‘I want to follow in Bannister’s footsteps’: Josh Kerr gunning for world mile landmark

• Scot aims to make history at July’s London Diamond League

• ‘This record is one of the most important we have’

It is, says Josh Kerr, a moment that makes the hairs on the back of his neck tingle every time he watches it. We are talking about Roger Bannister, his body taut then spent, falling into a crowd of well-wishers on a cinder track in Oxford in 1954 having become the first person in history to break the four-minute mile barrier. “That’s what I live for,” Kerr says, with the broadest of smiles.

And then comes the grand reveal. Because at the London Diamond League in July, Kerr intends to stand on the shoulders of track and field’s giants – such as Bannister, the Australian Herb Elliott, Sebastian Coe and Steve Ovett – by breaking the mile world record.