But when the Scot squeezed hard on the trigger over the final 200m at Zurich's Weltklasse last night he found nothing left in the barrel.
But Kerr wasn't the only one struggling to keep up with the searing pace.
The Olympic champion Cole Hocker of the US was also too far back when the pacemaker Elliot Giles dropped out with 400m to go, and Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen kicked for home.
Suddenly a race that had been billed as the rematch of the big four in Paris boiled down to two men: Ingebrigtsen and US star Yared Nuguse.
Ingebrigtsen was the fastest man in the field, and broke the longstanding 3,000m world record last week.
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