Mo Farah Running Away From Things — Tight portrait crop of Mo Farah's face during 2012 Olympic race showing exertion and elation with kit collar visible.

Mo Farah Running Away From Things

2012Single-topic blog / photoshop memeclassic

Published March 30, 2026

Mo Farah Running Away From Things is a photoshop meme built around a photo of British distance runner Mo Farah crossing the finish line at the 2012 London Olympics with his arms spread wide and mouth agape in disbelief. Created on August 12, 2012 by graphic designer Luke Harvey, the Tumblr blog dropped Farah's panicked-looking figure into scenes from movies, TV shows, and pop culture, making it look like the Olympic champion was fleeing for his life. The blog racked up nearly a million hits within days and became one of the defining memes of the 2012 Summer Games1.

photoshop memes exploitable templates olympics memes early 2010s memes tumblr memes

Overview

Mo Farah Running Away From Things takes a single photograph of Mo Farah at the exact moment he realized he'd won the 5,000-meter final and places him into dangerous or absurd scenarios. In the original photo, Farah's eyes are wide, his mouth is open, and his arms are spread outward in shock6. Stripped from the Olympic context and dropped onto a new background, that expression of joy reads as pure terror. The blog's subtitle described itself as "a tribute to Mo Farah for being a true Olympic legend"3, and the images showed Farah fleeing from everything from a *Jurassic Park* T-Rex to the Teletubbies to a herd of cartoon wildebeest1.

Origin & Background

Platform
Tumblr
Key People
Luke Harvey, Mo Farah
Date
2012

Mo Farah won gold in the 10,000-meter race on August 4, 2012, at the London Olympics, becoming the first British athlete to win that event5. A week later, on August 11, he took a second gold in the 5,000 meters with a time of 13:41.66, finishing the last lap in a blistering 52.94 seconds6. As he crossed the line, photographers captured his face frozen in astonishment1.

The next day, August 12, 2012, 21-year-old graphic design graduate Luke Harvey from Staffordshire launched the Tumblr blog "Mo Farah Running Away From Things"5. Harvey had been watching slow-motion footage of Farah's finish with a friend when the idea struck. "We were laughing and saying you could put some cracking pictures behind it," he told the Daily Mail1. His first post dropped Farah into a scene from the 1993 film *Jurassic Park*, making it look like the sprinter was outrunning a Tyrannosaurus Rex5.

How It Spread

The blog spread fast. On August 13, 2012, both the Daily Dot and Mashable picked up the story2. Over the following 48 hours, galleries of the images appeared on BuzzFeed, HuffPost UK, the Daily Mail, Runner's World, Uproxx, the New York Daily News, and the Independent5. SB Nation ran their coverage under the headline "Move Over, McKayla: Mo Farah Is The Hot New Meme," positioning it alongside McKayla Maroney Is Not Impressed as the second major photoshop meme to come out of the London Games4. HuffPost UK called it "surely a contender for tumblr of the year"10.

By the time Harvey went to work the next morning, the blog had nearly a million hits3. The Independent noted the blog's warm, non-malicious tone as unusual for internet humor, describing it as "nice, nice, nice" in a medium that typically rewards cruelty3. Even the British government's official Olympic Twitter account shared the images1.

Popular entries showed Farah running from Tony Montana in *Scarface*, fleeing a horde of zombies, sprinting away from the Teletubbies, outpacing Wile E. Coyote, dodging the rolling boulder from *Indiana Jones*, escaping Star Wars TIE fighters, and being chased by a crowd of brides in wedding dresses17. The FW noted the irony that Harvey's creation was "the second great picture meme spawned from the summer games"12.

How to Use This Meme

The format is straightforward:

1

Take the cutout photo of Mo Farah mid-stride with his shocked expression from the 5,000m finish.

2

Place him onto a background featuring something threatening, dangerous, or comically absurd (movie monsters, cartoon villains, stampeding animals, pop culture threats).

3

Position Farah so it looks like he's running *away from* the threat rather than toward a finish line.

Cultural Impact

Mo Farah Running Away From Things was part of a larger wave of photoshop memes that emerged from the 2012 London Olympics. SB Nation dubbed the Games the "Meme Olympiad," with Farah's blog and McKayla Maroney's unimpressed face leading the charge4. The meme stood out for being an entirely positive tribute rather than mockery. Harvey said he hoped Farah would "see the funny side" and that "the whole aim of it was as a tribute to him"7.

The blog attracted coverage from over a dozen major news outlets within 72 hours of launch5. The Independent highlighted the blog's "huggable Helvetica typeface" and fanzine-style subtitle as setting a friendly, fan-made tone3. Neatorama noted how Farah's real emotion of joy was perfectly repurposed: "No, he's not panicked, but with the proper menacing background, it sure can look that way"11.

The meme also boosted Farah's already skyrocketing public profile. He was already a British national hero after completing the rare 5,000/10,000-meter double, joining legends like Emil Zatopek, Lasse Viren, and Kenenisa Bekele8. The lighthearted blog added internet fame on top of sporting glory.

Fun Facts

Farah moved to Britain from Somalia (under circumstances later revealed to involve trafficking) and was trained by Alberto Salazar in Portland, Oregon, far from the British tabloid pressure89.

The 5,000m final where the iconic photo was taken was actually the slowest Olympic 5,000 final since the 1968 Mexico City Games, but the result was all that mattered6.

Harvey described himself as hoping to become a graphic designer and illustrator. The blog was his biggest viral hit1.

Farah went on to repeat the 5,000/10,000 double at the 2016 Rio Olympics, becoming the second athlete after Lasse Viren to defend both titles at successive Games9.

The blog launched just one day after Farah's second gold, meaning Harvey turned around his first photoshop within hours of the race5.

Frequently Asked Questions