Great Britain's Josh Kerr says he won't be nervous or feel the pressure as he goes for Olympic gold in the 1500m; Kerr says "pure adrenaline and passion" helped him to win the World Championships
Tuesday 23 January 2024 06:48, UK
Great Britain's 1500m world champion Josh Kerr says he is confident of winning gold at the Paris Olympics and surpassing the achievements of British legends Sebastian Coe and Steve Cram.
Double Olympic champion Coe and world champion Cram were part of a golden era in British middle-distance running but neither achieved the prestigious double of being both world champion and Olympic champion.
Kerr is one of a small number of British athletes who is expected to challenge for a gold medal in track and field in Paris.
He left home in Edinburgh at the age of 17 and moved to the US to attend the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque to give him the best chance of fulfilling his potential in running.
Having turned down a deal with Nike, Kerr signed with Brooks once he became professional in 2018 and now trains in Seattle with the Brooks Beasts Track Club, where coach Danny Mackey trained him towards his success at last year's World Championships.
Mackey was probably one of a few people in the world who believed Kerr could win gold at the World Athletics Championships with a lap to go, and the coach was so excited he quickly woke his young daughter Isla up from a nap so they could watch the end of a thrilling race.
It proved a good move as the Scot clocked 3:29.38 to win a massive battle with silver medallist Jakob Ingebrigtsen over the final 300m. "It was pure adrenaline, pure passion for that last 200," Kerr told Sky Sports News' Lawrie Anne Brown at his family home in Edinburgh where he grew up.
"The morning of [the final] my parents and my fiance came to my hotel and they were asking how I was feeling.
"I was like 'I'm going to win today' and so my dad doubled down and he goes 'alright, so when you win, we're going to be standing over here so you come over and you give us a hug then'. And I was like 'OK, perfect'."
Kerr's victory, which was a season's best, saw Britain scoop men's 1500m gold for the second World Championships running after Jake Wightman triumphed in Eugene, Oregon in 2022 by finishing ahead of Ingebrigtsen in similar style.
Kerr's family and friends were cheering and screaming in the stadium during the race in Budapest with the images shown on television shortly after his historic victory.
His family has a famous sporting pedigree with his father John and brother Jake both playing professional rugby.
John Kerr told Sky Sports News: "We knew he was a really good nick moving up to 600m to go. He got in the place he wanted to be and that's when it started getting really exciting. The last 200 metres everyone was just jumping up and down and it was awesome."
Josh's mother Jill runs a physiotherapy practice in Edinburgh. She described the chaos of watching the closing stages of the race. "I can't see that well far away so I was going 'Is Josh in the lead? Is Josh in the lead?!' … as we were jumping up and down. It was just surreal."
The promise by Kerr earlier in the day of giving his parents a hug if he won the race was fulfilled as he celebrated in front of family and friends.
Kerr displays a sort of straight-talking that is not seen in many British athletes. In the past he sparked headlines by saying he is not interested in being "on a yoghurt pot" when talking about sponsorship.
Does the honesty translate to his belief on the track? Kerr believes he has the pace to finish first at the Olympics. "If I'm running a personal best it means it's the fastest Olympic final there's ever been. If you're in those areas and those races, you can't affect what everyone else is doing, you've got to be what you're doing.
"If I run three mins 27 seconds in the Olympic final, and it gets me fifth, it's the best that I can do and that's all I'm looking to do. I'm not looking to cross any grey lines, I'm not looking to put myself in any dark spots, I'm just looking to see the best that I can get out of myself. So I will accept whatever result comes.
"I think I'm good enough to win. I think I'm going to be in the right positions and if I run in those areas in those times, I think it will be good. But I'll accept that whatever result and shake everyone's hand."
His father John says of the Olympic 1500m final: "It's going to be an incredible race. I think Josh would be the first person to admit that on any given day, there's probably one of five or six people that could win it, and that's the standard. It's so high."
For Kerr, who is 26 years old, he believes his confidence comes from his past performances on the big stage. "I'm just honest. There's nothing that I say that I'm like: 'oh, I probably shouldn't say that, or I'm lying'. It's truly what I believe. And if people get annoyed that's completely fine," he says.
"I've run a season's best, a personal best in every world and Olympic final since I've arrived on the scene. That shows me that I'm consistently good at that high level versus other people that haven't quite had the consistency.
"That's where that information comes from and that obviously adds to the confidence. I'm just looking to get medals home to the UK and I hope people get behind that."
Kerr says his Olympic bronze medal from Tokyo and being the current world champion has taken some pressure away.
"You could frame it as I'm world champion - I don't want to lose. Or you could frame it as I've wanted to win this Olympics for 12 to 14 years," he added.
