<\/a>Olympic hero Mo Farah has revealed how he was quizzed by US border officials on suspicion of being a terrorist.<\/p>\nThe double gold medal winner, who was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s honours list, said he was hauled before guards while entering the country for a holiday this Christmas.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old runner told The Sun Sunday that border guards questioned him because of his ‘Somalia origin’.<\/p>\n
The athlete even resorted to showing his Olympic medals in an effort to prove who he was.<\/p>\n
On a previous visit to the country, Farah revealed that he was asked to leave before receiving a letter explaining that he was ‘under investigation as a terrorist threat’.<\/p>\n
Farah moved to the UK with his British-born father aged only eight.<\/p>\n
He said that he was taken aside by border guards while visiting Portland, Oregon, with his family on a Christmas break.<\/p>\n
The athlete said: ‘I couldn’t believe it. Because of my Somali origin I get detained every time I come through U.S. Customs.’<\/p>\n
Farah said he had to resort to ‘getting his medals out’ to prove who he was, as he was conveniently carrying them in his luggage.<\/p>\n
Farah, whose triumphs in the 5,000 metre and 10,000 metre races provided two of the most exciting moments of London 2012, trains in the US.<\/p>\n
After failing to qualify for the 2008 Olympics he moved his wife Tania and daughter Rihanna to Portland to work with legendary coach Alberto Salazar at Nike’s headquarters.<\/p>\n
But the runner said that he had previously encountered problems with border officials.<\/p>\n
Assuming that his sponsors Nike had sorted out his residency visa, Farah ‘had to leave’ America as he was using a tourist visa.<\/p>\n
He said: ‘We flew to Toronto to stay for a few days, then come back in.<\/p>\n
‘But when we were there we got a letter telling us we were under investigation as a terrorist threat and we would have to stay away for another 90 days.’<\/p>\n
Distressed because he only had four days’ worth of clothes with him, Farah got in touch with Salazar.
\nFarah claimed that his American coach had a ‘friend who works for the FBI’ who was a ‘massive running fan’. According to the athlete, the contact ‘got it sorted’.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source Mail Online<\/strong><\/p>\nBy Mario Ledwith<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olympic hero Mo Farah has revealed how he was quizzed by US border officials on suspicion of being a terrorist. The double gold medal winner, who was awarded a CBE in the New Year’s honours list, said he was hauled before guards while entering the country for a holiday this Christmas. The 29-year-old runner told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p89N1L-Rt","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3315"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.daafeet.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}