Hello, I’m Sarah! I am the national champion in speed climbing and currently live in Tauranga. Originally I grew up in Wellington where I started climbing at the age of 12. In 2017 I unexpectedly qualified for the Youth Olympics and made the move to Mt Maunganui the day after my last school exam to train with the NZ Head Coach (Rob) for this event. This really kickstarted my career in climbing and since the Youth Olympics I have had the privilege of competing in multiple World Cup and World Championship events. At the start of last year (2022), I decided to commit to only training and competing in speed climbing, as Rob had developed a high performance program with the aim to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Pretty hard to not give that a shot! Since I made the change, I have competed at five World Cup events and have broken my NZ record at four of them, whilst my PB has decreased from 10.94s to 8.81s. I can say that I am pretty proud of that. With the qualification event for Paris looming on the horizon in November this year, I am getting really really excited and nervous to see how the last (almost) 2 years of work can be put to the ultimate test!

Outside of speed climbing I am also undertaking a Research Masters degree in Environmental Science, looking at shallow groundwater contaminants at Lake Tarawera. I am incredibly passionate about looking after our environment and protecting it against future climate change and other stressors, and I am really enjoying this next step on my journey towards eventually working in the scientific field. In my free time (not that I really have much!) I love to get out into nature to go mountain biking, canyoning, skiing, surfing, camping, and rock climbing, depending on the season and weather.