Top 10 moments of Mo Farah’s remarkable life

World champion runner Mo Farah takes us on 10 laps of his milestone-filled life.

Lap 1 Earliest memory

My earliest memory was growing up in Somalia the sights and sounds. I had a very happy childhood running around, playing football in the street and getting up to mischief. I was young when I came to the UK [Mo moved to be with his dad in London when he was eight] so I don’t remember everything but I was very close to my twin brother, Hassan, and it was hard to be separated from him. I thought he would join us in the UK a few weeks later but in the end I didn’t see him for many years.

Lap 2 On Your Marks

I started running at school. My PE teacher Alan Watkinson spotted my talent for running even though I wanted to be a footballer. He used to encourage me to go to training by allowing me to play indoor football or giving me a new Arsenal shirt. In my first race I came second as I went the wrong way, but it came fairly naturally to me. I represented Great Britain at schools level but it was after a UK Athletics trip to Disneyland Florida for aspiring athletes when I was 16 that I realised that if I trained hard I could go somewhere in athletics.

Lap 3 Getting Started

Before I committed to running full time I wanted to be a car mechanic. I still like taking things apart and rebuilding them. My brother is a car mechanic in Somalia. I also had a job working in sales in Sweatshop in Teddington. When I retire from running, I would like to work with kids and continue my work in the Mo Farah Foundation, which I set up with my wife Tania in 2011 to help alleviate poverty and improve health facilities and education in the horn of Africa and the UK.

Lap 4 Life-changing moment

The 2012 Olympics were obviously a big part of my life and I still remember the 2005 announcement that London was to be the host. We were driving to an athletics league meeting in Birmingham and we stopped at a service station to listen to the announcement live. I remember them saying London and everyone jumping up and down. At that time it was a big focus for me as I had just started to break through at world level.

Lap 5 Born to win

I hate to lose in everything I do, from running to playing FIFA on the Playstation. It was when I didn’t qualify for the Olympic Games 5000m final in Beijing in 2008 that I said never again would I miss a major final and vowed to come back stronger in 2009. I was in good shape going into the 2008 Olympic Games but had maybe over-trained in the last few weeks.

Lap 6 Family and faith

Family is very important to me. I first met Tania when I was 12, we went to the same school, Feltham Community College in West London. We got together in 2008 and married in April 2010. Alan Watkinson, my old PE teacher, was my best man. My family give me balance in life. No matter how tired I feel after training or if I’m disappointed because I haven’t hit the times I wanted, when I go home the kids [Mo has a nine-year-old

step-daughter, Rihanna, and two-year-old twin daughters, Aisha and Amani, pictured below] don’t care about that. They just want to play and have fun with daddy. They help me from thinking too much about running. Faith is also important, too. I’m happy to be a role model [as a British Muslim] but generally I just be myself and get on with it.

Lap 7 Living to my means

I am not really an extravagant person. I like gadgets phones, tablets, cameras etc. The most extravagant thing I bought after the Olympics was a nice car a Cadillac Escalade. I am a big football fan and a passionate Arsenal supporter so I would pay good money to see Arsenal play in the Champions League Final.

Lap 8 Becoming famous

The weirdest thing about becoming a well-known face is when other famous people know me and know about my running. I’ve got to meet and know a lot of the Arsenal players and the manager, Arsene Wenger. Last month I met golfer Rory McIlroy at Nike in Portland. We were getting a photo together and he said, “Let’s do the Mobot.” I was thinking, “Wow, the best golfer in the world knows about the Mobot.” It was flattering.

Lap 9 A Glasgow miss

One of my biggest disappointments was missing the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow last year. After the success of London in 2012 I knew the Commonwealth Games was going to be a great event. I had been training very hard to try to win in front of another home crowd but unfortunately I got sick just before it and was unable to run. I got a lot of messages from fans saying that they had bought tickets to see my run and it hurt even more to hear this.

Lap 10 New Year’s resolution

My main aim for 2015 is to defend my World 5000m and 10,000m titles. The IAAF World Athletics Championships take place in Beijing in August. Then, looking further ahead, the big one is the Olympic Games in Rio in 2016. I have no problem staying motivated because I know I have to keep working extremely hard as I know there are hundreds of runners in places like Kenya and Ethiopia training hard to try to take my titles from me.