07 March 2023 , 21:18
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Four times Olympic gold medal runner Sir Mo Farah has admitted he came third in a school dads’ race - losing to a man wearing jeans.
And Sir Mo was even wearing his running spikes.
Mo and his wife Tania, also a keen runner, revealed he is pretty slow over short distances and she has joked that she can stay ahead of him in a sprint of up to 50 metres.
The couple revealed Mo’s embarrassment after Britain’s most successful Olympic sailor Sir Ben Ainslie and his wife, Sky presenter Georgie Thompson, told how they were put off sending their daughter Bellatrix to the primary school with the dads’ race when they found out it was treated competitively and Mo would take part.
But Mo’s wife Tania told them he had actually come second, at which point the champ confessed it was even worse and that two dads had beaten him.
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Tania said: “He took part in that parents’ race at sports day and came third. And the guy that won it was wearing jeans.
“He’s not a sprinter - that’s what it is. The parents’ race is always 100 metres.”
The Olympic gold-medallist admits he is a slow sprinter and his talent lies in distance running (Daily Mirror)Mo then admitted: “I was like ‘oh, no’, and I had my spikes on. I was like ‘I’m ready for this’.”
Tanya continued on the Ainslies’ Performance People podcast: “The dad that won dined out on it for an entire school year. We didn’t hear the end of it.
“People just assume Mo can run fast. What they don’t realise is his running fast is sustained running over many laps. So a straight 100m sprint, not so much.
“I’ll beat Mo over about 50-60 metres and then he’ll overtake me.”
Mo, 39, said the proud race winner was “tagging me as well, going ‘yeah, have some of that’.”
Georgie then admitted she and Ben were looking for a school with a competitive outlook for children - but Ben was put off by Mo being a parent.
She said: “I’ll let you into a secret. When we went to look round various schools for our daughter Bellatrix, we popped into one local school and we questioned them immediately on their competitive nature and if they taught them the importance of winning and losing.
“We said ‘the taking part counts, but we actually quite like the idea of a winning and losing philosophy’.
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“And the teacher said ‘it’s very much about taking part amongst the children, but we do have a sports day where the parents can be as competitive as they like and can play for medals.
“Ben got a little bit more interested and then they said ‘the one caveat and problem that we have is that Mo Farah is a parent’.
“At which point we both went ‘oh no, this is no good’.”
“Georgie added: “Whenever we’re in a sailing club or anything like that Ben is always too polite to say no, and he invariably he doesn’t end up winning.
“Then there’s this awful bragging rights culture.”