Josh Kerr has produced many highly impressive performance over the course of his decade-long international career.
World titles indoor and out, Olympic silver and bronze and British records over both the 1500m and the mile and bettering the times of three legends of middle distance running, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett and Steve Cram, have already cemented the 27-year-old from Edinburgh’s place in track and field’s history books.
But the challenge that lies ahead of New Mexico-based Kerr this weekend is his most testing yet.
Tomorrow, at the London leg of the Diamond League, Kerr will attempt to set a new world mile record.
The current mile world record of 3 minutes 43.13 seconds was set 27 years ago, in 1999 by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj. Kerr will today attempt to lower that record to 3 minutes 42 seconds.
Read more: Josh Kerr: I want to be known as the best miler in history
It is, the Edinburgh man has acknowledged, a mighty task that lies ahead but one person who is optimistic that her compatriot is as well-equipped as anyone to set a new mile record is Kerr’s follow Olympic medallist, Laura Muir.
“What we all know about Josh when he says he's going to try and do something is that he's going to give it absolutely everything,” says Muir, who will race the 1500m in London this weekend.
“He's very bold and he's very confident in his abilities, which is fantastic. And his mindset is amazing.”
Muir knows exactly what it feels like not only to be chasing records, but to flag to everybody beforehand that breaking said record is the plan. For several months, Kerr has made clear that his first major target of this summer is this world record attempt, with his second target being gold at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, which begin next week.
In 2022, Muir set out her stall and made public that she was aiming to break the world indoor 1000m record at the Muller Indoor Grand Prix in Birmingham. Although ultimately, unsuccessful, it gave her a taste of what Kerr will be in for today and while she’s not so bold as to predict he’ll end the weekend as a world record holder, her respect for his attempt is clear.
“It's going to be tough for Josh,” she says.
“Setting that sort of record attempt out so early means everybody knows he's doing it. So it's whether somebody else is going to sit on him (during the race) and it may well be the world record gets broken, but it's not by Josh, it might be by somebody else. So it's really challenging.
“I've gone for records before and when everybody knows you're going for it, they’re just going to use you.
“It is a very brave thing to do. But Josh would not say he was going to go for something he didn't think he could do, so there's no doubt he's going to be going for it as best as possible.
“Regardless of what he runs, it's very commendable just to be having an attempt at it.”
There’s several of Muir and Kerr’s fellow Scots also in action in London today - Megan Keith will race the 3000m while Jemma Reekie will race the 800m.
