Josh Kerr and Jake Wightman left the Scotstoun track on Wednesday morning to the sound of The Proclaimers singing about walking 500 miles. On Saturday night, much of the attention will be on 13 men running just one.
The meeting of the two Scots over that mile distance at the Commonwealth Games – just before 21:00 BST – feels like the moment Glasgow 2026 has been building to.
Kerr, the fastest man ever over the distance. And Wightman, who preceded his compatriot as world champion over 1500m four years ago.
Childhood pals from Edinburgh who’ve been racing in this bit of Glasgow’s west end since they were juniors. Bad beatings, grim weather, long car journeys along the M8 with sandwiches for sustenance are in their shared history.
And now they are back at Scotstoun. Different, but the same. Both determined to win gold for Scotland in the historic, reinstated, Blue Riband event of these Games.
But speak to those who know athletics, and they’ll take a red pen to that narrative.
They will mention Cam Myers of Australia. Just 20 and enjoying a stellar summer in which he’s broken through in the Diamond League. He edged Wightman in their heat on Wednesday in a time almost five seconds fastest than Kerr’s.
That in itself won’t trouble the world record holder, who was coasting to such a degree that he had time to conduct the crowd at a couple of points.
But he and Wightman will be wary of the youngster. As they will be of another Australian, Olli Hoare.
The 2022 champion has had quite the time of it in Glasgow. First, he apparently stumbled across a murder in the city while on a training run (he didn’t). Then it was reported that he was threatened with a blade (he wasn’t).
And once he finally got on to the track, Hoare was tripped early in Kerr’s heat.
He only secured his place in the final after an appeal, but will be on the start line for the 1609m race and will be a threat.
As will one or two others who might have designs on emulating Cole Hocker, the American who capitalised on Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s enjoyably spiky pre-occupation with each other to snatch Olympic gold in Paris two years ago.
The fastidious Kerr, it’s safe to say, will have kept those receipts. Just as he will the ones from the 2022 Commonwealth final, in which Wightman took bronze while he trailed in last place.
‘If I was Josh or Cam, I’d be worried about Jake’
“I genuinely can’t wait to watch it. It’s going to be a cracker,” said BBC Sport pundit Steve Cram, who will be in the stadium on Saturday.
Few know this distance and its vagaries better than the Englishman, who himself is a former mile world record holder and three-time Commonwealth champion.
He praised organisers for the innovative inclusion of the event, which was last run in 1966 and is a tribute to ‘The Miracle Mile’ run at the 1954 Vancouver Games.
On that occasion, England’s Roger Bannister and Australian John Landy competed two months after the former became the first athlete to run a sub-four-minute mile.
And Cram notes the parallels between that and what is to come in Glasgow, just a couple of weeks after Kerr lowered the mile record to three minutes 42.66 seconds.
“It’s going to be fascinating,” he added. “I don’t think any of them are going to completely dominate. I think it’s going to be really close.
“I keep saying to people that if I was Josh or Cam Myers, I’d be worried about Jake.”
The easy assumption to make is that the Scottish crowd will roar one of their own to victory, but being the home athlete is not neccessarily always advantageous.
You’re trying to sort tickets for people right up to race day. You’re expected to make time to see friends and family. There are more sponsor demands, more media to do, more people wanting a piece of you.
Take Kerr post-heat on Wednesday. He had already stopped for several interviews before his walk from the stadium to the athletes’ area was repeatedly interupted by well-wishers and selfie hunters – all of whom were graciously indulged.
“It’s not easy,” Cram says. “If it’s in Australia, you don’t have to worry about whether you stay in the hotel or at home, about how much you engage, how involved you get in things.
“So yeah, there’s a lot of extra pressure – if that’s the right word – or maybe just distractions when you have a home Games, because everybody wants access to you and the ones who are closest to you can often be the biggest distraction.”
Wightman said his plan was to relax in the team hotel and keep his head down between the heat and the final. Kerr has posted Instagram reels of him running around Glasgow.
Neither seem unduly concerned about much other than – to paraphrase The Proclaimers – who’s gonna be the man on Saturday night.
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