Mustafa Mohamed: "Glad I escaped that fate"

In the late 1980s, the troubled situation in Somalia escalated when a civil war forced Mustafa Mohamed's family to flee the capital, Mogadishu. The Swedish national team runner's mother, Hakima, had met a Swedish man named Ramon Larsson who helped the family get to Sweden before the situation became increasingly critical.

- The situation deteriorated rapidly. The airport in Mogadishu was full of people before we left. In the end, it was unclear whether we would be allowed to join. In the end, we still sat on board one of the last regular planes that left the increasingly violent Somalia, says Mohamed, who was eleven years old when he came to Sweden, in his summer talk on Swedish Radio.

- I began to understand that Ramon Larsson was not only my mother's new husband but that he would also start to be like a new father to me.

"Mickey", as he is called, got a new home with his family in Lysekil where he quickly learned the Swedish language and started school in sixth grade.

Today, 41 years old, Mustafa Mohamed is the Swedish record holder both in the 3,000 meter hurdles and in the marathon. He is married to the former national team runner Hanna Karlsson and has two children.

What his life would have been like if it were not for Ramon Larsson, who died of cancer in 2004, he has no idea.

- I am so grateful for the journey I have had to make, grateful for how my stepfather Ramon and his family took care of us, how we got such good conditions to enter Swedish society. I often think about what it would have been like if I had come all by myself instead, as an unaccompanied child - if I had been forced to take smuggling routes and travel by refugee boat across the Mediterranean to get here. It's hard to imagine what it would have been like. I'm so glad I escaped that fate.