Sir Brendan Foster was walking on the beach at Bamburgh in his native North East on Boxing Day when his phone rang.
“It was Mo,” the 75-year-old recalled to Mail Sport. He said, “I’m retiring next year and I want to run my last race at the Great North Run”. I said, “That’s great news.” I was honored. I said, “All I can promise you, Mo, is that we’ll do our best to give you a good farewell.”
Fast forward nine months and the farewell for Sir Mo Farah has now arrived, with thousands of fans lining the 21.1km route from Newcastle to South Shields on Sunday to cheer on the four-time Olympic champion for the last time. Or #OneMoTime as it is marketed.
“We love Mo, we’ve always loved him,” admits Foster, who proudly founded the Great North Run in 1981. “We have been involved with him since childhood. He’s a great kid, he’s a lot of fun.
“He has won the Great North Run six times. The region has taken him to their hearts. The spectators along the side of the road will undoubtedly experience this.
Mo Farah will run the final race of his brilliant career this weekend at the Great North Run
Sir Brendan Foster (left) is good friends with Farah and expects him to finish on a high
Farah has an excellent record on the Great North Run, having won the event six times
“There’s a pub right at the finish, The Bamburgh, and they’ve changed their name for this weekend. I can’t tell you what they call it, but they’re revealing it on Saturday.
“I think this weekend Mo will know how people in this part of the world feel about him. He’ll be warmed up, he’ll be emotional. I think it will be great. It will be a historic moment.’
It will also be Farah’s first Great North Run since 2019 when he won the iconic half marathon for the sixth consecutive year. The only time he actually failed to finish first was on his debut in 2013, when he was beaten by one second in a thrilling finish by Ethiopian great Kenenisa Bekele, while another distance legend, Haile Gebrselassie, took third .
This time, however, the 40-year-old will walk away without any expectations. On his farewell tour this year, he finished ninth so far at the London Marathon in April, eighth at the Great Manchester Run 10k in May and fourth at The Big Half in London last weekend.
There he was defeated by three fellow Britons: Jack Rowe, Mahamed Mahamed and Andrew Butchart. On Sunday, Farah will compete against an international field including Kenya’s Geoffrey Kamworo, runner-up at this year’s London Marathon and three-time world champion in the half marathon, and Ethiopia’s Muktar Edris, two-time world champion in the 5,000 metres.
But Foster says, “I think he’ll do well. He told me he thinks he’s pretty fit. He takes it pretty seriously. He’s been training at high altitudes for the past seven weeks to prepare for this, after playing in that Soccer Aid game that I blew his mind off!”
Farah’s training camp was at Font Romeu in the French Pyrenees, where Foster visited him to interview him for a BBC One documentary, Mo Farah’s Last Mile, which airs tomorrow (Saturday) at 12.30pm. The program looks back at the best moments of Farah’s career, most notably his ‘double double’ of gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters in both London 2012 and Rio 2016, all of which Foster commented on.
“He’s had an incredible journey,” said Foster, fellow 10,000-meter Olympic medalist and bronze medalist in 1976. “He was illegally smuggled into Britain and he has become, in my view, Britain’s greatest sportsman or woman ever.
“If you look at what he’s done: ten world titles – six world titles and four Olympic Games – in a truly global sport. If you look at the countries on the map, they all have 5,000 and 10,000 meter runners.
“He is the Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi of our sport in this country. And we will never see him again. If you look at the great athletes we’ve had in the past – Daley Thompson, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Sally Gunnell, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Katarina Johnson-Thompson – Mo has won four Olympic gold medals and none of they achieved that. won more than two.
Farah has won four Olympic gold medals and Foster believes he is Britain’s greatest athlete
Foster has compared Farah to Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi as he looks at the impact he has had on his sport
“In my opinion, it’s not emotional to say he’s the best. I am happy to be able to have the debate. But he didn’t do it in a boat with three others, or on a bike in a lot of different events. He didn’t do it in a team of 10 or 14 others. He did it on his own.
“If there was a summary I would say he is a great guy and his career is built on his dedication and hard work.”
Many others will obviously have a different summary of Farah’s career, given his relationship with Alberto Salazar. Farah’s former coach was suspended for four years in 2019 for doping violations. But Foster says, “All I can say about that is, watch Saturday’s schedule. I asked him the question: “Did you make a mistake with Alberto Salazar?”, and I leave the answer to him. I had to ask him. I could not do it.’
When asked about his link to Salazar ahead of this year’s London Marathon, Farah insisted he “wouldn’t have done anything else” in his career. Now the question is what he will do when his career is over. For example, Foster hopes he turns to coaching.
“He has so much knowledge about how to prepare, how to train, how to do it, he’s the man,” he says. “I hope the knowledge he has becomes available to the next generation of distance runners.”
Farah will get a glimpse of that next generation on Saturday as he embarks on some of the Junior and Mini Great North Run events, which have seen a record 10,000 children between the ages of three and 16 take part.
Foster is not afraid to ask Farah about his relationship with his ex-coach Alberto Salazar (right), who was banned from the sport for four years in 2019 for doping violations
Foster (left) hopes Farah will turn to coaching after spending time on his running career
On the other end of the age spectrum, 102-year-old Bill Cooksey is aiming to become the oldest person to complete the Great North Run on Sunday. The retired County Durham teacher plans to run the full distance of the half marathon and will wear a special 102 bib number signed by Foster.
“He’s actually my coach’s brother-in-law, Stan Long,” Foster reveals. “He came up to me and said, ‘Aren’t you running? Stan always said you’d go on forever!” I’ll have to see what time he does and I’ll try to beat him when I’m 102!’
Cooksey is one of 60,000 participants on Sunday, with the 42nd Great North Run set to break the record for the highest number of finishers. That milestone means a lot to Foster, especially since it comes so soon after the 2020 event had to be canceled due to the Covid pandemic.
“It’s Britain’s biggest mass event since it started in 1981,” added Foster. “We are looking forward to the record numbers and, post-Covid, it will be a big statement when Britain’s biggest event has the largest number ever. Mo and the 102-year-old are two of the stories, but the real story is there are 60,000 stories.”