From Somalia to England, to the 5000/10,000m double in London and image-of-the-Games status there, to threshold of doubling up in Rio, Mo Farah has been on an epic journey. The last thing he needed was a trip.
Ten laps into the 25 at the Olympic stadium on Saturday night, Farah was clipped by friend and sometime training partner, American Galen Rupp, and fell. He didn’t blame Rupp, but his own long stride.
‘I was thinking: Is the race done?’: Mo Farah crosses the line to win the 10,000m.
‘I was thinking: Is the race done?’: Mo Farah crosses the line to win the 10,000m. Photo: Paul Gilham
Immediately, his athletic life passed before his eyes. The hyperbole is his, not ours. “I thought, this is it,” he said later. “The guys are going to keep racing, they’re going to get rid of me.” Farah hoped the race leaders hadn’t seen his mishap. They hadn’t.
“Mentally, I was thinking: is the race done? Is the race done?” he said. “I thought about all my hard work and that it could all be gone in a minute. I wasn’t going to let it go. I got up quickly. I thought about my family. It made me emotional.
“I was thinking to myself, no, no, I’ve worked too hard to miss the medals. I promised my daughter Rhianna I was going to get her a medal. I wasn’t going to let her down.”
Farah told himself not to panic. He was glad of an element of good luck in his bad, that the incident had happened early. If it had been inside the last half-dozen laps, he doubts he could have recovered.
“I was thinking, it’s OK, we’ve still got a long way,” he said. “I managed to get back into the rhythm. Each lap, I got more into my rhythm.”
As Farah scrambled back into his stride, Rupp fell into next him, solicitously. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Are you all right?” Farah appreciated his sportsmanship. “I haven’t seen Galen for a while, as I was training in the south of France and Galen’s been in the US,” he said. “When he tripped me up, he just wanted to help me up. He’s a great sportsman.”