Who is the real Mo Farah? Olympic star says he was trafficked to UK

One of the greatest athletes of all time, Mo Farah, has revealed that he was brought to the UK illegally as a child.

The multiple Olympic and world champion said he was first brought to Djibouti from Somalia, and then to the UK when he was 9-year-old and was forced to do housework in exchange for food.

The 39-year-old said his name had been changed to Mohamed Farah from Hussein Abdi Kahin in the fake travel documents used to fly him to Britain by a woman he had never met before.

"I was then made to look after another family's children," Farah told a BBC TV documentary "The Real Mo Farah" which will go on air on Wednesday.

WHY HE REVEALED THE TRUTH

Farah said his children motivated him to tell the truth about his past. "I've been keeping it for so long, it's been difficult because you don't want to face it and often my kids ask questions, 'Dad, how come this?' And you've always got an answer for everything, but you haven't got an answer for that," he said.

Farah also said that his wife Tania once said that "there were lots of missing pieces to his story". But she eventually "wore him down with the questioning" and he told the truth, reported BBC.

MO FARAH THE ATHLETE

Farah is the most successful British track and field athlete with four Olympic golds. His ten world championship gold medals - four at Olympics and six at world championships - make him the most successful male track distance runner in history.

He won gold medals in both the 5,000-metre and 10,000-metre races at the 2012 London Olympics and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

At Brussels in 2020, Mo Farah ran 21.330 kilometres to set a new world record for the farthest distance run in an hour.

RUNNING SAVED HIS LIFE

Farah said he wants to tell his story to challenge public perceptions of trafficking and slavery. "I had no idea there were so many people who are going through exactly the same thing that I did. It just shows how lucky I was," he told BBC.

"What really saved me, what made me different, was that I could run," Farah said.