Josh Kerr made a spectacular comeback to regain the 3000m title at the World Athletics Indoor Championships Kujawy Pomorze 26 on Saturday (21).
After a thrilling contest – the second-fastest in competition history – the British athlete emerged victorious.
The 2023 world 1500m champion, who won the world indoor 3000m title two years ago on home soil in Glasgow, was confident that he could fight to regain the gold in Toruń. And he did, after a striking finish in 7:35.56 that saw him pip USA’s Cole Hocker and France’s Yann Schrub.
Kerr had only raced once since sustaining a calf injury in the 1500m final at the World Championships in Tokyo – suffering defeat to Hocker in their two-mile battle in New York in February.
After a quick start from South Africa’s Luan Munnik, it was Hocker who took the lead. The Olympic 1500m and world 5000m champion was followed by Uruguay’s Valentin Soca and Ethiopia’s Addisu Yihune.
Yihune, accompanied by his compatriot Getnet Wale, moved to the fore after 1200m. As the race entered its final kilometre, it looked increasingly likely that it would come down to a battle between two pairs: the Ethiopian and the US, as Hocker was joined among the leaders by his compatriot, Yared Nuguse.
But that was when Kerr stepped up a gear. With 300 metres to go, he broke into the leading group and decided to go all out.
Hocker closed well to take silver in 7:35.70, just 0.01 ahead of Schrub.
“It’s nice to be back to where I was,” said Kerr. “This race didn’t go the way I wanted it to go, but racing is all about dealing with the situations you are put in. I shouldn’t worry much about the mistakes in the race, although there were a lot of them today.”
In a high-quality race, Kerr’s winning time was the fastest at the World Indoor Championships in almost three decades.
Before Saturday, only four world indoor 3000m finals had been won inside 7:40 – the last in 2010, when USA’s Bernard Lagat won in 7:37.97. Only Haile Gebrselassie has triumphed in a quicker time than Kerr, and that happened in 1997.
“I had all kinds of scenarios in my head, and I am just pleased it all went in my favour today. I put a lot of pressure on myself before this race, and I was stressed,” Kerr added. “I thought I would be at the top of the sport for a long time but, after missing a couple of opportunities that I wanted, I am really going to enjoy this gold.”
In the absence of Australia’s world leader Cameron Myers, Schrub started as the fastest athlete in the field so far this year. The French athlete celebrated his 30th birthday the day before the race and gave himself a late present – world indoor bronze.
“There was a great field running here with Kerr, Hocker, Nuguse, and others,” he said. “I come from the 10,000m and I was racing against the best milers in the world who have won Olympic and world golds, so this bronze is a great result.”
Behind him, Kenya’s Jacob Krop ran 7:36.76 for fourth place and Nuguse was fifth. Soca secured sixth and Munnik seventh in a PB.
Piotrek Przyborowski for World Athletics
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