"I wouldn't have asked for a much better build-up than already having an Olympic bronze medal and already being a world champion, so I know what's possible. So you've already got the pressure off a little bit of …I want to make my first Olympics. That's always a pressure for athletes, and then 'I want to be an Olympic medallist.' And I've done that.
"This is just the last stage. I don't feel a lot of pressure just because it's what I've done for a long time. It's my job. It's just another day in the office for me."
After Kerr's victory there was much focus on Edinburgh Athletic Club because they had inspired the last two world champions in the 1500m. And when an old photo surfaced showing a young Kerr and slightly older Jake Wightman, both athletes were asked about their memories of running as youths.
Of the photo, Kerr said: "I was under 13 at the time and so I did the 1K, whatever it was. And then I passed it over to my brother, he gets cut out of the photo every time! He was the under 15 leg and then we passed over to Jake Wightman and he did the under 17 leg and we won. So we were all standing there with the trophy and that was the first time I ever raced with him. He was down every Tuesday, Thursday night like we were."
On the Olympics, Kerr says: "It definitely won't make it easier for me having Wightman in there because he's an amazing athlete. I think that's what is going to make this year's 1500m - and overall athletics in the UK - so exciting because we're going to have a very high level of competition. I hope there's just all these different storylines so people can get really behind the races."
Coe won consecutive gold medals in the 1500m at the Olympics in 1980 and 1984 but did not have the same success at the World Championships. Cram finished second at the Olympics but did win the World Championships in 1983. So could we see a British runner adding the Olympics to their world title? And which one?
"Myself and Jake will be doing the same thing so we have some pretty good chances to make some history," Kerr said.
"If we can keep getting these medals, I think it would be such a great era to inspire that next generation. We failed for a long time not having the right inspiration throughout the years. I think it would be a failure for us if we look back in 10 years and no one's in our position."
Kerr spent the Christmas period in Edinburgh with family and friends which also included keeping up the training and running over 10 miles on Christmas Day.
It was a break from wearing sunglasses which he wears when running competitively. It has given Kerr a unique look that he believes gives him an advantage.
He said: "I first started wearing them in 2022 before the World Championships. I was looking for something to give me a bit more of an edge, a little bit different about me on that start line.
"And the fun thing is that you can't see my eyes when I've got them on. We sit from about 45 minutes to an hour before in a small room, and we all sit with each other, just kind of sitting down, not doing anything, all looking at each other. It's nice people not looking at my eyes. So a lot of people are staring at me, asking me if I'm looking at them. So it's just a bit of an edge."
Kerr was without his sunglasses as he turned up to a parkrun in December just a short distance from his family home. He signed autographs and took selfies with some of those attending the 5km race in Edinburgh Holyrood. One fan also told him he had won a small amount of money betting on Kerr at the World Championships.
Kerr had persuaded his family to attend the run just a couple of days before Christmas, which included his brother who also completed the course running and pushing a pram containing Kerr's young nephew.
His brother Jake Kerr was a Scotland international who played rugby for Leicester Tigers and Bristol Bears and recently retired. He is "extremely proud" of his younger brother.
"It's something that you can't put into words. Understanding a fragment of what he's had to do to get to where he is and what he's achieved it overwhelms you with emotion as you saw with mum and dad," Jake added.
Kerr has been aiming to return home with an Olympic gold medal from this summer and it is a plan in the making for well over a decade.
He said: "In middle-distance running you get told that your golden age is between 26 and 28. I'll be 26 when this Olympics comes around. They pushed it [the Tokyo Olympics] by a year (because of Covid-19). So I was a little bit older and I was able to get an Olympic bronze medal there which made a big difference.
"But I knew that this was one that I was going to be at my peak. It's a peak age. I knew the kind of trajectory I was on, it was going to take me a little bit to really familiarise myself within a world championship stage or Olympic stage, so I thought this was going to be the one that I could really win.
"You've got to believe in something. It really was the end goal for me when I was growing up and I was doing all my training here in Edinburgh."
Kerr reveals the inspiration he got when listening to Sir Chris Hoy, who returned to George Watson's College in Edinburgh to inspire youngsters.
"Hoy was a Watsonian and he sat up in assembly in one of the big chairs right next to our head boys and he gave a fantastic speech and it was massively inspirational for us," he said.
"I said to myself I want to do something that's enough to sit there one day and be able to talk to everyone else. I was able to do that after the world championships and I was able to sit up there during assembly.
"I remember so vividly him (Hoy) coming in because he got his school colours that day as well. It's just trying to create little moments for people to really hang on when they're trying to get through the tough times of sport, because it's not as easy as going to school and then going to university and then winning a World Championships. It does take a bit of inspiration along the way."
