Jake Wightman Won’t Run 2024 World Indoors in Glasgow; Josh Kerr Still Deciding
World Athletics president Seb Coe says top athletes must race more but respects athletes' rights to make their own schedules
By Jonathan Gault
Scottish 1500-meter running is having a moment right now. Laura Muir has medalled at two of the last three global outdoor championships. Between Jake Wightman, Josh Kerr, and Neil Gourley, there have been at least two Scots in each of the last four men’s global outdoor 1500m finals — other than Kenya, no other country can make that claim. And of course, Scots have won the last two men’s 1500m outdoor world titles, Wightman prevailing in Eugene and Kerr in Budapest. Not bad for a country of 5.4 million — roughly the population of South Carolina.
From March 1-3, Glasgow’s Emirates Arena will host the World Indoor Championships, just the second time, after 2008 World Cross in Edinburgh, that Scotland has hosted a global running championship. But while Muir has already committed to competing in the 3000m if selected and Kerr told Sean Ingle last week he has yet to decide, LetsRun.com can reveal that Wightman will not compete in Glasgow. Three of Scotland’s greatest-ever athletes, in their prime, and we may only see one of them competing in a global championship contested on home soil.
Wightman has been announced for two races so far in 2024: the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix on February 4 in Boston (New Balance is Wightman’s sponsor and his agent, Mark Wetmore, is the meet director) and the Maurie Plant Meet in Melbourne on February 15. Australia is a long way from Glasgow, and Wightman’s father/coach Geoff confirmed to LetsRun that Jake, who has not raced since January 2023 due to a foot injury, will not race World Indoors. Geoff told LetsRun part of the reason why he won’t race in Glasgow is so he can get the Olympic qualifying time of 3:33.50 out of the way.
“Jake ran World Indoors in 2018 in Birmingham and finished sixth,” Geoff wrote in a message to LetsRun. “That was when the Commonwealth Games was in Gold Coast the following month. When he targeted the European Indoors in Glasgow in 2019 he picked up his first major injury – a stress fracture of the sacrum just before Christmas. We have therefore stuck to a 2-3 race indoor season ever since. And with the cancellation of the Birmingham Indoor Grand Prix in February, it should be one race indoors at NBIGP Boston and two in Australia outdoors in Feb/Mar. The target will also be to try and secure Paris qualifying time early, having missed the whole year.”
Kerr said last week that he’d like to compete in Glasgow but is not sure he will be able to do that and be at his best for the Olympics in August.
“It’s in Glasgow,” Kerr told The Guardian. “I grew up racing there. So I’m banging the drum for it. But [my coach Danny Mackey] is like: ‘Well, you know, you told me that everything has to be towards this 6 August goal. So why are we getting emotional when, even if you win World Indoor gold, if you don’t make the Olympics, then the year is a failure.’”
For the third straight year, Kerr will run at the Millrose Games in New York on February 11, where he is targeting the indoor 2-mile world record of 8:03.40 held by Mo Farah. And while Kerr has never run European or World Indoors, he has run a second indoor race on the last weekend in February in each of the last two years. In 2022, Kerr chose to chase the British indoor mile record at Boston University (which he broke, running 3:48.87) rather than compete at the British champs. Last year, Kerr ran the 1500 at the World Indoor Tour Final in Birmingham, where he finished 5th in 3:34.93.
The 2024 World Indoor Championships run from March 1-3, just one week after Kerr typically ends his indoor campaign. But Mackey, who reiterated that they are still undecided about whether to pursue World Indoors, told LetsRun earlier this week that there are a number of complicating factors at play.
For starters, Mackey said, running Worlds is not as simple as just tacking on one more race to the schedule. As a 2023 global medalist, Kerr would be in line for a spot on the team under British Athletics’ selection policy but would be required to run the British championships on February 17-18 in Birmingham (Mackey said he did not expect British Athletics grant Kerr an exemption to skip the trials, though admitted he had not discussed the possibility with them). That would mean a total of four more races, not one: prelims and finals at both the British championships and World Indoors.
Kerr’s life has changed since he became world champion. Mackey compares Kerr to a CEO now because the demands on his time are so much greater. Signing up for a meet like World Indoors does not just mean running the race; it also means spending the weeks and months leading up to the event giving interviews about the race and fulfilling obligations from sponsors like Brooks and Oakley, who want to promote his participation in the race.
“For him to go add on two more races doesn’t mean anything to somebody else,” Mackey said. “It’s only a mile, go run it. But the amount of media and stress that he has to handle to do that adds up. If anybody doesn’t think there’s any cost to that, then they’re stupid.”
Mackey said that is why he is impressed by an athlete like Noah Lyles, who is able to manage all of those demands while consistently racing at a high level — though he noted that Lyles, like many of the world’s top sprinters, is likely to skip World Indoors.
