Single moment Mo Farah's PE teacher changed his life by breaking a rule

Sir Mo Farah’s life would have looked very different had he not met the inspiring PE teacher who encouraged him into sports.

And now the Olympic champion is getting behind an initiative to get kids moving for 60 minutes a day to help combat the obesity epidemic - and says doing so could change their lives, too.

Sir Mo, 42, was born in Somaliland but trafficked to the UK at the age of nine by a woman he had never met. He was forced to work as a domestic servant and to look after the woman’s children in exchange for food and board.

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Mo, who was born Hussein Abdi Kahin but given his better-known name by the people who trafficked him, was eventually enrolled in Feltham Community College in South London. He was made to lie to his teachers, telling them he was a Somalian refugee.

There, the unkempt 11-year-old who spoke no English was taken under the wing of PE teacher Alan Watkinson, who noticed the little boy showed a lot of promise on the athletics track.

“If it wasn’t for Alan, who recognised my talent and pointed me in the right direction, then I would never have become this guy who’s won so many medals. It honestly changed my life,” Sir Mo tells the .

“I was one of these kids who wasn’t afraid to do the work, but I came into a new environment, with a new language and I was dealing with my own life. The only language that I did speak was PE. If we were in PE, doing athletics, javelin or football, then I was that kid who was laughing and smiling. That’s what I enjoyed the most.”

Alan, who won the Pride of Britain award for Teacher of the Year in 2012, was the first person Mo opened up to about his real identity. He was instrumental in alerting social services to the young boy’s circumstances, and he was placed with another Somalian foster family.

Throughout Mo’s turbulent school years, Alan was a steady presence who went above and beyond to nurture the future Gold medallist’s talents. “I’ll never forget there was a moment when my PE teacher actually took me to the local running club and I joined,” Sir Mo recalls.

“Then from my club I got asked to represent Middlesex. I didn’t know how I was going to get there or what we were doing, and Alan said, ‘I’ll pick you up’. He did that and I represented Middlesex and I won it! And I’ll never forget that moment.

“It’s like, that’s a PE teacher! He’s not my parent. He’s not my guardian. It’s someone who believed in me. You never forget a teacher who has encouraged you and given you the best advice.”

Now Sir Mo is teaming up with his old teacher again as part of the Youth Sport Trust’s drive to back National School Sports Week, which aims to encourage kids to get physically active for at least 60 minutes a day.

Less than half (47%) of children currently achieve an hour of exercise each day. Research shows that one in 10 children in England are classed as obese or at risk of obesity by the time they start reception, at the age of four or five - and by age 11, more than one in five (22.7%) are either overweight or obese.

And if current trends continue, it is predicted that more than a third (38.9%) of children will be overweight or obese within the next 10 years.

“Obesity is a concern and there are so many issues that kids will face if we don’t recognise this and tackle it together as a nation,” says Sir Mo. “If we don’t make more kids active, we are in trouble. We’re already in trouble right now, but I think the quicker we react, the quicker we come together, the more we can do about it.

“When you’re an adult you know what to do, whether you cycle, run or walk, or whether you mentally just go out to clear your head, but for kids it’s hard,” he adds.

Dad-of-four Sir Mo follows the example with his own family. Wife-of-15-years Tania Nell was heavily pregnant when he won his double gold medals at the London 2012 Olympics - and twins Aisha and Amani were born just a few weeks later. The pair, now 13, have a 10-year-old brother Hussain and a 20-year-old stepsister .

“We’re really active within our family, because I know myself how far I’ve come and what I was doing when I was their age,” he explains. “It’s important for me as a father to support them. It’s not that I want them to be champions. No, it’s just for their own mental health.

“I try to make them active, whether it’s cycling, running or rowing. One of them does enjoy athletics and as a father I just try to support her and tell her what she can achieve.”

Sir Mo is not wishing to single out which daughter might be following in his footsteps, but he stresses he will never be a pushy parent. It’s her choice.

“She can become whatever she wants to become, and as a father I just carry on supporting them,” he says.

As part of the new initiative, Sir Mo has devised a series of fun challenges for kids that can be downloaded from the Youth Sport Trust’s website. Schools can register to receive free activity packs, plus there is a chance to win a visit from a star athlete or one of 1,000 free kit packs from Sports Direct.

“Exercise can be little and often,” says Sir Mo. “Break it down into 20 minutes before they start school, 20 minutes at lunchtime and 20 minutes after school. As long as the heart rate goes up and you are moving, that’s what counts,” says Mo.

It should be fun, too - just as it was for him as a child, despite his difficult early years.

“I just wanted to be a kid and talk about certain things and have a laugh with other kids,” says Mo. “And I believe with having a hard life early on, it was hard to find that place, so sports helped me escape.

“It gave me somewhere where I could talk to people, where I could be myself, and people could just see me as a sportsman and then be judged for that, rather than not being able to speak English or not knowing anything about history or geography or religious education.”

*National School Sports Week takes place between June 16 and 22, powered by Sports Direct and Under Armour. Register for free at . There are 1,000 sports kit packs to be won as well as vouchers and athlete visits.

GET MOVING WITH MO

Sir Mo’s gone the distance and devised several easy challenges for children, all available online and on .

These are his favourites:

• The Catch and Clap challenge: see how many times you can throw a ball up, clap once and catch it in 60 seconds.

• The Zig-Zag relay: choose a place to start and lay out five markers in a zig-zag pattern. On ‘go’, run around the circuit and touch each of the markers before running back to the start. Each time you complete a circuit you score a point.

• Do the plank: Lay face-down on the floor, resting your weight on your forearms and toes. Hold the position for 60 seconds, keeping your bottom down, your back straight and your forearms flat on the floor.

• Around the World: How many times can you pass the ball around your waist in 60 seconds? If you drop the ball, you need to pick it up quickly and carry on.

• Speed Bounce: jump over a cone, side to side, landing with both feet on the floor, each side of the cone. Challenge yourself to complete a certain number of jumps within 60 seconds

For more challenges, visit and use the QR code to watch on YouTube.