It is a good time to be a 27-year-old athlete at the Paris Olympics as after Noah Lyles and Arshad Nadeem, New Zealand's Hamish Kerr scripted history winning the Gold medal in men's high jump final after prevailing in a one-of-a-kind jump-off against the USA's Shelby McEwen. Kerr and McEwen had the option of winning a shared Gold medal but both decided to go for a jump-off after both cleared the 2.36m mark.
The bar was raised to 2.38m at which both faltered. It was then lowered to 2.36m and both Kerr and McEwen failed again. Finally, Kerr cleared the bar when it was lowered for the second time to 2.34m and beat McEwen to the Gold medal. However, the path wasn't easy for Kerr, who had a fault start to the third round in a bizarre jump or rather a failed jump.
As Kerr ran in to jump over the bar, he instead jumped under it onto the mat as it looked like someone, who had never participated in the high jump was taking part. Kerr pulled out of the jump at the last moment and the way he went onto the mat, the fans made hilarious parallels with children going into their bed while many said that this jump made them believe that they can be Olympians as well.
Watch the video here:
"To do it the way I did it was just amazing," Kerr said on winning on jump-off. Qatar's Mutaz Barshim who won the bronze medal in Paris, had shared the Gold with Gianmarco Tamberi of Itay in Tokyo. However, Kerr and McEwen wanted to give themselves a chance to be able to separate from each other.
"It was crazy. I have so much respect for what they did in Tokyo. But I always thought that to add to the story and to be able to be given the chance to actually do the jump-off would be so amazing," Kerr added. I knew straight away that we were going to make history and we did that.
"I'm pretty sure Shelby was in the same mindset because we just looked at each other and it was pretty simple. We both just nodded and off we went."
Echoing Kerr's sentiments, McEwen said that both were on the same page regarding the jump-off. "We talked to each other, and he was like, 'Let's jump off.' And I was like, 'I'm all for it.'"
