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.

Early life
Tetzlaff was born in 2000 in Lower Hutt. She gave up gymnastics as an 11-year-old, in part because of the drive to push on through injuries. She tried circus performance but eventually settled on climbing, a shared interest with her older brother. 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. 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. In 2018 she moved from Wellington to Tauranga, where she uses a speed wall in Blake Park at Mount Maunganui.

Competition climbing
Tetzlaff entered the 2017 Oceania Youth Championship in Nouméa, signed up for the qualification event for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics "on a whim", and medaled in all three of speed, boulder, and lead, taking gold in speed and boulder. 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.

Even before the 2018 Youth Olympics, she stated: "my sights are set on the 2024 Paris Olympics". 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. Her time in the final qualifying race, 8.54 seconds, was a personal best but well behind the times of the top contenders at the Olympics. Her goal is to continue improving her times to reach the world standard by 2028 and 2032.

In a world cup in Chamonix prior to the Olympics, she set another personal best and an Oceania record with a time of 8.40.

Personal life
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. Her master's research won the 2023 Waikato Regional Council Prize in Water Science.