Josh Kerr stayed true to his word by backing up his world record-breaking run with Commonwealth gold in Glasgow. Euan Crumley speaks to some of those who work closest with him to find out more about the processes he uses to hit his targets, and the impact he is having on his Brooks Beasts team in the US

Julian Florez’s daughter is only two years old and already she has noticed that the “off-duty” version of Josh Kerr is in stark contrast to the one you will find with his sunglasses on, a target to hit in training or standing on the start line with a race to win.

“We always talk about how there are two different people within Josh,” says the Assistant Coach of Brooks Beasts, the professional team based in Albuquerque of which the mile world record-holder is a key component. “There's the friend that we all have, and then there's that competitor, the one that's here to win no matter what, to lay everything on the line. And they definitely have different personas. 

“Even my daughter notices it. Whenever Josh is around the house, she's just like: ‘Oh, that's Josh’. But if he's at practice and he has his shades on, or if he's on the television with his shades on, she uses his full name. She's like: ‘That's Josh Kerr’, so she picks up on that dual personality. Children don't lie and for her to notice that duality is really cool.”

Those who watched the Scot fly to the mile world record he had so boldly proclaimed he would break in London back in July have witnessed just how focused he can be. The same goes for those who saw him completely dismantle a top-class field to win the Commonwealth mile title he so badly wanted on home soil in Glasgow two weeks later. 

But, after the finish line was crossed at Scotstoun, it didn’t take him long to turn back into Josh again, happy to spend time with the young fans who had come to watch him in action, signing every autograph and posing for every selfie. 

That night, when he stood on the top step of the podium and struggled to hold back the tears as Flower of Scotland played, was Kerr’s most recent race. Despite the occasional suggestion otherwise, the European Championships in Birmingham had not been on his agenda but, after his 3:42.66 in London and that golden Commonwealth moment, there had been some talk of him going after another record held by Hicham El Guerrouj – the 1500m world mark of 3:26.00 – last month. It was decided, however, that both body and mind needed a reset so Kerr has been back in the States preparing for his return to another place of great personal significance. Budapest. 

It was there, in 2023, that he landed the 1500m world title and moved on to a new level. 

Now he will be back at the same venue by the Danube this month, where he will renew his rivalry with fellow wild card entry Jakob Ingebrigsten, to compete at World Athletics’ inaugural end-of-season shindig, the Ultimate Championships. 

As is usually the case, Florez will be by his side. The 33-year-old is right-hand man to Brooks Beasts head coach Danny Mackey and, as he puts it, “wears as many hats as possible”. From pacer, to video editor, social media curator, even team barber, “I fill in wherever I’m needed”.

Florez was also a student at the University of New Mexico when a 17-year-old Kerr turned up with his parents to sign the paperwork that would take him from Edinburgh to America, so he has seen the development of a champion at very close quarters. The man with a marathon PB of 2:16:12 and the distinctive long black hair was to be found roaring with approval trackside as Kerr broke that world record earlier this summer, while he was also grinning from ear to ear in the Scotstoun stands at the Commonwealth Games. 

The same goes for those world championships of three years ago. “That was the first one,” he says of that Budapest win. “That was the big moment. If you look back at some of the videos of Team Kerr back then, and how absolutely bonkers we were going in the stadium when he was in that last 100m, it's insane.”

Florez smiles as he remembers that first meeting all of those years ago and how he and a few others gave Kerr “a bit of banter” about being so young that he needed his parents with him to confirm that university move. He laughs, though, when he thinks about what came next. 

“That role dynamic quickly shifted,” he says. “It was pretty quickly that he established himself as a leader on the team, that he showed the example of what it is to achieve excellence, how to do that and pave that way from a young age.”

Florez cites the then freshman Kerr beating the heavy favourite Edward Cheserek to win his first NCAA title in 2017 as the performance that caused heads to turn and the penny to drop that he could be a force to be reckoned with. 

“I think performance speaks louder than anything else and when he really went after that indoor season [in 2017] and took out Edward Cheserek, I think that flipped the switch in everyone's head on the team of like: ‘Well, if you can do this here, you can do this anywhere’, and it really gave us the example to to follow,” he says. “I think no one believed in him but himself that day and he went out and again shocked the world, which he's done a few times throughout his career.”

It isn’t just the wider world that Kerr has left an impression upon, though. Mackey likes to have people with “contagious energy” in his group and Kerr certainly fits that bill. Florez describes him as the “north star” who sets the example for others to follow. 

“There are so many lessons that people can learn from him, and in so many different aspects from how he handles the mental side, how he handles the nutrition side, how he handles training,” he says. 

“He tries to make race day as normal as possible. Even when we were in the build for Tokyo [the 2025 world championships], during that warm-up period for a workout, we would get in our car and drive for 15 minutes after he warmed up in between that and when he would start his workout, to replicate what was going to happen in Tokyo, because we knew that the the warm-up track was about a 15-minute ride from the stadium. 

“There are so many dynamics that you can evolve into your everyday training that maybe the everyday, aspiring high school or club athlete isn't implementing that they could, and maybe  haven't thought about.”

That level of detail has been noted by his team-mates, too. Valery Tobias will never forget her first meeting with Kerr when she joined Brooks Beasts in 2023. The USA 800m international athlete was, she says, so much in her own event bubble that she didn’t actually know who he was. “What’s your name?” and “What event do you do?” were two of her first questions. “I would come to learn right after that: ‘Oh my gosh, he's a big deal’,” she laughs. “I watched the world championships after meeting him, and then he won, and I'm like: ‘I can't believe that. How did I not know who he was?’.”

