It’s an interesting thread. I lean Kerr because his PRs are now more impressive, a bit more hardware, and he has a bit more range and success up to 3,000 (lest we forget that Tim has run 1:43).
However, I think one of the intangibles of “legacy” is how dominant one was and for how long. Tim was pretty indisputably the best 1500 meter runner on Earth from 2018 to 2020 or maybe ‘21 before the Olympics, he simply had the misfortune of only having one Outdoor World or Outdoor Championship to contend between 2018 and 2020. Kerr was only arguably “the best miler in the world”, from his global title in 2023 up until losing the Olympics but due to his racing schedule, only actually ran a handful of 1500s and miles in that time. One of which he lost to Nuguse
After your salient point at the end, you still lean Kerr?
I'm not certain it is that salient. People are making a lot of Tim's DL record, but if we're honest, we know they don't matter. In fact, most of us would actually point out the majority problem with the sport is that regular season meets don't matter, it's a huge structural problem. In terms of legacy, it was never the regular season meets that determined the legacies of legends like Coe, Ovett, Cram, El G, Ngeny, etc. It was only the races where they won medals or broke WRs that we really remember. I don't think the regular season is entirely irrelevant, but it's little more than a footnote in the career of athletes of the calibre of Kerr and Tim C who have real achievements to their name
Obviously, Kerr is disliked on these boards so he was never going to come out of this better than the eminently likeable Tim C. But Kerr has had the better overall career. More medals, more Olympic medals, better PBs over the 1500, mile, and 3k. And he'll probably add to the medal tally before he retires.
I'll say this for Tim C: he was a better DL runner, and he was the last person to truly dominate the 1500. If the Tokyo Olympics hadn't been delayed, he'd be a gold medallist. Even Jakob at his peak wasn't as dominant as peak Tim C, who looked untouchable in both TTs and championship races. I hope he has one last Wightman-style hurrah left in him
So does this argument basically hinge on the indoor medals? Because Tim C. has a better medal haul at 1500, right?
He won't when the careers are over, I expect, but for now.
After your salient point at the end, you still lean Kerr?
I'm not certain it is that salient. People are making a lot of Tim's DL record, but if we're honest, we know they don't matter. In fact, most of us would actually point out the majority problem with the sport is that regular season meets don't matter, it's a huge structural problem. In terms of legacy, it was never the regular season meets that determined the legacies of legends like Coe, Ovett, Cram, El G, Ngeny, etc. It was only the races where they won medals or broke WRs that we really remember. I don't think the regular season is entirely irrelevant, but it's little more than a footnote in the career of athletes of the calibre of Kerr and Tim C who have real achievements to their name
They do matter. You just choose to not care about it
After your salient point at the end, you still lean Kerr?
I'm not certain it is that salient. People are making a lot of Tim's DL record, but if we're honest, we know they don't matter. In fact, most of us would actually point out the majority problem with the sport is that regular season meets don't matter, it's a huge structural problem. In terms of legacy, it was never the regular season meets that determined the legacies of legends like Coe, Ovett, Cram, El G, Ngeny, etc. It was only the races where they won medals or broke WRs that we really remember. I don't think the regular season is entirely irrelevant, but it's little more than a footnote in the career of athletes of the calibre of Kerr and Tim C who have real achievements to their name
Tim C was the best in the world ove 1500m for at least a couple of seasons. When he lined up there was little doubt who was likely to win. Kerr, as much as I admire his accomplishments, does not have the same aura about him. He's always in the mix but to to the level Timmy C was.
Obviously, Kerr is disliked on these boards so he was never going to come out of this better than the eminently likeable Tim C. But Kerr has had the better overall career. More medals, more Olympic medals, better PBs over the 1500, mile, and 3k. And he'll probably add to the medal tally before he retires.
I'll say this for Tim C: he was a better DL runner, and he was the last person to truly dominate the 1500. If the Tokyo Olympics hadn't been delayed, he'd be a gold medallist. Even Jakob at his peak wasn't as dominant as peak Tim C, who looked untouchable in both TTs and championship races. I hope he has one last Wightman-style hurrah left in him
So does this argument basically hinge on the indoor medals? Because Tim C. has a better medal haul at 1500, right?
He won't when the careers are over, I expect, but for now.
In 1500 medal terms it's down to the difference between Tim's world champs silver and Kerr's olympic bronze. But then, Kerr has better PBs in the 1500 and mile, significantly so in the mile (2+ seconds).
I'd also argue that Kerr's best years have overlapped with a considerably more competitive era than Tim's. Tim wasn't really racing much more than Manangoi, and at the end, a rising Jakob. Kerr's peak era has overlapped with a historically deep period for the 1500 and, along with Jakob, Kerr has been the most consistently competitive athlete in the majority champs during this time.
