The world indoor 3000m champion expands on the ambition behind his mile world record attempt and what it will take to write his name into the history books.

“To be remembered as the best middle distance runner in history, you have to make history and that's the next part of this journey.”

A few days have passed since Josh Kerr announced his intention to go after Hicham El Guerrouj’s world record of 3:43.13 from 1999 at the London Diamond League meeting in July, but the world indoor 3000m champion certainly isn’t tired of talking about it. In fact, he admits it’s a relief that the news is out there now. 

“I always thought it was almost the worst kept secret in athletics, but people evidently did a good job of keeping it quiet,” he smiles. “Being able to chat about it freely is actually really nice. It's obviously a huge goal, but it's something that I'm very, very confident and very passionate about.”

With this year’s World Indoor Championships, where he secured the second 3000m gold medal of his career, now in the rearview mirror, Kerr is back at his New Mexico base and zoning in with his team on Project 222, backed by sponsors Brooks.

Its name represents the number of seconds involved in covering 1609m on the track in three minutes and 42 seconds and the 28-year-old hopes his attempt will remain a topic of conversation for the months to come. 

Few events have captured the imagination through history more than the mile – a distance that conjures some of the truly great athletics images and moments, from Roger Bannister and John Landy to Seb Coe and Steve Ovett. 

Kerr’s attempt to join those names with this assault on a fabled mark has already got the athletics world chattering but, in a summer where the football World Cup will hog the limelight, the ambition is that it will also help his sport to elbow its way into the wider  consciousness. 

The stakes will be high and certainly haven’t been reduced by such an early, and such a public, declaration of intent, but Kerr wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I love the pressure of big moments, with a lot on the line, so this suits me really well,” says the 2023 world 1500m champion and Olympic silver medallist. “I'm almost creating my own pressure that allows me to really focus in. I do feel like I'm a bit more well-rounded. I know where my limitations are a bit more and I feel very confident that we're going to be in shape to do this thing in July.”

Time and again, Kerr has proven his championship credentials. In previous interviews with AW he has described the art of winning major medals as being a finely-honed skill in itself. This will still be an open race but making the clock, rather than a podium position, his priority presents a different set of challenges.

“The tough part about racing people is that they are variables,” he says. “You never know who's going to show up, what kind of fitness people are in, the moves they are going to make, positioning and things like that, so you’ve got to be on your game with that.

“The nice thing with a record is that it doesn't move and so, once the gun goes off, you know that record’s not going to change for that next three and a half minutes. That is less of a variable than a person. 

“Obviously there are going to be people in the race that might be capable of running as fast, if not faster, than me. I can't see that as a possibility, but you know, that is humanly possible. It's the only variable that's in there and so it's fun to have something a little bit different. 

“I've chased records in the past, with the indoor two-mile world record [8:00.67 in 2024], and I got the [1500m] NCAA record back in 2018, and that was 37 years old.” 

Succeeding with this chase, of course, would top the lot. For many reasons, the mile is different and, thanks to its past, has a romance all of its own

“It’s more widely understandable, too,” agrees Kerr. “Everyone, I think, has probably run a mile and knows how fast they could run a mile – or could guess, at least – and I think those numbers mean a little bit more than the 1500m right now, and maybe in history. Obviously, the mile has been run for a long, long time. 

“The 1500m world record is great, but that was a debate – which one do we go for? And for me it was a no-brainer. I was like: ‘We have to run the mile’ and then it was ‘We can make it the Emsley Carr Mile in London’. There's this romantic look at things. And I do think it's the right balance between speed and strength, but it's also the right balance for the most casual viewer and the most intense viewer.

“If you're casual, you understand the mile and if you’re intense, you know that there's an extra nine point something metres to deal with that we're going to need to calculate in those four laps. So you can nerd out on as much as you'd like, really.

“Other than the people who are coming to the London Diamond League in person, I hope that people tune in and watch.”

Look out for an exclusive interview with Josh Kerr in the May issue of AW magazine.