On Monday, four-time Olympic gold medalist Mo Farah won the , an annual road race that finishes in front of Buckingham Palace. With no serious international competition in the field, Farah was the clear聽favorite, but he still took the opportunity to celebrate the victory with his trademark 鈥淢obot鈥 sign as he broke the tape. You can鈥檛 blame him. Farah was coming off a rough couple of weeks.聽
In case you missed it, at a press conference prior to last month鈥檚 London Marathon, Farah injected the proceedings with when he decided, apropos of nothing, to announce that he鈥檇 had items stolen from his room when he stayed at a hotel owned by Ethiopian distance running legend Haile Gebrselassie. The incident, which sparked off a public feud between two giants of the sport, 鈥攚illing to degrade the ambiance of the world鈥檚 most competitive marathon with his personal vendetta. Then again, the marathon itself didn鈥檛 turn out to be all that competitive; Eliud Kipchoge trounced the field to win his ninth consecutive Marathon Major. Farah finished .
More recently, Farah has been getting trolled for doing and Twitter feeds in which he promotes a cleaning product called 鈥淢r. Muscle.鈥 Of course, in 2019 there鈥檚 nothing unusual about celebrities moonlighting as social media influencers, but the image of 鈥淪ir Mo鈥 scrubbing his bathroom tiles in sweatpants was too good for some people to resist. 聽
鈥淒ude is broke AF,鈥 a poster using the alias 鈥渕o debt mo problems鈥 wrote in that famed repository of goodwill, .
I don鈥檛 know anything about Farah鈥檚 pending insolvency, but, for the first time, I feel compelled to write a few words in his defense.
Not that he needs it. Farah鈥檚 achievements on the track speak for themselves: back-to-back Olympic gold in both the 5,000 and 10,000-meters. (It鈥檚 a feat only accomplished by one other athlete, Finland鈥檚 Lasse Viren, who owned the mid-鈥70s.) Farah also has won back-to-back-to-back titles in both events at the biennial IAAF World Championships. Nobody else has done that. 聽
When Farah was at the height of his powers on the track, a period that spans roughly from the 2012 and 2016 Games, there was a sense of inevitability to his races: it didn鈥檛 matter how many times he drifted to the back of the pack, or 鈥攜ou knew he was going to destroy everybody on the final lap. As is the case with Eliud Kipchoge and his current marathon streak, Farah exhibited a level of mastery and control that defied what is supposed to be possible in a sport where so much can go wrong every聽time you step on the line.
But while Kipchoge is regarded with near-unanimous adulation, for his associations with Alberto Salazar and , coaches who have both been accused of doping-related misconduct. (Farah left Salazar鈥檚 Oregon Project in 2017. Although he was never officially coached by Aden, Farah mentions him in his 2013 autobiography Twin Ambitions, writing that he and Aden had known each other for years.) Beyond that, there鈥檚 also a profound difference in attitude. Kipchoge approaches his profession with zen-like placidity, while Farah is far more brash. Can you imagine Kipchoge ?
To his credit, Farah is not afraid to also make jokes at his own expense. In the midst of the kerfuffle during the lead-up to the London Marathon, the running media world was treated to of Farah cartoonishly falling off a treadmill set to Kipchoge鈥檚 world record-setting pace. In the Twittersphere, there were murmurs that such slapstick antics were unbefitting of an elite marathoner a few days prior to a major race. , it further cemented the difference between Kipchoge the stoic and Farah the publicity-seeking showboat.聽
It鈥檚 certainly true that Farah doesn鈥檛 mind a little bit of attention. was created in 2012 on 鈥淎 League of Their Own,鈥 a sports-themed game show on which Farah has been a guest four times. A prodigious social media user, Farah has and nearly on Instagram鈥攂y far the most of any pro distance runner. His Instagram profile pic captures the moment when he was knighted in 2017.聽
Does this all amount to a kind of arrogance? Of course it does. But wouldn鈥檛 you be arrogant, too,聽if you were a child refugee from Somalia who grew up to become one of the most accomplished athletes in the world? And whatever you might want to say about Farah, you can鈥檛 accuse him of not doing his part for the publicity-starved sport of distance running. Arguably the most impressive aspect of his 10K win on Monday was that he was racing again, not even a full month removed the London Marathon. These days, Kipchoge only competes twice a year.聽
Speaking of the Boss Man, on Wednesday that Kipchoge will be writing a blog in the lead-up to his next attempt to run a marathon in under two hours. It鈥檚 theoretically possible that this was his own idea. Who knows? Maybe Kipchoge has a burning desire to share his private thoughts with a bunch of nerdy strangers on the Internet. But if I had to bet, I would guess one of his sponsors has asked the world鈥檚 greatest marathoner to put himself out there a little more. 聽
Here, for once, Farah can show Kipchoge how it鈥檚 done. 聽