The Resilience of the Long-Distance Runner

Coincidentally, on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, I came across an article in The Guardian newspaper on Mo Farah, a Somaliland-born, British long distance runner and winner of 4 gold Olympic medals, among countless other European and World Championship medals.

I didn’t know he had been trafficked to the UK aged 8, and forced to work as a cleaner and child minder for a family he didn’t know and had not connection to. His payment? Food.

He was only allowed to go to school at age 11, where his sporting abilities were noticed by the school PE teacher. Farah subsequently confided his situation to his teacher, who then arranged for him to be fostered by another family.

I didn’t know this, because Farah told a different story about his family – that he had come to the UK with his mother and father, an IT Consultant - rather than the truth: his father had been killed by a stray bullet in the civil war when he was four, leaving him and his twin brother, six other siblings and his mother completely alone.

The story is shocking. Yet what amazed and inspired me in this article were his:

Vision

Whilst always strong in sports and athletics, it was only when watching runners Cathy Freeman and Haile Gebreselassie that he decided he would become an Olympic champion. He found his North Star whilst at sixth-form college.

Resilience

He admits that he didn’t have the appetite for the regime he witnessed his Kenyan housemates following – a regime of eat, train, sleep – until he missed out on the Athens Olympics.

After that, he was ruthless in his focus. When flights to the UK were halted following the Iceland volcanic eruption, he left his newly-wed wife to make her own way home to the UK whilst he headed off to train in Kenya, and uprooting his family to Portland, Oregon to train with a renowned coach, Alberto Salazar.

Loyalty

He credits his coach, Alberto Salazar, with building his self-belief and helping him work on the tiny differences that differentiate a great athlete from a world-beating athlete, molding him into the champion he became.

In 2019, Salazar received a 4-year ban for doping offences. When asked if he should have left Salazar earlier when the rumours first emerged, Farah says no – because he is a loyal person and likes to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Dedication

Farah is ruthless in his commitment to running, admitting he had to stay away from his family for months at a time in order to train. To say that wasn’t easy is an understatement, but the bigger picture was the comfort he can now provide for his family.

Awareness

He recognizes the various emotions that have impacted his choices. Fear and self-doubt earlier in life. The shame of having been forced to work as a domestic servant.

He acknowledges how, when he experienced the freedom of college life, he did go ‘a bit crazy’. But he never went fully off the rails. When he recalls jumping off a bridge - naked - into the Thames, and the interviewer questions if he was drunk, he is shocked. No! He is a good Muslim.

Even though the Home Office was aware of his situation, and knew his father had been killed, Farah didn't publicly share the truth about his background until he was ready to tell his story - in a BBC documentary in 2022.

Control

Throughout his life, running was the thing he could control. He could train and push himself. In an early life with little freedom and where everything seemed to be dictated for him, he nurtured his sense of agency through his running.

Rather than lament what was beyond his reach, he focused on what he could control.

Love and Gratitude

His love for his sport, his family and his pursuits (sporting foundations, philanthropy, the Muslim Writers Awards) is evident.

His gratitude to his teacher, his coach and his family is clear.

In possibly the ultimate act of acceptance, he says he has achieved so much, not in spite of his past - but because of it.

Self-Awareness | Self-Management | Self-Leadership

In reading more about Farah, I marveled at his level of emotional intelligence: his ability to understand and channel his emotional energy effectively, the quality of his choices - founded in optimism and intrinsic motivation, and his ability to lead himself through the many different challenges he faced throughout his journey.

Prior to these disclosures, the fans watching his many feats of endurance and athleticism, his broad smile and infectious enthusiasm, would likely never have guessed the many challenges he had faced head on.

Andrea Stone is an Executive Coach, partnering with leaders and their teams to create success. She works with executives in global, technology-oriented organizations, to foster greater value creation for themselves, their teams and their customers.

© Andrea Stone, Stone Leadership