KERR LEAVES IT LATE
Brit’s thrilling 1500m finish recalls Coe and Cram
JUST like the wider British athletics team at these Games, Josh Kerr left it late. He left it late to show his talent in Tokyo, and he left it late to make his mark on this 1500m final, but when he went, he really went. When he stopped, he was an Olympic bronze medallist.
It was the kick that did it. He was 10th after one lap, seventh after two, and fifth at the bell, but how he motored on the back straight. Fifth became fourth and fourth became third as he passed Abel Kipsang on the bend.
That being Kipsang who broke the Olympic record in the semifinal. That being Kerr who only crawled out of his heats as a fastest loser.
But forget what went before, because Kerr flew past him and set off across the final 100m in chase of Timothy Cheruiyot, the world champion, and had this race gone on another metre, he would have beaten him, too. Not to be, but a close run thing, and a quite charming sub-plot to the more global parochial narrative around the winner, Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who at the age of 20 also broke the Olympic record.
The Norwegian phenomenon’s time of 3:28.32 was astonishing, and a culmination of what has been painted as something hing of a family experiment. Two ol der brothers have ve gone before him, European champions in their own right, and there has been an acceptance that mistakes in their journeys have been used by their father, Gjert, to prepare the kid of the litter for his. It took him to the very top of an Olympic podium and surely there will be more.
As for Kerr, aside from his bronze he also became Britain’s first male Olympic medallist in this classic distance since 1988, as well as setting a new personal best of 3:29.05. That put the Scot second in the national all-time list, ahead of Seb Coe and Steve Cram, with only Mo Farah out ahead. ‘Damn it,’ he said on hearing that detail, and really it was hard to tell if he was pleased or disappointed.
The 23-year-old has tended to fly under the radar a bit, possibly as a consequence of living and training in the US for six years. But he outlined his threat in finishing sixth at the worlds in 2019, and underlined it by beating Jake Wightman at the Olympic trials in June. He escalated from that win to this third in a dramatic manner.
‘I’m blown away,’ he said. ‘This has been a hard championship for me wi t h the first round not being right, but it was just one of those days. I had this weird confidence in myself. Some may call it cockiness. I call it confidence. If you put the effort in and the work in, and you’re surrounded by a team like myself, you can’t not be confident. My US visa says that I’m an entertainer. I just have to live up to that.’
Kerr’s success extended what has been an impressive late burst from a British team that justifiably took a lot of criticism in the early part of this meet. Their tally now stands at a credible six, and all have come since Tuesday, when Keely Hodgkinson took 800m silver.
‘ When the first medal came back from Keely there was a sense of enjoyment from someone else,’ said Kerr. ‘I had to take myself away and think, “I want to create that for myself”.
‘I wanted to be the one everyone looks at. I’m that self- centred. Watching her be so professional here and go out and take what was hers, I wanted to take that attitude. I felt like a world beater and I just had to go out and perform.’
He did that, serving as the highlight on an otherwise understated evening at the track for the British. In the same race, Jake Heyward was ninth and Wightman 10th, with his father Geoff commentating.
The 4x400m women’s relay team could only finish fifth in their final, which was won by the USA. American Allyson Felix
thus became the most decorated female track and field athlete of all time with her 11th Olympic medal.
Meanwhile, Morgan Lake became the latest member of the British squad to withdraw after injuring her foot in the warm-up to the high jump final. Any debrief from these Olympics needs to include a look at how many athletes have pulled out.