motivated by jumping higher<\/a> and has said with that comes results.<\/p>\n“I came into this sport with just this desire to want to jump higher and that is the amazing thing about athletics it is so measurable.<\/p>\n
“That goal to see where the limit is, with how high I can jump, has not been achieved yet.”<\/p>\n
Kerr is in the middle of a heavy training block and will open his season at the National Championships in Auckland in early March.<\/p>\n
He will defend his Diamond League title and Commonwealth Games titles this year and improving his personal best from 2:36m to 2:40m is the aim for 2026.<\/p>\n
![\"Hamish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4KBKXX3_250222_AthleticsChCh_39_jpg.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nHamish Kerr during the International Athletics Meet in Christchurch, 2025.
\nPhoto: \u00a9 Photosport Ltd 2025 www.photosport.nz\n<\/p>\n
Only 16 men have jumped 2:40m or higher and the last person did it in 2014.<\/p>\n
“It is definitely the target for this year and to achieve that would be an amazing honour, but we also know there is more in the tank.”<\/p>\n
He is also inspired by the thought of challenging the world record of 2:45m set by Cuban Javier Sotomayor in 1993.<\/p>\n
Kerr realises it would be quite an achievement, but it’s one he has put plenty of thought into.<\/p>\n
“With my team we wrote down all the things we think we could optimise and it came out as quite a big list. So that is really gratifying to know that even after all these years there are still a lot of stones that we haven’t turned over yet.<\/p>\n
“I think in the next few years if we can start flipping a few of those over there is a decent chance that we’ll be able to get a number of those centimetres.”<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Zealand high jumper Hamish Kerr is the Supreme Winner at The 63rd Halberg Awards. 2026. Photo: Andrew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-287310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4JT3KRN_260216_HalbergAwards_109_JPG.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n