It all culminated for Kerr with listening to Flower of Scotland playing while he stood, bottom lip twitching, on the podium. Several times he had to stop singing to compose himself and, when the music stopped, he had to wipe tears from his eyes.
Scotland matters to him in a way that those many natives who have lived outside the country will recognise. Albuquerque in New Mexico is his base now – something his accent and phraseology sometime betrays – but Edinburgh will always be home.
“It’s it’s everything to me,” Kerr said of his nationality. “It’s the way I present myself and the way I was built. I grew up in Edinburgh until I was 17 and I’m very proud to be Scottish. I’m back four times a year right now, which I feel pretty good about.”
With that said, how does he feel about being considered a sporting standard bearer for his country? As a successor to the likes of Sir Chris Hoy and Sir Andy Murray?
“Um, yeah, that, that sounds, yeah, I mean, it’s an honour to be, to be spoken in the same sentence as those two legends,” said the loquacious Kerr, for once struggling for words as the notion takes hold.
“Sir Chris Hoy went to my school, actually, and spoke a few times during assemblies and that just closed the gap between me and him for when I was sitting there as a pupil. It made it seem possible.
“Hopefully I can do that, too, but those two guys are absolute legends of the game and I’ve got a lot of work to do to keep up with them.”
Keeping up, as Kerr has proved this summer, is not something he tends to struggle with.
