Sir Mo Farah pens emotional letter to late friend after sudden death | Other | Sport

When I crossed the line at the 2018 Chicago Marathon and broke the European marathon record, the clock stopped. Everything else kept moving.

The noise, the crowd, the emotion, but for a second it was just me and that number, and everything it had taken to get there. People see the time, but they don’t see the years of hard work, overcoming challenges and people behind it.

They don’t see the training camps in Ethiopia before dawn, the injuries that make you question everything, the nights you genuinely don’t know if your body will hold together long enough to get to the start line. They don’t see the treatment rooms, the massage beds, the phone calls where everything feels like it might fall apart. That’s what a career at the top actually looks like, and that’s what I’ve had the chance to reflect on since hanging up my racing shoes.

The people who made that record-breaking moment possible were never on the start line, but they got me to it. Celebration Day, a national moment on Monday, May 25, to remember those who shaped our lives but are no longer with us, gives us all an opportunity to honour those people.

I first met Neil Black when I was about 14, and he was a physio at a GB screening weekend. Quiet, focused, unassuming. I had no idea this man would become one of the most important people in my life.

Over the years he got to know my body better than I knew it myself. Not just technically, though his touch was extraordinary, he could tell within seconds what was wrong when I couldn’t even describe it, but he understood me. What I needed to hear, when to push, when to just say: “you’ve got it, mate.”

Before London 2012 I would climb onto his massage bed tight, exhausted and mentally shot. He would work on my back or my ankle, tap me on the shoulder, and those four words “you’ve got it, mate” were enough. Because he meant them, I believed them.

Neil also knew how much family meant to me. In those big stadiums, being able to see them and hug my wife and children… some people might see that as a small thing, but it isn’t. It’s everything. And he knew that without me ever having to say a word.

There was also a moment, later in my career, when I was struggling badly with injuries – the kind that make you question whether you have anything left. I called him and said, “Neil, I’m really hurt.” He told me to give him three days. He dropped everything, got on a flight, and came to me. No fuss, no hesitation, just there.

That’s Neil Black. That’s who he was.

Neil died suddenly in 2020 and it knocked the ground from under all of us, not just me, my whole family. My children grew up knowing him and my oldest daughter still remembers him from championships around the world. Losing him reminded me, brutally, that gratitude left unspoken is just a feeling nobody else gets to receive.

That’s where I am today. Since retiring, I’ve been able to step back and look at the full picture of a career – not just the medals and the records, but the people woven through every part of it, and Neil Black is in all of it. Not in the record books, but in every finish line I crossed.

That’s why Celebration Day means something really important to me. It’s a national day on May 25 to honour the people who shaped us but are no longer here. Not the names on the podium, but the ones behind them. The physios, the coaches, family, friends, the quiet voices in the treatment room who told you that you had it when you weren’t sure you did.

At 7pm on Monday, May 25, I’ll be joining the Big Toast and raising a glass to Neil Black.

If I could speak to him now, I wouldn’t have a speech. I’d just say thank you. Properly, this time.

Celebration Day takes place on the last Monday in May, inviting the nation to honour those who are no longer with us. At its heart is the Big Toast at 7pm, when the country pauses to raise a glass and #MarkTheirMemory.

Find out more at www.celebrationday.com