Page 97 - Powerlist 2019 - Digital Edition

Sir Mo Farah Sport
Olympic champion, 5,000m, 10,000m

There’s a very good argument to be made that Sir Mo Farah
is Great Britain’s best-ever athlete. He is a sporting superstar,
icon and role model to children and young people across the
world.
He’s an Olympic, World and European champion and the
first athlete to win three long-distance doubles at successive
World Championships and Olympic Games.
After the 2017 World Championships he revealed he would
retire from track events after winning an incredible 10 major
gold medals, to concentrate on marathon running and road
races.
In the 2018 London Marathon, Mo broke the British record
with a time of 2hrs 6mins 22secs, beating Steve Jones’s 1985
time of 2:07:13. He is aiming to compete for Great Britain in
the marathon at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
His achievements at London’s 2012 Olympics were a career
highlight for Mo and his fans. He entered the history books
by winning the 5,000m and 10,000m double, in the process
winning Great Britain’s first-ever 10,000m gold.
Other gold medals followed. He went on to win the
long-distance double at the World Championships and
secured his legacy with an incredible double gold at the 2016
Rio Olympics.
He is the first British man, and only the second man ever,
to hold the Olympic and World 10,000m and 5,000m titles
Luol Deng simultaneously.
Mo was formally recognised for his achievements with a
NBA player, LA Lakers Knighthood in the 2017 New Year’s Honours List. Born and
raised in Mogadishu, Somalia, he moved to Britain when he
was just eight, with little knowledge of English. His running
He grew up in the midst of a civil war and was forced to flee skills were picked up early by his PE teacher in west London.
his country, Sudan, for Britain but Luol still managed to
become one of the world’s most successful basketball stars.
Today, the Sudanese-British player has a £55million deal
with the LA Lakers.
Despite his childhood difficulties, Luol’s sporting talent
shone through, excelling in football and basketball from
an early age. Michael Jordan was his hero, and his dream
was to play in the NBA. In 1999, he left the UK for the US to
pursue that goal.
He attended the Blair Academy, where he was quickly
recognised as one of the most promising players. He then
attended Duke University and in the 2004 NBA draft was
picked seventh by the Phoenix Suns. He was traded to the
Chicago Bulls, the home of his hero Jordan.
He has been keen to share his success, and set up
a charity, the Luol Deng Foundation. The non-profit
organisation uses basketball as a tool to give hope to those
in Africa, the US and the UK.
He has also been keen to give back to his home country.
In 2015, his foundation built the Manute Bol Court in South
Sudan for children to play and learn the game.
In 2017, he hosted the DENG Camp USA, where he offered
intensive coaching to young and emerging basketball
players of south Sudanese descent.
This follows on from his efforts in the UK, where he has
hosted the camp for more than a decade. He plans to roll the
programme out internationally.
Luol represented Britain at the 2012 Olympics.

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