LONDON, England (AFP) — As he surged home in last year’s Olympic 10,000 metres final, Mo Farah completed an improbable journey that had taken him from war-torn Mogadishu to the summit of international athletics.

Farah’s triumph beneath a hail of popping flashbulbs at London’s Olympic Stadium took Britain’s tally of gold medals to six in just one day, and the man who capped ‘Super Saturday’, as it quickly became known, was left dazed by the deafening roars of the home crowd.

“It’s never going to get any better than this,” he beamed. “This is the best moment of my life.”

Seven days later he won the 5,000m to complete a rare long-distance double and his ‘Mobot’ victory pose — in which he arches his hands onto his head to create an ‘M’ shape — became almost as widely imitated as sprint king Usain Bolt’s ‘Lightning Bolt’.

A humble and affable competitor, Mohamed Farah was born in the Somali capital Mogadishu and spent his early years living amid the turmoil of Somalia’s civil war and neighbouring Djibouti before being brought to London by his father at the age of eight.

The tall, long-limbed boy spoke barely a word of English, but his talent for running was spotted by physical education teacher Alan Watkinson, who took him under his wing at Feltham Community College in Feltham, west London.

“I took him to a schools cross-country championship. He literally didn’t know what was going on and ran in the wrong direction,” Watkinson told The Independent newspaper in 2010.

“He had to follow the other kids around and he still managed to finish second. A few weeks later we went to a county championship and he came fourth despite having no spikes.

“He had something special. I took him aside and told him that if he stuck at running, he could one day compete for Britain.”

Farah claimed his first major track title in the 3,000m at the 2009 European Indoor Championships in Turin and followed it up with a 5,000m/10,000m double at the following year’s European Championships in Barcelona.

He moved to the United States in 2011 to work under marathon great Alberto Salazar and overcame disappointment in the 10,000m at that year’s World Championships in Daegu — when he was pipped in the last 50 metres — to triumph in the 5,000.

Despite plans to run next year’s London Marathon, the perpetually smiling Farah says he does not intend to turn his back on the track.

“A hundred per cent I’ll be back on the track (after the 2013 World Championships) and hopefully in 2014, up to a marathon,” the 30-year-old said last month.

In the meantime, Farah has other ambitions in mind, including a mooted exhibition race with Bolt over 600m, where victory would enable him to add the title of World’s Fastest Man to his growing list of honours.