I’d like to know why Spoty rejected me

Josh Kerr has revealed his huge disappointment at being snubbed by the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year shortlist and would “love to see the minutes” of the judges’ top secret deliberations.

Kerr is urging viewers to vote for his fellow world athletics champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson now. Kerr will still travel from his base in Seattle to attend Tuesday’s ceremony, using it as extra motivation in his quest to become only Britain’s second post-war Olympic 1500m champion. .

Seb Coe, who won his Olympic gold in the 1500 meters in 1980 and 1984 and is now chairman of World Athletics, was among those to react to Kerr’s shocking omission from a reduced shortlist of six.

‘Are you laughing Spoty? World champion in the biggest global sporting event of 2023,” said Coe, who was himself a Spoty winner in 1979.

When a public vote has previously taken place, viewers have chosen a succession of world and European athletics champions, including Steve Ovett, Brendan Foster, Daley Thompson, Steve Cram, Fatima Whitbread, Liz McColgan and Jonathan Edwards. Now they have made a partial decision, with the BBC selecting just six possible winners for viewers to vote on.

“I’m obviously hugely disappointed,” said Kerr, who defeated Jakob Ingebrigtsen, one of the all-time 1500m running greats, in a dramatic side-by-side finish at the World Championships in Budapest.

Kerr also joked that he would now have to pay for his flights back to Britain, admitting that the subjective vagaries of the Spoty pre-selection process were quite different from the world in which he operates.

Speaking to a group of journalists, including two members of the 12-strong Spoty panel, Kerr said: “I’m in a very specialized sport. You are fast enough, you run a qualifying time and you participate in the event. Not many things in my entire career have depended on the judgment of others. I’ve always been taught to go out there without any doubts, but obviously I left some doubts.

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‘I’d like to see the minutes of the meeting, if they ever come out. To be honest, I was hoping my flights would be covered, but I don’t think they will be covered at all this time! But no, every time I can go back to Britain, I’ll come back. It’s a big family time for me.

“It’s such a prestigious event and an award I would have loved to participate in. But I’m still going. I will be there to represent British athletics and support KJT. I’m not sitting there crying. I’m going out and getting my work done for next year.

“KJT had such a great comeback in 2019. I was someone who could take home a gold medal for the team, and so was she. And many more days. I was only three and a half minutes away. I don’t know if that was taken into account. I’m happy that I can hopefully support her in victory.”

Asked if the controversial snarl would serve as extra motivation ahead of the Paris Olympics next summer, Kerr said: “I’m here to create moments for myself and Team GB. I’m here to get medals. If it is deemed good enough for Sports Personality of the Year, I will hopefully be there representing athletics.

“I have been honored in a number of ways by some wonderful people. But yeah, you think about the ones you don’t get. I’m not shortlisted for Sports Personality of the Year, so I’ll add it to the list of things I’d like to do.

“It was one of the best 1500m finals in the world that we have seen in a very long time. It will be a more difficult year [in 2024] to get on that shortlist. Hopefully next year my performance will be comparable to everyone else’s.”

Kerr, who said after his Olympic bronze two years ago: “I’m not here to eat yogurt… I’m not here to be famous, I’m here to race,” also laughed at the reactions to those comments by Andrew Pozzi, another British athlete and Johnson-Thompson’s partner. The broader context was that Johnson-Thompson, who had to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics due to a calf injury, had appeared in an advertisement for Muller.

“It was more the process of being bullied for being an anonymous Olympic medalist – just letting people know I was there to get medals,” Kerr explains. “If those opportunities arise, that’s fine, but that wasn’t always my childhood dream. He [Pozzi] I was just trying to protect KJT and that’s fine. We are good friends. We report on it quite a bit. It’s very ironic.”

As for his dreams, Kerr also revealed that he has been focused on this particular Olympic Games since the age of 14 and that his absolute focus on Paris could mean he even misses a home World Indoor Championship in Glasgow in early March.

“It is sometimes difficult to have an American coach [Danny Mackey], but it also helps in other ways,” he said. “If I had a British coach I think it would be a situation of: ‘Let’s do it. Let’s get patriotic. Let’s go to Glasgow and do a job.’ As he says, “You told me that everything has to be towards this August 6 goal. So why do we get emotional when, even if you win World Indoor Championship gold, if you don’t make it to the Olympics, the year is a failure?’

“August 6 is my day. From that moment on everything works again. I have been watching these Olympics for a long time, twelve years to be exact. I realized I was going to be at the peak of my career.”

Speaking about his rivalry with Olympic champion Ingebrigtsen and his good friend Jake Wightman, who was once an Edinburgh team-mate, he added: “Sometimes it’s a bit tongue-in-cheek and we have a bit of fun. the same way he did [Ingebrigtsen] has a bit of fun in interviews. We want the same thing and we are not willing to make the sacrifice of: ‘You can have this.’ I stand by all the things I say.

“I want to win when everyone is at their best. You don’t dream of achieving an ‘off year win’. You dream of racing to the line, dipping and gaining a vest’s worth and hopefully running away with a gold medal.