Sarah Tetzlaff

Sarah Tetzlaff (born 2000) is a competition climber from New Zealand, specialising in speed climbing, and a member of the 2024 New Zealand Olympic Team. She won her place at the Olympics by winning the Oceania qualifier, held in November 2023 in Melbourne, Australia.[1]

Early life[edit]

Tetzlaff was born in 2000 in Lower Hutt.[2] She gave up gymnastics as an 11-year-old,[3] in part because of the drive to push on through injuries. She tried circus performance[4] but eventually settled on climbing, a shared interest with her older brother.[3] By age 13 she was competing in speed, but her fear of heights sometimes left her frozen at the top of the wall for many minutes.[5] While finishing at Wellington Girls' College, at age 17, she went to Germany for an exchange month, and returned fired up for the sport.

For years Tetzlaff had to train in other countries, as the nearest speed wall to New Zealand was thousands of km away in New Caledonia.[3] In 2018 she moved from Wellington to Tauranga,[3] where she uses a speed wall in Blake Park at Mount Maunganui.[5]

Competition climbing[edit]

Tetzlaff entered the 2017 Oceania Youth Championship in Nouméa, and signed up for the qualification event for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics "on a whim"[4] and medaled in all three of speed, boulder, and lead, taking gold in speed and boulder.[6] That result took her to the Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she took 21st place in sport climbing at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics, a combined event featuring all three disciplines.[3]

Even before the 2018 Youth Olympics, she stated: "my sights are set on the 2024 Paris Olympics".[4] When she won the Oceania qualifier in 2023, she and teammate Julian David became the first two New Zealanders to gain a place in the 2024 Olympics, and they will be the first New Zealanders to compete at climbing in the Olympics.[7] Her time in the final qualifying race, 8.54 seconds, was a personal best but remains well behind the times of the top contenders at the Olympics.[3] Instead, her goal is to continue improving her times to reach the world standard by 2028 and 2032.[5]

Personal life[edit]

Tetzlaff is a part-time master's student in environmental science, at the University of Waikato, focusing (despite her proximity to the ocean) on the shallow water near the shores of Lake Tarawera.[3][5] Her master's research won the 2023 Waikato Regional Council Prize in Water Science.[8]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Paris 2024: Julian David and Sarah Tetzlaff become first New Zealand climbers to qualify for Olympic Games", New Zealand Herald, 26 November 2023
  2. ^ "Sarah Tetzlaff", NZ Team, New Zealand Olympic Committee, archived from the original on 2020-02-15{{citation}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g "Olympics 2024: Sarah Tetzlaff", UK Climbing, retrieved 2024-07-11
  4. ^ a b c McFadden, Suzanne (30 July 2018), "Young climber striving to be faster, higher, stronger: As climbing becomes a new Olympic sport, 18-year-old Sarah Tetzlaff is reaching heights no Kiwi climber has reached before", Newsroom, retrieved 2024-07-11
  5. ^ a b c d Walker, Angela (13 March 2024), "From terror to the top, climber sets sights high", Newsroom, retrieved 2024-07-11
  6. ^ "Sarah Tetzlaff", Athlete results, International Federation of Sport Climbing, retrieved 2024-07-11
  7. ^ Aotearoa’s first Speed Climbers set for Olympic debut, Radio New Zealand, 1 April 2024, retrieved 2024-07-11; also includes an 19-minute audio interview with Tetzlaff and her coach
  8. ^ "Sport climbing champion wins water science prize", The Valley Profile, 4 December 2023, retrieved 2024-07-11
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