Hamish Kerr's history-making jump in Serbia. Photo / Getty Images
The 39-year-old national record of high jumper Roger Te Puni (Ngāti Porou) has finally been surpassed in a history-making bronze medal jump by New Zealand athlete Hamish Kerr at the 2022 World Indoor Championship in Belgrade, Serbia.
Te Puni's long-standing national indoor record of 2.16m set in Waitematā, Auckland in 1983 was bettered four times by Kerr on his way to becoming the first New Zealander to win a global (world championships or Olympic) high jump medal.
25-year-old Kerr matched his national outdoor record of 2.31m in securing the bronze medal.
Te Puni, who in his prime stood 6ft 4in and weighed 80kg, won 11 national titles between 1982 and 1994 and finished eighth, "fresh out of school", at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, according to Stuff, who spoke with him in 2014.
He finished eighth again at the 1990 Games in Auckland.
His personal best was 2.24m, which he set two weeks after the Auckland Commonwealth Games.
''It would've been nice to do that two weeks earlier. I would've had a bronze,'' Te Puni told Stuff.
His older brother James is the former chief executive of the Wellington Hurricanes.