Kerr Takes World Indoor 3000m Gold on Home Soil

Josh Kerr claimed Great Britain’s first gold medal of the 2024 World Indoor Championships, seizing the men’s 3000m title in 7:42.98 on home ground in Glasgow.

A move timed to the bell

The final unfolded in a packed Commonwealth Arena, where Kerr held his patience behind Ethiopian surges. With 500 metres to go and the race still bunched, Olympic 10,000m champion Selemon Barega forced his way to the front, but Kerr tracked the move and closed right up against him as the bell rang.

Halfway down the back straight he kicked again, a decisive injection of speed that Barega could not answer. Rounding into the home straight, the Scot dipped for the line with 0.61 seconds to spare, as the noise inside the arena threatened to lift the roof.

Ending 31 years of waiting

The victory made Kerr the first British man to win a world indoor 3000m crown and only the third Scottish athlete ever to take world indoor gold — following Tom McKean and Yvonne Murray, both champions in Toronto in 1993, who were in Glasgow to witness his moment.

He also snapped a long Ethiopian hold on the discipline: after wins by Yomif Kejelcha in 2016 and 2018 and Barega in 2022, Kerr became the first European winner of the event since Italy’s Gennaro Di Napoli retained the title in that same 1993 edition.

Yared Nuguse of the United States swept past the fading Barega to grab silver in 7:43.59, leaving the defending champion with bronze in 7:43.64. Kerr, draped in a Saltire, later told reporters, “I just didn't want to short change anyone because I knew I had the support of all Scotland and the UK tonight.”

Already a world 1500m champion and Olympic silver medallist, the 26‑year‑old added the indoor crown by following a blistering two‑mile indoor best in New York just weeks earlier. It was a homecoming victory that wrote Highland names back into a record book long owned by others.