Josh Kerr, 23, is the first British man to win a medal in the middle-distance event at the Olympics since 1988; fellow Team GB athletes Jake Heyward and Jake Wightman finished in ninth and 10th respectively
Sunday 8 August 2021 15:54, UK
Great Britain's Josh Kerr has won a bronze medal in the 1500m at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
The 23-year-old secured his medal by running a personal-best time in the final of three minutes and 29.05 seconds.
Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen took gold and Kenya's Timothy Cheruiyot just pipped Kerr to silver.
Kerr is the first British man to win a medal in the middle-distance event at the Olympics since 1988. Fellow Team GB athletes Jake Heyward and Jake Wightman finished the final in ninth and 10th respectively.
Team GB have plenty of history in the 1500m event, with their five golds being more than any other nation, and five of the nine podium places during the Olympic Games of the 1980s being taken by Brits.
It has been a long wait since those heady days of Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram and Peter Elliott though.
However, on Saturday Scotsman Kerr joined their legion as he crossed the line third behind Ingebrigtsen, who produced an Olympic-record time, and Cheruiyot.
In a race run at a fast pace, Kerr stormed past Abel Kipsang down the home straight and almost overhauled another Kenyan in Cheruiyot for silver, as his time of 3:29.05 knocked 2.5 seconds off his personal best.
It was also just 0.24 seconds outside Mo Farah's British-record time over 1500m and is the third fastest by a British man in history.
Kerr's Olympics were almost over in the heats when he finished seventh in his race, only to scrape through as a fastest loser, and he made the most of that chance to remarkably win Team GB's sixth athletics medal of Tokyo 2020.
"I'm blown away. This has been a hard Championships for me," Kerr said. "The first run wasn't great, it was one of those days and you can have those. Sadly mine was the first round of the Olympics.
"I had to go back, think about it, recalibrate and come back to these next rounds fighting for every single step.
"I feel like you saw that today, you saw that in the semi-final and I'm really happy with that performance.
"I have this weird confidence in myself. Some may call it cockiness, some may call it general confidence. When you put the effort in and you're surrounded by a team like I am, you can't not feel confidence every step of the way.
"I'm so pleased I can give back to all those people who were able to sacrifice for me.
"When the first medal came back to our Team GB camp through Keely (Hodgkinson) there was a sense of enjoyment through someone else. I had to take that away and think, 'I want to create that for myself'."
