And when he won double gold in Barcelona in , nobody dared dream, let alone believe, he could go on to repeat it at the Olympics. Farah, 29, was born in Somalia and moved to Britain when he was a young boy. There are numerous stories about his early life, many of them untrue. The most common myth is that he came as an asylum seeker.
In fact, his father Muktar was born in Hounslow and went to work as an IT consultant in Mogadishu, where he met his wife Amran. They lived in a big stone house, had six children and, when civil war tore Somalia apart, Amran and the children moved to neighbouring Djibouti, while Muktar returned to London.
When Mo was eight, he and two siblings moved with their mother to England, to be with their father. Three children, including his twin brother Hassan, were left with their grandmother in Somalia, because Muktar couldn't afford to bring them all. The twins didn't see each other for 12 years. Has Farah ever wondered how life might have turned out if he had stayed in Somalia and Hassan had come here? He shrugs. I don't know any different. Hassan has lived all his life in Somalia, so for him it's different.
Is he a good runner? Farah remembers little about the early years — just running up and down the streets, kicking a ball. In a way, he says, life began when he moved to London. After years away from his father, he was thrilled when they were reunited: "Seeing Dad was more exciting than anything else. Farah couldn't speak English when he arrived. The first words he uttered in the playground were, "Come on, then. He grins. I was just one of those cheeky, crazy kids running around.
Farah, an Arsenal fan, was desperate to be a footballer. As a boy, he didn't care much for running, and his PE teacher and mentor, Alan Watkinson , had to bribe him to compete on the track. You need somebody who believes in you, Farah says, somebody who'll make sacrifices and push you. Watkinson has always been there for him, as has Paula Radcliffe , not only supporting his running but also funding driving lessons so he could get to training independently.
When Farah talks about his career, the same words come up again and again: discipline, sacrifice, graft, pain, selfishness. He seems the ultimate example of the uncompromising athlete. But, he says, it used to be so different. Even when he was studying athletics at St Mary's University, what he really wanted to do was muck about. Well, there was the time he jumped off Kingston bridge naked. Why did he do it? I just had too much energy. Was he drunk?
Course not, he says — he's a good Muslim. I was with my mates and if somebody dared you, you'd do it, wouldn't you? I don't know if I want to see that, to be honest. For a long time, Farah says, he didn't push himself enough.
In , aged 22, he moved into a house in London with the Australian runner Craig Mottram and a group of Kenyan runners, including the 10,m world number one Micah Kogo. Farah had already come second in the European under championships and run for Great Britain, so he was no slouch. But watching Mottram and the Kenyans made him feel like one. And I said to myself, if I'm ever going to have any chance of beating these guys, I'm going to have to change something.
How was his lifestyle different? I thought as long as I run, that's it. I didn't know any better. So what changed? Farah says he just got fed up with himself, and with settling for relative success. I want to be the best in the world and race against these Kenyan guys.
In , he won the European cross-country championships. Then he had to step up another gear. So he spent more time in Kenya, running at altitude, building up speed and stamina, eating sensibly, resting and sleeping. In he got together with Tania. They had met at school in west London, when Farah was 12, and her first memory of him is as a little boy with a bleached-blond afro.
They went to the same athletics club and lived round the corner from each other in Hounslow; Farah was initially friends with her brother. When they became a couple, Tania had a daughter, Rihanna, who was two. That was just because I wanted a different race to commentate on because we're so used to seeing Mo win by going ahead in the last m. Instead, what we got was the 'Mo Show' again and I'm delighted with that.
There were athletes competing in that 5,m final who have real ability, more so than the guys who ran in the 10,m final last Saturday. Unlike Mo, however, the others aren't given the best opportunities to perform at their best. Britain has invested in those working behind the scenes, on those who affect the small things - particularly the science and medicine side - and that has resulted in us winning many medals at Olympic Games.
Yes, Mo is training hard. Yes, he's got a good coach - but are the others sleeping in altitude tents? Are they bringing generators with them? Do they have ice baths? Are they looking after the little things? If they're lucky they'll have an agent or manager who does a bit of that, but it becomes a different matter when they're in the international set-up. There have been examples of that lack of support during these championships when, for example, the Kenyan team left a marathon runner asleep in her bed at the airport.
How could they not know she was not on the plane? They haven't got an athlete with the stature of a Kenenisa Bekele or a Haile Gebrselassie to demand that attention to detail. The result is that these talented athletes are not coming to the track as well prepared as Mo and until something changes then Mo is going to continue to dominate. Mo used to be the team's 'jack the lad'.
In his younger days he was a mischievous, cheeky little so and so. He was a laugh and certainly wasn't as focused as he is now. That has changed because you can't go around the team hotel cracking jokes when you know people are looking up to you, watching your every move. Mo's attention to detail, his focus, probably means that side of his personality isn't on display as much as it used to be, but I spent the afternoon with him at the start of the season - he cooked a barbecue - and he was the same old Mo.
It was the day after he had been beaten in Eugene so he was a bit down, but we had a great pool competition at his house. He was full of banter, trying to put me off my game, but he didn't manage it, of course, because I beat him Even in Monaco he was winding me up something rotten about my m British record, pretending he didn't know what the record was when I knew full well he had it in his sights. As he has become more certain, the others have felt increasing self-doubt: and that has operated as a closed feedback loop.
They get close; they back off. Farah has maintained that impossible level for five years. But this is sport, and sport waits for no one. Every champion knows that one day a champion-in-waiting will emerge. Revel in the champions while you still can: the Everest people are rare indeed. Commentator and former long-distance runner Brendan Foster recalls how Farah transformed from a nervous newbie to Olympic legend. Mo was always a talented athlete, but he lacked big-race nous. And when he came up against the big boys at the World Championships or the Olympic Games, they ran away from him.
But he was able to change both those things. The second came when he worked with his coach Alberto Salazar and changed his running action at the finish. It took them a couple of years. It stopped him from over-striding, to maximise his speed. With that came the next important thing, confidence. He learnt to win, he knew he could win, he knew what his plan was. He had got the physicality right — and that allowed him to get the mental side right. In the 10,m at the World Championships he was beaten into silver-medal place because he mistimed his finish.
So now his policy is to sprint from the front with a lap and a half to go.
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