New Zealand’s first female Olympic speed climber scaled the world’s biggest stage — and she did it with a fear of heights she’s never quite conquered.
- 8.39s PERSONAL BEST — PARIS 2024
- 15m WALL HEIGHT — OLYMPIC STANDARD
- 15 NEW ZEALAND RECORDS BROKEN
There’s something delightfully contradictory about Sarah Tetzlaff. She is New Zealand’s finest speed climber — a woman who scales a 15-metre wall in under nine seconds, who broke the Oceania record twice in a single day, and who stood on the Olympic stage in Paris as her country’s first-ever female climbing representative. She is also, quietly and genuinely, afraid of heights.
“It was tough at first,” she’s said of her early days in the sport, which she took up aged 13. “I’ve managed to push my tolerance of the fear, but it still sits there and comes out when I don’t want it to.” On cloudy, windy days, the final metre of the wall can feel impossibly exposed. Her coach once zip-tied a tarpaulin across the top to simulate a ceiling — and that, remarkably, was enough to make it manageable.
“I hit the top and saw the light go green, and I was like — oh my gosh, I know what that means.”
From gymnastics to the Olympic wall
Tetzlaff, born in Lower Hutt in 2000, gave up gymnastics at 11 — in part because of the culture of pushing through pain — and briefly tried circus performance before finding climbing. She had barely started when she turned up to the 2017 Oceania Youth Championships almost on a whim and medalled in all three disciplines: speed, bouldering, and lead. She took gold in two of them. It was enough to take her to the 2018 Youth Olympics in Buenos Aires, where she finished 21st in the combined event. She was 17 years old, and she had already decided: Paris 2024 was her target.
Six years later, she made it — and then some. At the Oceania qualifier in Melbourne in late 2023, she won decisively, climbing the wall in 8.54 seconds. A few weeks before Paris, she broke the Oceania record at a World Cup in southern France. Then she broke it again, on the same day, setting a time of 8.40 seconds. “I actually broke the record twice that day,” she said, “so it’s a nice little confidence boost right before the Olympics.”
The art of nine seconds
Speed climbing is deceptively straightforward to describe and almost impossible to comprehend until you see it. The wall is always 15 metres tall, always set at a five-degree overhang. The holds — 20 for the hands, 11 for the feet — are always in exactly the same position, fixed to a two-millimetre tolerance. Every competitor in the world trains on the same route. The women’s world record sits at just over six seconds. The fastest men do it in under five.
Athletes are counted down with three beeps, then they explode. The event is head-to-head — two climbers racing side by side — which means there is nowhere to hide, and the pressure is immediate and total. Tetzlaff, characteristically, finds it calming. “Because the wall is always the same, you can control the stresses,” she has explained. By Paris, she had run the route somewhere in the region of 10,000 times.
“I was in a flow state. There was a point three-quarters up where I was aware we were neck and neck. My senses just went — whoa, this is so close.”
SARAH TETZLAFF, ON THE OLYMPIC QUALIFYING FINAL
At Paris, she achieved a new personal best of 8.39 seconds in the seeding round, earning 12th place, before being eliminated by Polish climber Aleksandra Kałucka. It was not a medal — but it was a milestone, and the beginning, rather than the end, of something.
More than a climber
What makes Tetzlaff a particularly compelling figure for the Gutsy Girls community is not just the sport, but the whole person. Alongside her training, she is a part-time master’s student in environmental science at the University of Waikato, researching the impact of leaking septic tanks on Lake Tarawera’s water quality. She won the Waikato Regional Council Prize in water science. “I do really want to make a difference,” she has said. “I love our special places and I want to protect them.”
Away from the wall, she surfs and mountain bikes. She is, as she’s pointed out to people who assume otherwise, someone who loves being outdoors — the indoor wall is her arena, not her entire world.
SARAH TETZLAFF — KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
- New Zealand’s first female Olympic speed climber — Paris 2024
- Oceania record holder — 8.40 seconds (set twice in one day, Chamonix 2024)
- Paris 2024 personal best — 8.39 seconds
- Winner, IFSC Oceania qualifying event, Melbourne 2023
- 15 New Zealand climbing records broken across her career
- Multiple New Zealand national speed climbing champion
- Gold medallist — 2017 Oceania Youth Championships (speed and bouldering)
- 2018 Summer Youth Olympics, Buenos Aires — combined event
What comes next
Tetzlaff is still only in her mid-twenties, and speed climbing is a sport with remarkable longevity — some of its world champions are still competitive in their late thirties. The Paris Olympics was, by her own framing, a beginning. She was the first. She won’t be the last.
For the Gutsy Girls community, her story carries something worth sitting with: that the summit doesn’t always look the way you expect, that fear and courage are not opposites, and that sometimes the most extraordinary thing you can do is climb the wall anyway — acrophobia and all.
All images are credited to Brydie Photography and are used with permission.
