Mo’ better victories
I’m usually tickled to find a good joke (usually a pun) in a news story, and for some reason England’s Mohammed “Mo” Farah seems to bring up a lot of them.
Before the 3,000m final at this weekend’s European Championships, for example, Peter Gambaccini pointed out in runnersworld.com’s Racing News that Farah’s main competition was expected to be Spain’s Jesus Espana.
Yes, that’s right…it’s Mohammed vs. Jesus. Write the next line yourself.
Now that Farah has won, of course, it falls to the British press to hand out the lines, such as:
It was the first success story for the Britain team in Turin: Farah, from the madding crowd.
(Like many nationally-competitive distance runners in the USA these days, Farah was born in Somalia and emigrated at a young age to escape the chaos of that country. One wonders if Somalia might rank with Eritrea as a challenger to Ethiopian and Kenyan dominance if they were capable of developing athletes themselves. Think Abdi Bile.)