Twelve months ago, the high jumper started one of the biggest years of his career with an almighty bang when he jumped 2.36m to win gold at the world indoor championships, shattering the New Zealand record and equalling the Oceania mark.
Then, in August, Kerr jumped to glory when he cleared 2.34m to be crowned the Olympic champion and return home with the gold medal.
But there is one notch in his belt that is missing.
"I’m actually currently not the national champion," Kerr said during an interview with the Otago Daily Times yesterday.
That honour belongs to Canterbury’s Adam Stack, who jumped 2.10m at last year’s championships, which Kerr skipped due to his heavy workload.
But Kerr is back home this summer, and is looking to add the national title to his cabinet in a place he has always viewed fondly.
The now Christchurch-based athlete was born in Dunedin before moving to Auckland when he was 2.
His parents, Bridget and Andrew, met and studied in the southern city, and his sister, Julia, also studied at the University of Otago.
"Probably a small part of me is still based in Otago — a very small part of me.
"I’m just super excited to get back to Dunners and compete in front of a crowd.
"I love the track down there. It’s really great, good atmosphere, nice sort of intimate kind of bowl with the various kind of hills and stuff around it.
"Just the reaction that I’ve had jumping has been awesome, so I’m really excited to have hopefully a great local crowd [to] watch us compete."
Kerr, who last competed in Dunedin in 2020, is among a crew of New Zealand’s elite athletes who have the rare chance to compete at home in a non-pinnacle year — something he knew was important to push the sport further.
"The year after the Games is all about, how do the community get behind it and how do we as athletes, hopefully, get people interested in doing sport and getting outside and just moving around?
"It’s pretty cool we get to compete domestically and do a bit of that."
Kerr, who was recently named sportsman of the year at the Halberg Awards, has spent a lovely summer at home, having not been overseas since October — "which makes me feel very itchy" — but he had already enjoyed success on the home summer circuit.
He acknowledged the energy of last year took its toll, and spent the first half of his summer rejuvenating to see if he still enjoyed jumping.
But the past month he had ramped things up and had already produced some good results, including jumping 2.30m at the International Track Meet in Christchurch two weeks ago.
And the buzz he has for his sport has returned.
"Last year was very much around titles and trying to win lots of stuff.
"There’s only so much you can do of that before it sort of starts getting a little bit external in a way, just in terms of your motivation.
"Also knowing that I’ve literally just ticked off the biggest one that you could ever tick off, it’s always interesting coming back into what that looks like moving forward.
"For me, I’m super motivated.
"I feel like I’ve got a lot more to give in terms of how high I can jump and how I can sort of push myself."
Reflecting six months on from the Olympics, Kerr said it was a "hugely successful" campaign. The obvious thrills were winning gold, and big jumps, but he also recognised his dedication to his craft.
"I knew that I had an opportunity to work really hard and put a really good plan together and really stick to it — and that’s what we did.
"We sat down in November 2023 and set some really clear expectations around how we were going to work and how committed I was going to be.
"That’s probably the thing for me that I’m really stoked about. Last year I really felt like I kind of elevated my level, in terms of my performance.
"As I start getting back into training, it’s quite cool to sort of see how some of those habits and ways of working have really set in stone now.
"In the next few years, I’ve — hopefully — committed to the fact that I will be able to keep winning and just go higher and higher and higher."