The competition is also why I rate those indoor 3000m titles that Kerr holds. He had to beat Barega, Nuguse, and Hocker for those medals. Neither were deep fields, but in both cases, he was beating Olympic champions.
I'm not certain it is that salient. People are making a lot of Tim's DL record, but if we're honest, we know they don't matter. In fact, most of us would actually point out the majority problem with the sport is that regular season meets don't matter, it's a huge structural problem. In terms of legacy, it was never the regular season meets that determined the legacies of legends like Coe, Ovett, Cram, El G, Ngeny, etc. It was only the races where they won medals or broke WRs that we really remember. I don't think the regular season is entirely irrelevant, but it's little more than a footnote in the career of athletes of the calibre of Kerr and Tim C who have real achievements to their name
They do matter. You just choose to not care about it
See, you have that backwards. I love the DL. I go to the London DL every year, bought my tickets for this year's event the moment they were released. But objectively, a DL means nothing. It's not like a regular season game, the ranking points don't earn athletes anything, like direct entry to the majority champs (as is the case in tennis). DLs are just meets for the sake of having meets. It's why SML doesn't have to run a single DL and can still be considered the best in the world, indeed, the best of all time. That's what I mean when I say it's a structural problem. DLs mean something to me personally, but they mean nothing in sporting terms.
I'm not certain it is that salient. People are making a lot of Tim's DL record, but if we're honest, we know they don't matter. In fact, most of us would actually point out the majority problem with the sport is that regular season meets don't matter, it's a huge structural problem. In terms of legacy, it was never the regular season meets that determined the legacies of legends like Coe, Ovett, Cram, El G, Ngeny, etc. It was only the races where they won medals or broke WRs that we really remember. I don't think the regular season is entirely irrelevant, but it's little more than a footnote in the career of athletes of the calibre of Kerr and Tim C who have real achievements to their name
Tim C was the best in the world ove 1500m for at least a couple of seasons. When he lined up there was little doubt who was likely to win. Kerr, as much as I admire his accomplishments, does not have the same aura about him. He's always in the mix but to to the level Timmy C was.
Better career at this point. Tim C.
Agree. Tim C is also eminently more likable than Kerr. Kerr gets attention from yapping a ton and throwing up a few great performances. Tim caught our attention from RACING a ton and throwing up numerous great performances.
After your salient point at the end, you still lean Kerr?
I'm not certain it is that salient. People are making a lot of Tim's DL record, but if we're honest, we know they don't matter. In fact, most of us would actually point out the majority problem with the sport is that regular season meets don't matter, it's a huge structural problem. In terms of legacy, it was never the regular season meets that determined the legacies of legends like Coe, Ovett, Cram, El G, Ngeny, etc. It was only the races where they won medals or broke WRs that we really remember. I don't think the regular season is entirely irrelevant, but it's little more than a footnote in the career of athletes of the calibre of Kerr and Tim C who have real achievements to their name
Distance racing is not the type of a sport where the “regular” season can matter. No runner can be in peak form for 15 DL meets ranging from May through September.
Obviously, Kerr is disliked on these boards so he was never going to come out of this better than the eminently likeable Tim C. But Kerr has had the better overall career. More medals, more Olympic medals, better PBs over the 1500, mile, and 3k. And he'll probably add to the medal tally before he retires.
I'll say this for Tim C: he was a better DL runner, and he was the last person to truly dominate the 1500. If the Tokyo Olympics hadn't been delayed, he'd be a gold medallist. Even Jakob at his peak wasn't as dominant as peak Tim C, who looked untouchable in both TTs and championship races. I hope he has one last Wightman-style hurrah left in him
Yeah this is my feeling too. And I find Kerr personally quite painful - though I do understand he's still a guy in his 20's trying to make money, trying to lift his, his sponsor and his sports profile. I find the "project 222" stuff delusional and insufferable. That being said....
Kerr won NCAA indoor championships indoors and out. He's won world championships indoors and out. He's won 2 Olympic 1500m medals and that is not easy to do.
Becalli, Keino, Coe, Cacho, Lagat, El G, Makhloufi, Willis and Josh Kerr. That is the list of men who have ever won multiple medals of any color across more than one Olympics in the 1500m (and they've only ever won two, max).
Ovett couldn't do it. Neither could Morceli, neither could Jakob. That is elite, elite company and while there isn't a gold there - is it really that important? If you are good enough to medal in the Olympic mens 1500m, you got yourself to the start line with the potential to win it and that in itself is an incredible feat. To do it twice? Huge legacy points. Especially in Paris he talked the talk and walked it too. No he didn't win (ironically because his movements triggered the fatal reaction from Jakob that allowed Hocker to win) - but he ran under 3.28 and missed gold by a foot and a half in the most anticipated 1500m race in 20 years.
