A meticulous approach took the Scottish 1500m runner to a world title in Budapest but he is not about to start leaving anything to chance as he turns his gaze toward Paris
When Josh Kerr takes time out of his increasingly busy schedule to chew the fat with AW, a little over three months have passed since the golden moment he’ll never forget.
“I would say that 50m to go in Budapest is going to be a lifelong memory,” he grins. “It was like: ‘You’ve got this one, just stay on your feet and you’ll be all right’. That was pretty special.”
Indeed it was. One of the standout races of the year, in fact the one AW readers voted the Mel Watman Performance of the Year, saw the 26-year-old following the example his Edinburgh AC clubmate Jake Wightman had set 12 months previously by outmuscling the much-fancied Jakob Ingebrigtsen to take world 1500m gold. The achievement means life has become a little bit different for the US-based Brooks athlete these days.
“The way that it’s sunk in is that now everything I do is with an expectation and approach of a world champion,” says the AW British Male Athlete of the Year. “In the way that I’ve approached winter training, in the way that I approach this upcoming year, who I’m being surrounded by and who I’m hiring to help with all the madness that comes with it. If anything, it’s made me slightly hungrier to get my teeth into more major championships and bring home some more gold medals.”
There is, understandably, an air of satisfaction emanating from Kerr when he reflects on 2023. An athlete who doesn’t race very often, his strategy is to truly make it count when he does. Having found it tough to build on the Olympic bronze medal he won in 2021, this time all of his energies were focused on one singular target.
“After the Olympics, I really struggled,” he admits. “I took a bit of time off and the motivation wasn’t there. I just had a tough time getting stuck back into winter training [for the 2022 season], but this time I was able to really flip a switch going into winter training and be like: ‘Right, this is where it starts’.”
Even this time last year, Kerr knew deep down that he had a genuine world title shot. He and his coach Danny Mackey constructed their plans at their base in Seattle off the back of that belief.
“Back in December I said to Danny: ‘This is a huge opportunity. I had a bad build-up to the World Championships in 2022 and I was fifth. If we can…
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