She certainly knows now and has been able to watch how the “big brother” of the team puts his plans in place. 

“He likes to practice the meet and how he's going to feel leading up to a race,” she says. “If he needs to show up two hours before a meet, then he'll practice that during our sessions. He really re-enacts everything and takes it super seriously. And whenever we do our reps, everything, he's fully dialled into it. He's very collaborative whenever it comes to training with the guys but whenever he's doing solo sessions he's just hitting all marks, hitting all the times and it's really motivating to watch his discipline.

“It's awesome to watch him run crazy times, but to also have such a great attitude. That's something he's really taught me to have. Sometimes I get overwhelmed in my head, and he always talks to me. He's like: ‘Practice what's getting in your way and practice it during your sessions. That's the best way to not feel unfamiliar during a race, because you've already done it at practice.

“He’s [even] practicing sitting in the chairs. Sometimes they have you waiting [at an event], and it gets in people's heads, mine included. Being at the world championships for the first time, I was like: ‘Why are we in this tiny room for such a long time?’. He will have practiced all of that. He has everything nailed down.”

Kerr’s laser-like focus doesn’t come at the cost of being oblivious to the wider team, however. Tobias says she has benefited from conversations with him that have arisen when he has gone out of his way to help.

“I've been working with the sports psychologist, but having conversations with Josh [has helped too],” she says. “He's such a big brother presence because he’s wise beyond his years.

“I definitely had a moment where I felt my mindset shifted. I really remember, I think it was during my first year in the team and we went to my first Albuquerque camp, and I got a hip injury, and when I went to our second one in the summer, I would show up to practices scared or already defeated – like, ‘This is going to be so hard. I don't know if I can do this’. I remember having such a bad first session at the camp and coach Danny saying to me: ‘I can see it in your body language. You’re already defeating yourself’.

“I was upset and Josh caught it, pulled me to the side and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. We were able to really talk about the switch in attitude and it was just a really, really good talk with him. I remember that so well because it really felt like a shift in my career.”

Perhaps what underlines Kerr’s mental fortitude most is that he declared his targets for the season so early. He was not slow in announcing that the Commonwealth Games would be a priority, while Project 222 – so called as it would involve covering the mile in 222 seconds – was launched after he won a second world indoor 3000m title back in March.

“When he first pitched [the mile idea] in autumn last year, we had already had a couple of conversations, especially following [the world championships] in Tokyo,” says Florez. “That didn't play out in our favour – he suffered a fall [in the semis] and an injury developed from that fall. It wasn't the pinnacle we were looking for, the pinnacle that he had worked for. Going into that race, Danny, myself and Josh had already had a couple of discussions, thinking that he was in shape to break the world record – or to at least give it an attempt.

“And so, for that season to come crashing down in the manner that it did, that next day he was already thinking about breaking the world record in the mile. I’d just finished dragging him off the track, and he was already looking at the next goal. And we were all on board.”

While the build-up generated plenty of interest and attention, the inherent risk of something going wrong and scuppering the plans made the confidence behind them all the more notable. So does Florez think it might encourage more athletes to do something similar in future.

“I hope so,” he says. “I hope more athletes become more vocal. A lot of times people can call it cocky, but I think it's confidence and I think that confident characters bring eyes to the sport. I do hope that more athletes come out and have this rhetoric and aren't afraid to really call their shot, because that's all it really comes down to. It's like, are you fearful of the future? And Josh wasn't. 

“He knew what his body could be capable of, and he trusted in the staff. He trusted in the team, the brand – everyone was doing everything they could to to make sure that he's in the best position possible to break that record, and so it was just this unanimous agreement between varying parts of this machine that we're all chasing that one goal, and it comes from the seriousness that he brings to this endeavour. 

“You know, it's not every athlete that can just say ‘I'm going to do this’, but when Josh says it, it's different because I truly believe that he'll do everything within his power to get himself there. And if he's going to do that, then so am I.”

Kerr’s exploits have, says Tobias, had a ripple effect through the team.

“He's always been a really confident person, and he's always been somebody who goes after what he wants. But I think, after breaking the world record, something looked different in him. Even at the Commonwealth Games, I was like: ‘He's just elevated himself even more’,” she says. 

“It's always nice to watch your team-mates succeed in general, but it's always nice to see them succeed after you've seen the hard work they put in, the hard sessions and the hard days. Afterwards, the energy around the team felt a little elevated. Whenever you have your team-mate do this amazing thing and he's somebody who you train with and he's somebody who you talked to, and you’ve picked his brain, it really does something to us. It changes the whole vibe of the team.”

And so on to the next thing. The team will be watching, and Florez will be right there on hand, when his friend steps back on to the track in Budapest. He will know, too, when his Josh is becoming Josh Kerr. There are some telltale signs.

“There's a moment where a switch is flicked, and that's right before he's going to go into the call room,” he says. When he puts his headphones on, that's his cue that it's time to get ready for war. He'll do his last strides with his headphones on, take them off, go to the call room, and then he's entering his arena.

“[After breaking the record] winning a gold on home soil for the Commonwealth Games is definitely one of the items that was on his bucket list for his career and he's ticking those boxes. There are a couple more left but he's well on his way to doing everything that he wants to do in the sport.

“There's truly no stone unturned in a build whenever he's working towards a goal or an endeavour, so I think he's a walking example of what it looks like to truly give it your all.”