Mo Farah is King of the track – just like Emil Zatopek who ran the 5,000 and 10,000 metres race – he was known by the nickname of ‘The Locomotive or the ‘Bouncing Czech.’ One of the greatest runners of the twentieth Century, Emil Zatopek achieved legendary status when he won the 5,000, 10,000 and the marathon at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki.
Mo Farah CBE born March 23rd 1983 is a British long distance runner on the track, he mostly competes over 5,000 and 10,000 metres, but has run from 1500 metres to the marathon.
In European Athletic Championships in 2010 and 2014, he was the first British winner of all track events. He is the second man in history to win long distance doubles at successive Olympic and World Championships, and the first man in history to win the Gold Medal in three consecutive 10,000 metre race.
British Iconic Moments
For me the star of any Airborne Show is the Lancaster Bomber with its equally iconic escort of a Spitfire and Hurricane, best known as the Queens Flight. The Lancaster might give the viewer the impression that it is a lumbering piece of metal in the sky, but they would be wrong in thinking that. It is as graceful as a Swan, its powerful Merlin engines giving that commanding majestic hint of here I am! Long may the Lancaster Bomber be part of our heritage in years to come.
It is puzzling why Sir Winston Churchill and the Lancaster Bomber identities are virtually hidden from the public when they both were instrumental in their way in helping to win one of our greatest battles – World War Two.
Call me sentimental, if you like, but having to endure the war at the tender age of four years old until I reached 10 and having my life mucked about by Luftwaffe bombers and fighter aircraft who seemed to like bombing and strafing Kent practically every night and day – a harrowing experience and one which I would not like to happen again. So raise your glasses and say thank you to Sir Winston Churchill who had that ‘Bulldog stamina’ and to those gallant men and their aircraft.
