’t going to get any harder than what I went through as a child.”
READ MORE: 2023 TCS London Marathon preview
Not far from where Farah was speaking, the preparations are in full swing not just for the marathon but also the imminent coronation of King Charles. As a knight of the realm, Farah is now living a very different life from the childhood which saw him illegally trafficked to Britain from Somalia.
“As a kid growing up coming to the UK was always a hard thing but you embrace it,” he added. “My PE teacher [Alan Watkinson] pointed me in that right direction – if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be in the sport. I brought so much pride for my country.”
With that in mind, then, how does he feel about the current UK Government policy of sending some asylum seekers to Rwanda?
“I think I was slightly in a different situation but you have to think these people don’t come with choice,” said Farah. “They are human just like us and don’t want to be in that situation. I was just a young boy and if my country didn’t embrace me, didn’t support me, the system didn’t support me, I wouldn’t be here.
“I’m not a politician, I’m a sportsman. If I see a kid who’s struggling or someone struggling, my initial thing is to go there and see if we can help them, whatever their colour or race or religion as a human piece of humanity. I think we just have to do the right thing.”
Chris Thompson, Mo Farah and Emile Cairess (London Marathon Events)
He wants to help, too, through his chosen sport. “My legacy is what I’ve achieved and I’d love to be able to help other British athletes to benefit from my experience,” said Farah.
One of those doing just that was Emile Cairess, who sat alongside Farah and Chris Thompson at the media event. There are high hopes for the joint British 10km record-holder, who broke the European 10-mile mark in March and whose marathon debut is being hotly anticipated.
“I think Emile has got the potential to do huge things in the sport,” said the 42-year-old Tokyo Olympian Thompson. “The problem he’s got is that there are so many races and events, you can market yourself in so many different ways. When I was a junior it was set out that you’d run cross country, you’d do a track championships and then you’d go to the roads.
“Now, the marathon majors are as big as the World Championships and the hardest thing he has is deciding what races he does and figuring out goals.”
The British contingent are not expected to be a factor at the very sharpest end of the race on Sunday, in which Amos Kipruto will be looking to defend the London Marathon crown he won in October with a time of 2:04:39. With Evans Chebet and Hellen Obiri finishing first in Boston at the beginning of the week, Kipruto intends to add to the Kenyan success with another victory.
“The London Marathon really means a lot to me,” he said. “It’s been a race I’ve dreamed about running in since I was young and to win last year was an amazing feeling.
“The preparation has gone well. Training has been balanced and similar to last year. That’s why I’m ready and confident for the race. I’m strong and looking forward to racing with guys that are fast.
“The guys who finished number one and number three in Boston [Chebet and Benson Kipruto], we train together. The training for me and for them was different as Boston and London are different courses but I have come to London with morale [high] because of what they both achieved in Boston.”
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