Mo Farah, the first British athlete to win four Olympic gold medals, said in a stunning revelation to his country and sport that he had been smuggled into the UK as a child under an assumed name.
“Most people know me as Mo Farah, but it’s not my name, or it’s not the reality,” he said in a statement. BBC documentary will be released on Wednesday.
“The real story is that I was born in Somaliland, north of Somalia, as Hussein Abdi Kahin. Despite what I’ve said in the past, my parents have never lived in the UK,” Farah said in clips of the documentary released Monday.
Farah, 39, previously said he had arrived in Britain with his parents as a refugee.
He said he was endangering his citizenship by sharing his story, and spoke to a lawyer in the film about what the disclosure could mean for his future.
The lawyer, Alan Briddock, said it was unlikely that Farah would lose his citizenship because he was trafficked as a child and shared his story with the relevant authorities.
In the documentary, Farah said he was separated from his family after his father was killed during the civil war in Somalia. He was brought to Britain at the age of 9 with a woman by the name of another child, Mohamed Farah. He thought he was going to stay with relatives, but was forced into domestic servitude.
“I had all the contact details of my relative and once we got to her house the lady took it from me and right in front of me she tore them open and put it in the bin and that’s when I knew I was in trouble , ” he said.
“If I wanted food in my mouth, my job was to take care of those kids, shower them, cook for them and clean for them,” Farah said. And she said, ‘If you ever want to see your family again, don’t say anything. If you say something, they will take you.’”
Years later, when he was in school, Farah told his gym teacher, Alan Watkinson, about his real identity. He was placed in the care of a friend’s mother.
In July 2000, with the help of Watkinson, Farah was granted British citizenship under the name Mohamed Farah, according to the BBC. He would become one of Britain’s greatest sports heroes.
Farah, a distance runner, won two gold medals at the 2012 London Olympics, in the 5,000m and 10,000m. He successfully repeated as champion in both races four years later at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, winning gold despite a dramatic fall halfway through through the 10,000†
Farah was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2017.
He has competed in major marathons since briefly retiring from the track in 2017, setting a national record after winning the 2018 Chicago Marathon with a time of 2 hours 5 minutes 11 seconds.
Farah recently announced that he will run this year’s London Marathon on October 2, his first marathon since 2019.