I respect Tim C and what he did (he was essentially the modern Filbert Bayi that ushered in the era of blazing fast world finals) and at their peaks, Tim might have come out on top across 10 or so races across a season (though 2024 Kerr capable of 3.27.5 - man, I might have to revise that), but if their careers ended this morning and they never ran another race in their lives, love him or hate him, it's Josh Kerr.
So does this argument basically hinge on the indoor medals? Because Tim C. has a better medal haul at 1500, right?
He won't when the careers are over, I expect, but for now.
In 1500 medal terms it's down to the difference between Tim's world champs silver and Kerr's olympic bronze. But then, Kerr has better PBs in the 1500 and mile, significantly so in the mile (2+ seconds).
I'd also argue that Kerr's best years have overlapped with a considerably more competitive era than Tim's. Tim wasn't really racing much more than Manangoi, and at the end, a rising Jakob. Kerr's peak era has overlapped with a historically deep period for the 1500 and, along with Jakob, Kerr has been the most consistently competitive athlete in the majority champs during this time.
The competition is also why I rate those indoor 3000m titles that Kerr holds. He had to beat Barega, Nuguse, and Hocker for those medals. Neither were deep fields, but in both cases, he was beating Olympic champions.
Tim's medal collection is rarer. Kerr's Olympic profile has been bettered by multiple people (some from before WW2 lol) while Cheruiyot only a select few who are arguably the top 3 greatest ever in the event (El Guerrouj, Morceli, Kiprop).
On PBs, context matters. Josh Kerr set his in a heavily paced (1400m), optimized race environment, while Cheruiyot’s best came under less ideal pacing conditions (800m). Times today are not directly comparable without accounting for pacing tech and race setup. The “stronger era” argument is also unprovable. You can’t show Cheruiyot wouldn’t win in this era, just like you can’t show Kerr would dominate in Tim’s. That’s all hypothetical. What we do know is that Cheruiyot won a World Championship, added two silvers, and established himself as the clear #1 for a period, that’s concrete.
and if you’re going to lean on faster times or “depth,” you also have to acknowledge modern advantages: wave-light pacing, super spikes, Maurten Bicarb have pushed performances across the board. Those factors matter when comparing eras.
You can rate those indoor 3000m titles however you want but Tim won 4 DL titles and those are better titles than the Indoor WC ones. View any world athletics ranking page. They are ranked higher.
They do matter. You just choose to not care about it
See, you have that backwards. I love the DL. I go to the London DL every year, bought my tickets for this year's event the moment they were released. But objectively, a DL means nothing. It's not like a regular season game, the ranking points don't earn athletes anything, like direct entry to the majority champs (as is the case in tennis). DLs are just meets for the sake of having meets. It's why SML doesn't have to run a single DL and can still be considered the best in the world, indeed, the best of all time. That's what I mean when I say it's a structural problem. DLs mean something to me personally, but they mean nothing in sporting terms.
DL races are some of the highest-scoring competitions in the World Athletics ranking system. Strong DL performances = big ranking points. Rnkings are used for qualification into Worlds/Olympics (not everyone gets in by time/standard). So DL results directly affect who even makes championships. Diamond League Finals = titles. DL is where athletes earn prize money, secure sponsorship leverage, better contracts. That’s very real in sporting terms .DL meets regularly bring together: Olympic medalists, World champions, top-ranked athletes, it’s where rivalries actually play out multiple times a year, not just once every 1–2 years. Personal bests national records fast times…come from DL meets with pacing and elite fields. So if you values PBs (like Kerr’s), you're already valuing DL-style races whether you admit it or not. Your SML example actually proves the opposite. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone can skip the DL because she’s already proven she’s the best, but that doesn’t mean the circuit is meaningless, it just means she doesn’t need it. Most athletes do need to race consistently to build their reputation and ranking. Especially in a historically better event (1500m) rather than the weak event (Womens 400m H).
Do you think to date that Timothy Cheruiyot or Josh Kerr has had a better career?
Tim has a lot of Diamond league wins, but Kerr has the double indoor golds.
they both have outdoor gold and many outdoor medals, with a slight edge to Tim probably.
I don’t know how their PRs compare but would guess slight edge Kerr because 3:27/8:00 is really impressive.
what Do you think? Discus
It’s an interesting thread. I lean Kerr because his PRs are now more impressive, a bit more hardware, and he has a bit more range and success up to 3,000 (lest we forget that Tim has run 1:43).
