High jumper Hamish Kerr at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow (© Getty Images)
Finishing third at the opening Wanda Diamond League meeting of the season in Xiamen was not quite the start that world indoor high jump champion Hamish Kerr had in mind in the wake of his Glasgow gold medal and world-leading leap of 2.36m.
Nevertheless, the New Zealander is nothing but a realist.
“It's early in the season and there are a lot of changes being made. There was probably more height there, but I just didn't quite get it,” reflected Kerr.
“I didn't find my rhythm, that was the hardest part – that my rhythm wasn't quite there and there was not very much consistency,” he added, after clearing a modest 2.24m, albeit in rainy conditions.
Kerr now has a few days to reflect, and he will be looking to recapture rather more of his Glasgow form when the Diamond League moves on to its second Chinese stop in Suzhou on Saturday (27).
Despite his performance in Xiamen, it certainly doesn’t diminish what he achieved in his only indoor outing of the year seven weeks ago.
In addition to his winning 2.36m being a world lead, Kerr also equalled the Oceanian record previously jointly held by the Australian duo of Tim Forsyth and Brandon Starc, who cleared that height in 1997 and 2018, respectively.
“This is a special medal for me and my country. We had some big goals and big dreams coming here (to Glasgow) but the focus is on the outdoor season. Although you can only compete against who turns up, and I wanted to capitalise on that, some of the top guys like Mutaz Barshim weren’t here,” said Kerr at the time.
Hamish Kerr competes at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow (© Getty Images)
Barshim, the three-time World Athletics Championships gold medallist and Olympic champion, originally had a trip to Glasgow in his diary, and a bid to regain the world indoor title he won in 2014.
Sadly, an ill-timed back injury in mid-February put an end to his plans for a brief indoor campaign.
Fortunately, the charismatic Qatari is now close to being fully recovered – finishing once place ahead of Kerr in Xiamen with 2.27m with victory going to USA’s Shelby McEwen, who also navigated 2.27m but on his first attempt to Barshim’s third – and Kerr is scheduled to face his friendly rival on two more occasions in the coming weeks, including in Suzhou.
After Suzhou, there is a 10-week Diamond League hiatus in the men’s high jump before the event returns on the programme of Monaco on 12 July and then London on 20 July.
However, many of the world’s top jumpers including Kerr will gather in Qatar on 9 May, the day before the Doha Diamond League, for Barshim’s What Gravity Challenge meeting (a World Athletics Continental Tour Silver meeting).
Joining Barshim and Kerr will be world champion Gianmarco Tamberi, world silver medallist JuVaughn Harrison and Kerr’s predecessor as world indoor champion Woo Sanghyeok, among others in a star-studded field.
“I'll go back to New Zealand after Doha, and I’ll also be off to the US to be with (close friend and 2017 world shot put champion) Tom Walsh in Athens, Georgia, where he’s based before coming to Monaco,” said Kerr, outlining his pre-Olympic schedule.
Hamish Kerr and Tom Walsh in Glasgow (© Getty Images)
“The jump of my life”
“I think the thing I was most proud about (in Glasgow) was jumping 2.36m. It was the jump of my life so far,” added Kerr, noting that he cleared the bar with daylight to spare before calling it a day and eschewing any attempts at a higher bar.
“I wanted to make the most of my peak and the good condition my legs were in. When I had the competition won, that’s what I wanted to do, although you can never plan for it. But knowing that I’d only jumped 2.31m to win gold, I wanted to jump higher than that because I think that winning at 2.31m is a little bit less than impressive… and 2.28m was definitely pretty low for a medal.
“It crossed my mind to have a jump at 2.38m but with all the adrenalin and motivation I’d need to get over 2.36m, as soon as I hit the mat, I also said to myself: ‘I’m done’.
“But jumping so well when the others are not shows that what we are doing back home (in his home city of Christchurch, New Zealand) is working.”
Coaching change
Kerr made the decision to change his coach at the end of last season, with 2023 seeing him clear an outdoor best of 2.33m when finishing second at the Zurich Diamond League meeting but also crashing out of the World Athletics Championships in the qualifying rounds 11 days earlier when he could go no higher than 2.22m.
He is now working with James Sandilands, a former flatmate of Kerr’s and teenage rival who competed for New Zealand as a hurdler at the 2013 World Athletics U18 Championships.
His previous coach Terry Lomax was looking to wind down his coaching commitments prior to retiring but is also still on hand in an advisory role.
Hamish Kerr in action in Zurich (© Chiara Montesano / Diamond League AG)
When Kerr’s decision to work with Sandilands was first announced last November, the phrase used by some New Zealand sports media to describe the switch was that it was “a bold move”.
With just 10 months until the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, many were sceptical about the benefits of having a new coaching environment, as a ‘settling in period’ often occurs with such changes.
However, with Kerr and Sandilands already familiar with each other, and the latter having accompanied Kerr on previous expeditions to Europe as the eyes and ears of Lomax, including his successful 2023 indoor campaign when he jumped what was then an Oceanian indoor record of 2.34m at the famed Banska Bystrica high jump meeting in Slovakia, there has clearly been none of the adaption issues many other technical events exponents have faced in similar circumstances.
High jump history
If Kerr continues to rise to the occasion in the coming months and gets on the podium in Paris, he will be the first Kiwi high jumper of either gender ever to get a medal at the Olympics.
After Glasgow, Kerr has certainly elevated himself into Paris medal consideration among athletics pundits.
As he was quick to point out in the Scottish city, none of the Budapest world medallists – Tamberi, Harrison or Barshim – competed indoors, so he is taking nothing for granted.
Nevertheless, prompted by Kerr’s gold medal-winning feat at the World Indoor Championships, there is anticipation that 2024 could turn out to be a halcyon year for the high jump.
Maybe the world will even see a man – and who would bet against it being Kerr, judging from the height he had with his final jump in Glasgow – going over 2.40m or more for the first time in six years.
Phil Minshull for World Athletics
