Multiple Olympic and world champion athlete Mo Farah has revealed he was illegally trafficked to the UK at the age of nine.

The 39-year-old Briton, who was born in Somalia, was brought to the UK from Djibouti at the age of nine and forced to do housework and childcare in exchange for food, he told a BBC documentary.

The father-of-four told the BBC's Panorama his name was changed to Mohamed Farah from Hussein Abdi Kahin in fake travel documents used to fly him to London by a woman he had never met before.

Once he arrived in the UK, the woman took him to her home in Hounslow, west London, and tore up a paper with the contact details of his relatives. Her family did not allow him to go to school until the age of 12.

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"For years I just kept blocking it out, but you can only block it out for so long," he said in the broadcast, which airs on Wednesday.

"Often I would just lock myself in the bathroom and cry," he said. "The only thing I could do to get away from this (living situation) was to get out and run."

Farah's physical education teacher Alan Watkinson contacted social services and helped him find a foster family in the Somali community after Farah told him what he was going through.

"I felt like a lot of stuff was lifted off my shoulders, and I felt like me. That's when Mo came out - the real Mo," Farah said.

"I had no idea there was so many people who are going through exactly the same thing that I did. It just shows how lucky I was.

"What really saved me, what made me different, was that I could run."

Farah said in May his elite track career could be over after he finished runner-up in the London 10,000 metre race and ruled out taking part in this month's World Championships.

The runner, who completed the 5,000 and 10,000 metres double at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, will run a marathon for the first time since 2019 when he takes part in the London Marathon in October.

Farah had feared that he might be stripped of his UK citizenship but the country's Home Office (Interior Ministry) announced on Tuesday that this will not happen.