However, I think one of the intangibles of “legacy” is how dominant one was and for how long. Tim was pretty indisputably the best 1500 meter runner on Earth from 2018 to 2020 or maybe ‘21 before the Olympics, he simply had the misfortune of only having one Outdoor World or Outdoor Championship to contend between 2018 and 2020. Kerr was only arguably “the best miler in the world”, from his global title in 2023 up until losing the Olympics but due to his racing schedule, only actually ran a handful of 1500s and miles in that time. One of which he lost to Nuguse
Kerr was never the best miler in the world. He beat a sick Jakob and didn’t win a race again until next year. No official ranking ranked him as #1.
This whole debate might end up coming down to how you look at 2018 and 2020. In 2018, there was no global championships but Tim was clearly the World #1. However, he went 0 for 2 against training mate Manangoi in two regional championships (Commonwealth, African Games). I don't think those were those the absolute focus of his season like a Worlds would've been, but it has to be said. So this might've been a silver medal had it been a championship year just like in 2017, even though Tim had improved year-to-year.
In 2020, I think most agree he would've been able to replicate what he did in 2019 and won Olympic Gold from the front if not for the pandemic. He'd shored up his weakness from 2018, and Manangoi was out of the picture for missed tests anyway. It didn't seem Jakob was yet there at the level which he got to in 2021. Tim still got silver despite fallout from an injury at the end of 2020.
So, some bad luck in timing impacts things a lot. Then you have Tim's obvious advantage in Diamond Leagues (regular meets and finals). He has two Commonwealth Games silvers and they came against stout fields like Kerr's World Indoors ones. It goes without saying, gold is better than silver so advantage Kerr.
I don't really care about Kerr's time advantage yet. It's pretty clear to me that 2018-20 Cheruiyot would've eliminated the margin away if he had wavelights and better pacers. Tim was absolutely capable of 3:27 then. This could change if Kerr blows out his mile attempt and runs something crazy.
There is the argument that Kerr is in a stronger era. OK, sure. Does it say something that a past-his-prime Tim just finished 4th at Worlds and was a consistent top-4 finisher in DLs all season long? Pre-injury Tim would do pretty well I have to believe. He was really good at running from the front and closing hard. Only the recent version of Jakob could match his consistency, and with rabbits running 1000 meters-plus evenly he'd be in a great spot to be a force.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
This whole debate might end up coming down to how you look at 2018 and 2020. In 2018, there was no global championships but Tim was clearly the World #1. However, he went 0 for 2 against training mate Manangoi in two regional championships (Commonwealth, African Games). I don't think those were those the absolute focus of his season like a Worlds would've been, but it has to be said. So this might've been a silver medal had it been a championship year just like in 2017, even though Tim had improved year-to-year.
In 2020, I think most agree he would've been able to replicate what he did in 2019 and won Olympic Gold from the front if not for the pandemic. He'd shored up his weakness from 2018, and Manangoi was out of the picture for missed tests anyway. It didn't seem Jakob was yet there at the level which he got to in 2021. Tim still got silver despite fallout from an injury at the end of 2020.
So, some bad luck in timing impacts things a lot. Then you have Tim's obvious advantage in Diamond Leagues (regular meets and finals). He has two Commonwealth Games silvers and they came against stout fields like Kerr's World Indoors ones. It goes without saying, gold is better than silver so advantage Kerr.
I don't really care about Kerr's time advantage yet. It's pretty clear to me that 2018-20 Cheruiyot would've eliminated the margin away if he had wavelights and better pacers. Tim was absolutely capable of 3:27 then. This could change if Kerr blows out his mile attempt and runs something crazy.
There is the argument that Kerr is in a stronger era. OK, sure. Does it say something that a past-his-prime Tim just finished 4th at Worlds and was a consistent top-4 finisher in DLs all season long? Pre-injury Tim would do pretty well I have to believe. He was really good at running from the front and closing hard. Only the recent version of Jakob could match his consistency, and with rabbits running 1000 meters-plus evenly he'd be in a great spot to be a force.
I'm more sympathetic to Tim because he realistically only had one championship in his prime while Jakob/Kerr had 2 or more. This race was impressive and it happened in 2025 some months ago:
Sure, Kerr could probably match the 39.xx close there but lets be honest, his 2025 was kind of lackluster and I found his London DL performance to be less impressive. He doesn't race much and focused on GST more. The 3k Indoor Titles? I mean they can't be that important right? Like are we seriously forgetting the DL titles Tim has like that other guy said? I just don't see the argument for Kerr, and that's mostly on him not racing key races. Two Olympic Medals plus World title or a World Title and a silver at both the Olympics/Worlds? Which one is rarer? Maybe if you are a championship purist and you only look at championships that could be the deciding answer. I don't know whcih one is rarer maybe you can answer that you are knowledgable.