Pictures: Maree Wilkinson
Champion speed climber Sarah Tetzlaff likens the lead-up to the Olympics to watching a big wave coming closer and closer.
“I can feel what’s coming on the horizon,” says the Mount Maunganui athlete, who was the first Kiwi woman to be announced on our Olympic team back in March.
“Whatever happens, it’s going to be very emotional, overwhelming and exciting in many ways. Being a competitive person, it feels like such a privilege to be preparing for that sporting stage – the biggest in the world – and I’m going to give it a really good crack.”
The 24-year-old, 1.73m-tall athlete has been doing a good job of cracking it. She’s won the New Zealand national title for speed climbing multiple times and has broken Kiwi records (15, in fact) at nearly every national and international competition she’s entered. She can scale her sport’s 15m-high wall in just 8.54 seconds – a personal best achieved last November at the Oceania Olympic qualifying event in Melbourne.
“I was pretty stoked with that time, especially as I’d never run close to that,” grins Sarah. “It was a massive surprise and pretty hard to wrap my head around the fact I’d performed better than ever before under so much pressure. I don’t think my coach quite believed it either!”
Sarah was 17, living at home in Wellington and just finishing school when she first heard from Rob Moore. It was right after she’d won three Oceania youth titles and subsequently qualified for the 2018 Youth Olympics.
The renowned speed-climbing coach suggested she move to Mount Maunganui so he could coach her for the event. She recalls, “I sat my last school exam and moved the very next day.”
Thanks to Rob, the Mount boasts Aotearoa’s only standardised speed-climbing wall, which provides athletes with a world-class training environment. Prior to its construction in 2019, it wasn’t possible to train for the sport in New Zealand.
Being based in the Bay of Plenty suits Sarah, who studies environmental science at Tauranga’s Coastal Marine Field Station. Her focus is freshwater ecology – specifically, the impact of leaking septic tanks on Lake Tarawera – and she has about 12 to 18 months of part-time study left to get her Master’s. She lives off academic scholarships and is always looking for more funding support.
Life is a bit of a juggling act right now, Sarah admits. Twenty-two hours a week are dedicated to her sport, with wall training taking up about 14 hours of that. The remainder is strength and conditioning.
Sarah is part of a national speed-climbing squad of six. The entire squad who compete at World Cup level are based out of the Mount. However, selectors only chose Sarah and Tauranga’s Julian David, 19, for the 2024 Paris Olympics. Paris will be the first time speed climbing has its own medal event.
The pair left New Zealand last month. Their first stop was a week-long training camp in Jakarta. Then, it was a flight to Lyon in France to compete in two World Cup events to gain a little more international experience.
“There’s definitely a lot of nerves and excitement,” confesses Sarah. “But I’m really looking forward to Paris and being in the Olympic Village with the NZ team and other athletes I admire. Mine is a very niche sport and I don’t get to be around high-performance athletes so much, so it will be very motivating.”
Her Paris supporters will include her parents, Vicki Stent and Greg Tetzlaff, her boyfriend Jack “JJ” Niles and her younger brother Will. It’s partly thanks to Will that Sarah’s a climber.
She tells, “Will used to do a lot of climbing. I saw he enjoyed it a lot, which is partly why I started.”
That was when she was 12 and looking for something to replace gymnastics. Dance, aerobics and circus classes were all fine, but none captured her like climbing. Even though she initially struggled with “an irrational and bizarre” fear of heights!
When not climbing or studying, Sarah loves to read sci-fi novels, or go tramping, mountain biking, surfing, rock climbing or canyoning, usually with her “fellow adrenaline- junkie” boyfriend at her side.
“I like to push myself out of my comfort zone. I get a lot of enjoyment from that,” she says. “Doing things that are just leisurely doesn’t really fill my cup – I like challenges.”
As for the future, the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and the 2032 Brisbane Games are already in Sarah’s sights.
“I’ll be 32 then and that will probably be my last go,” she says. “I say that as a 24-year-old with lots of energy in life. But hopefully, I’ll keep those wins coming!”
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