Sir Mo Farah is Great Britain's most successful track athlete in modern Olympic history but he has been keeping a secret for over 30 years.
The 39-year-old long-distance runner won the hearts of the nation when he powered to victory in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres at London 2012 before repeating the feat four years in Rio de Janeiro.
However in an astounding revelation during a BBC documentary, set to air on Wednesday, Mo Farah admits he is an illegal immigrant who was smuggled into the UK by traffickers at the age of nine.
His real name isn't Mo Farah either as he revealed he was born Hussein Abdi Kahin in Somaliland.
Mo said in his 2013 autobiography – Twin Ambitions – that he was born in Mogadishu, in Somalia, and came to the UK as a youngster with his mum and two of his brothers to live with his dad.
This is far from the truth, though, as he feels the need to tell his "real story" at "whatever the cost".
He said: "Despite what I’ve said in the past, my parents never lived in the UK. When I was four, my dad was killed in the civil war. As a family we were torn apart.
"I feel like I’ve always had that private thing where I could never be me and tell what’s really happened."
Mo's mother, Aisha, sent him and twin brother to Djibouti to live with an uncle during the height of the Somali civil war, which cost the life of his father, Abdi, who was killed by shrapnel from a bazooka while tending his cattle.
In 1993, he was brought to Britain instead of the real Mohamed Farah, who still lives in Somalia and has never been to the UK.
The woman who brought him in pretended to be his mother after using false documents to enter the country to work for the family with younger children.
This is when he realised he had taken someone else's place after the man meeting them at the airport wondered where his son was.
Sir Mo said: "He was her husband and their family name was Farah. He was waiting for [her] and his oldest son Mohamed.
"When they got to the house, the woman destroyed the contact details Mo had for his only UK relative. “At that moment I knew I was in trouble," Mo says.
During the documentary, Sir Mo visits the shack he lived in with his uncle in Djibouti and says: "The hardest thing is admitting to myself that someone from my own family may have been involved in trafficking me."
He learns there are up to 100,000 trafficking victims in the UK, adding: "What really saved me... was I could run."
* The Real Mo Farah, BBC1, 9pm, Wednesday 13 July.
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