Of course, Lyles’ two main events — the 100m and 200m — aren’t offered at World Indoors. And it should be noted that each of the last two Olympic 1500 champions ran and won a major indoor championship earlier that year. In 2016, Matthew Centrowitz won World Indoors on home soil in Portland on March 20 and earned Olympic gold in Rio on August 20. In 2021, Jakob Ingebrigtsen won the Euro Indoor 1500 title in Torun on March 5 (and the 3000 title on March 7) and Olympic gold in Tokyo on August 7.
But Mackey says that athletes like Ingebrigtsen, who are able to maintain close to top fitness almost year-round, are the exception rather than the rule. Of the top six finishers in the men’s 1500 at the 2022 Worlds, Ingebrigtsen was the only one who also ran World Indoors.
“I don’t know how Jakob does it, to be honest,” Mackey said. “…Jakob, he can race 25 times a year, break all of these records, and be peaked for 10 months. That’s not really been Josh’s MO…We’re pretty selective about when he can be really ready to go. We don’t have a massive window with him.”
Obviously, Kerr plans on being pretty fit this winter if he is trying to break a world record at Millrose — LetsRun stats guru John Kellogg converts Farah’s 8:03.40 world record to 7:27.42 for 3000 meters. But Mackey does not believe Kerr needs to be in peak shape to break the record and is cautious of extending his indoor season another three weeks. He noted that Kerr’s last two trips to the UK for indoor races did not go particularly well — he was 4th at the 800 at the 2020 British champs and 5th in the 1500 at the 2023 Birmingham World Indoor Tour meet.
“He doesn’t really like to do races he’s not ready for,” Mackey said. “…For him to go run Millrose, the world record is not that fast. He’s gonna be 85-90% ready, kind of like how he was last year when he ran 7:33. It’s [a question of] do you want to extend the season a month or just have one and done?”
Mackey said that while his role of coach is ultimately in service of his athletes, there are times when he has to be the “adult in the room” and offer his objective assessment about what each athlete can realistically handle. He is concerned about piling the mental, physical, and emotional strain of World Indoors on top of a year that also includes the Olympic Games, which remains Kerr’s primary focus. If Mackey concludes the cumulative toll is too great, he will recommend skipping World Indoors.
“I’m worried about [potential] injury, the extra stress of it and travel,” Mackey said. “I’m worried about just overall recovery. He’s gotta be going into August – which is for all these guys, their fourth major global championship in a row outdoors – feeling super energetic and excited and not tired…He’s still gotta make the Olympic team, which is hard to do. That’s a lot.”
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Coe says it’s not his job to decide when athletes race, but says the best athletes don’t race enough
Mackey’s explanation gets at one of the existential tensions of professional track & field. Athletes such as Kerr and Wightman want to be at their best at the most important meet of the year — in 2024, that’s the Olympics — and are heavily incentivized to prioritize that meet above all others. They have come up in a system where the Olympics (or outdoor Worlds) is the only meet that matters, with most athletes’ endorsement contracts structured to reflect that. As a result, any meet that could pose even a potential hindrance to that aim can be jettisoned if it does not fit exactly right — which leads to fewer meets that matter and places an even greater reliance on the one that does.
Meanwhile, fans of the sport want to see the best athletes race each other, and the “only one meet matters” approach does not help with that. Wightman still has not raced Ingebrigtsen since the 2022 Worlds final. Kerr and Ingebrigtsen did not race each other after Worlds last year, either as Kerr skipped the Diamond League final. Even if Ingebrigtsen, who is currently dealing with a sacrum injury, does run World Indoors in 2024, a rematch with Wightman and/or Kerr may have to wait.
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has spoken about track becoming more than a “May to September sport.” He believes the best athletes need to race more often — both overall and against each other.
“We’re not doing it enough when you compare it to other sports and there need to be some changes,” Coe said in July.
But Coe — who barely raced his greatest rival, Steve Ovett, outside of the major championships during his own career — does not feel it is place to force athletes to compete at certain meets.
“I’ve been an athlete,” Coe said. “I’m hardly likely to be a federation president that tells athletes what programs they have to adhere to. That’s between them and their coaches. I wouldn’t have welcomed somebody in my position turning round and saying, ‘Seb, I want you to do this event or that event’ in an Olympic or World Championship year. What we will do is we will provide those opportunities.”
World Indoors is one such opportunity, and Coe has been working on tweaking the calendar to create more of them. There have been discussions at WA about moving the World Cross Country Championships from March to December, allowing athletes to run a cross country and indoor season rather than choosing between them. Another possibility, Coe said, is to make sure each outdoor season ends with the World Championship, rather than the Diamond League final.
But creating those opportunities is only half the battle. Athletes still need to be incentivized to take them — if not by World Athletics, then by the shoe companies who pay their salaries.
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