Interesting, I suppose most of the results bear that out.

Regarding Mo with a Somalian background, was it not so long ago that the Ethiopians were unbeatable at long distance running, something to do with having lived at altitude for generations and thereby getting along with less oxygen ?

Somalia being next door, if my Geog. memory serves me right, I wonder if the same applies with Mo ?

Could be, although he moved here when he was 7 or 8. Probably in the genes!

Que Británico más raro !!
¿Mohamed Farah? Muy británico, sí.
Un somali que roba una camiseta de Gran Bretaña en los juegos gana los 10.000 metros.

You get the idea. Bit of sour grapes?

Possibly! But that was one of the readers' comments, not in the actual article, right?

Yeh, get the idea.
Wonder if it ever crosses their tiny minds, that without the Catalans who don't consider themselves to be Spanish at all and likely never will, Spain would probably not even have won an eggcup, never mind the world cup.

Spain has high hopes for Marta Dominguez in the 3000m Steeplechase this afternoon. But athletics isn't really Spain's thing - good job we have the World Cup and two Eurocopas to console us!

And of course Team GB would be a bit further down the medals table without the Scots ...

But, as far as I know, Scots are Brits.. aren't they..

Actually you'll find the Catalan sportsman have no problem waving the Spanish flag and singing "Yo soy Espanyol"

Something I first saw by the Mallorcan Basketballer Sergi LLull (who prefers to be called Sergio) when Spain won the European Championships 2 years ago

Now the sportsman like to wave their regional flag along with the national one which is why we saw the Asturian, Andalucian and Catalan flags around when Spain won the football World Cup and Euro Championships. In fact, I think I even saw a Basque one with Javi Martinez (who has the least Basque name possible)!

Btw, this must be Spain's worst Olympics ever! Only 3 medals and all from women, incidently 1 Catalan and 1 Basque. Shows the lack of funding in the Olympic sports over the past 4 years since the cuts started.

There are many theories about this but one significant factor is that the majority of the successful East Africans had to run many miles to school every day.

As I recall the celebrations in Barcelona were a pale shadow of those in Madrid.
I know when I was passing on my congratulations in my own area I was often surprised at the very indifferent response of the locals who generally love their football.

It's sad to see them, but there have been many internet comments (thankfully not here) from people in Britain saying much the same thing. What's the matter with them? They complain when people move to Britain and don't make any attempt to integrate and some are even hostile to the indigenous culture, and they still complain when someone like Mo Farah is proud to represent his adopted country.

In that case maybe I should have been a long distance runner.

Looking at today's kids getting driven to school every day sometimes from just a few hundred yards away, I don't see muh hope got them emulating Mo.

As I recall with the Ethiopians it was mainly down to them being comfortable with less oxygen and I believe they did quite a lot of training at high altitude for that reason.

He is a British citizen, married to a British citizen, has a British step daughter who ran onto the athletics field to hug him, and he has two more on the way.

The ladies are doing well qualifying for the 1500 mtrs semis, three so far .......