Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis are pin-ups for multiracial Britain, but the image tells only part of the story, writes MARK HENNESSY
MO FARAH has an eye for the simple, direct and convincing quote.
Shortly after winning the 10,000m on Saturday, the Somali-born athlete was asked at a late-night press conference if he would have preferred to have run as a Somali.
“Look mate, this is my country,” said the 29-year-old. “This is where I grew up. This is where I started life. This is my country and when I put on my Great Britain vest I’m proud. I’m very proud. The support I got today was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe it. It was the best moment of my life.
“If it wasn’t for the crowd and people shouting out my name, cheering and putting the Union Jack up, I don’t think it would have happened,” said Farah, who had but a few English phrases when he landed in Britain as an eight-year-old.
Now, Farah and Ennis, whose father is Jamaican, are being touted as symbols for a multicultural Britain. One newspaper columnist tweeted his belief yesterday that Britain had been “rebooted” by the events of August 4th, 2012.
The hope now from a phenomenal weekend for British sport is that the multicultural flavour of Team Great Britain will leave a harmonious legacy long after the Olympic flame has returned to Greece.
Farah is a useful role model. Going to school in Hanworth in London after he had arrived in Britain from Djibouti, the eight-year-old could parrot just a few phrases given to him by his father to get him through his first day.
“Excuse me”, was one, along with “Where is the toilet?” A third, “C’mon then” – a statement of challenge in London’s toughest districts – got him into a fight with the school’s toughest kid on his first day.
“He twatted me,” Farah recalled in a recent newspaper interview conducted at his London training ground in St Mary’s, Twickenham, the same place that has been home to many Irish athletes these past weeks.
Blessed with talent, Farah has received the kindness of strangers, including veteran Olympian Paula Radcliffe, whose own dream of appearing in London 2012 ended in injury. She paid for his driving lessons, telling no one.
Certainly, August 4th, 2012, is an aeon away from August 4th, 2011.
Then, police shot a 29-year-old man, Mark Duggan. after stopping him in a taxi. He died at the scene shortly after. Within 48 hours, parts of London were ablaze.
The riots that followed were partly blamed on the creation of a feral generation of youths in run-down inner-city districts, but also, partly seen as a verdict on Britain’s experience of immigration since the first West Indians arrived on the Windrush in 1948.
Yesterday Duggan’s family held a service to commemorate. So far, no decisions on prosecution have been made. Extraordinarily, none of the police officers involved, who believed that he was about to draw a weapon, have yet given statements. The officer who pulled the trigger has been told that he cannot be put back on firearms duty, lest it inflame tensions, while academics warn that the ingredients that sparked last year’s riots remain. In some places, the situation is worse than it was a year ago.
Sport, some believe, can help to ease tensions, though the head of the British Olympic Association, Lord Colin Moynihan, yesterday warned that the rush to sport by children wanting to emulate Olympic heroes will not last indefinitely in the face of poor, or absent, facilities. What was needed, he said, were “better facilities, more access to facilities, not closing playing fields – and giving the young people of this country an opportunity to take the inspiration they’re feeling the length and breadth of the country and to turn that into greater participation.”