Olympic high jump champion Hamish Kerr will return to competition later this month, drawing a line under a season he spent away from the runway while he recovered from burnout.
RNZ reported on Wednesday morning that the Cantabrian will jump at the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial in Silesia, Poland, on 23 August. It will be his first competition of the northern season and his first meeting of any kind since March, when he cleared 2.28m at the New Zealand Track and Field Championships in Auckland to win a tenth national title.
The Silesia meeting is part of the Wanda Diamond League, the sport’s premier one-day circuit, and Kerr goes into it as the defending series champion. RNZ reported he will face the Italian Gianmarco Tamberi, the Tokyo Olympic co-champion and one of the most recognisable figures in the event.
Kerr won in Silesia last season with a season’s best of 2.33m, a result that set up his first Diamond Trophy in Zurich. A win in Poland this time could put him in the Diamond League final in Brussels in September, which the circuit has scheduled as a two-day meeting at the start of the month. Matteo Sioli of Italy currently leads the high jump standings after three rounds, according to RNZ.
The return closes a strange and largely silent year for an athlete who spent the previous four collecting almost everything the event has to offer. Kerr won Commonwealth gold in Birmingham in 2022, the world indoor title in Glasgow in 2024, Olympic gold in Paris later that year, the Diamond Trophy, and then the world outdoor title in Tokyo in September last year. He had not competed internationally at all in 2026 before this announcement.
What stopped him was not an injury. In July he pulled out of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games, where he was the defending champion, and was unusually direct about why. Newswire covered the withdrawal at the time.
“The start of this year, had a massive few years, felt like the body was good and ready to get training, but we realised pretty quickly I was pretty burnt out,” Kerr told reporters in Glasgow. “Took a bit of a step back and had a nice physical mental reset just over the last couple of months.”
He had travelled to Scotland hoping to compete and decided against it only in the final days. “I’m just not quite ready and not in a position that I want to be to go out there, and do the singlet and the New Zealand team justice,” he said. “Unfortunate to make the decision and it was one that was not made lightly.”
In a statement released by Athletics New Zealand on the same day, Kerr set out the same reasoning in more measured language. “After a successful, yet incredibly demanding few years, I came into 2026 feeling motivated and excited for the season ahead. Early in the year I felt a bit burnt out and needing to take a step back to reset both mentally and physically. Since then, I’ve been back training and feel I’m making encouraging progress,” he said.
“My team and I were working hard to be ready in time for Glasgow 2026 and while I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made, we’ve agreed I’m not quite ready to compete.”
Athletics New Zealand said at that point that Kerr and his team believed he was close to a return, possibly within weeks. The Silesia entry, three and a half weeks after the withdrawal, is that return arriving roughly on the timetable they described.
New Zealand Team chef de mission Nigel Avery backed the call in July and framed it around what comes next. “Hamish has built his career on striving for excellence and performing at the highest level. While this was a hard decision, it speaks to the standards he holds himself to and the competitor he is. We look forward to seeing him back in action and wish him every success on the road to Los Angeles 2028,” Avery said.
Los Angeles is the point of all of it, and Kerr said as much in Glasgow. Asked whether he still intended to defend his Olympic title, he said that was the intention and the reason the reset had taken as long as it had. “I think that’s important this year to explore these things and really make sure that I’m right for the bigger ones coming forward,” he said. Asked whether he would compete again this season, he answered with a single word, “maybe”.
That answer makes the Silesia entry more significant than a routine start list. High Performance Sport New Zealand had been working with him on both his physical and mental condition, and a fortnight ago there was no certainty he would jump at all in 2026. He is now entered in a Diamond League meeting against a field that will not make allowances for a long layoff.
The competitive picture is also less forgiving than it was. Kerr sits at the top of the world rankings on results banked over the past two seasons rather than anything he has done this year, and a generation of jumpers has been busy while he has not. Sioli, still in his early twenties, has spent the season accumulating Diamond League points that Kerr has had no opportunity to contest.
Whether Kerr can clear the heights that made him champion after five months without competition is the question the Silesian Stadium will answer on 23 August. What he has already done is rarer than a medal. He named the problem out loud, in the middle of a Games, in a sport that generally prefers its athletes to describe their setbacks as niggles.
What do you make of Kerr’s decision to sit out a season to protect the back half of his career? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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