Kimberlee Downs & Sarah Cowley Ross:
The Kiwi experts calling the Olympic shots
“What athletes put themselves through on a day-today basis is crazy.”
When Sarah Cowley Ross is asked what her the most memorable moment from her time competing in the London 2012 Olympics was, she doesn’t skip a beat. The Kiwi athlete, originally from Rotorua, was part of the heptathlon event and had travelled to the Games alongside her family and some of her close friends.
The stadium was full, she recalls, and while it was special to know her wha¯nau was watching, she had no idea where they were in the crowd.
“I put my blocks down for the first event – which was hurdles – when I vividly heard, in amongst 85,000 people, my brother yell out, ‘Go, Sar!’ It was a moment I’ll never forget and that I’ll cherish forever because behind every athlete is such a big team.”
It’s this experience, just part of her long athletic career that also included multiple Commonwealth Games, which makes Sarah such an integral part of the TVNZ reporting team for the Olympics this year.
She knows not just exactly what those big events are like, but also how drastically things will be different for the Games this year.
“For the people who are the bigtime performers, the Olympics is the world’s greatest sporting stage and to figure out how to do that without a crowd, that’s something they’ll have had to prepare for mentally,” she explains. “Our sports psychologists in New Zealand have been working overtime.”
As well as her role providing news updates throughout the Games, Sarah is very hands-on in another way. Since May
2020, she’s been chair of the New Zealand Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission. Not an easy time to take over a giant role, when the world – and all those planning committees – were staring down the barrel of a series of events so unprecedented that the word has now lost its meaning.
“In May 2020, the Olympics had been postponed and we had a new date, which was a relief for the athletes,” Sarah recalls. “But we also thought that ‘Covid world’ may be over in six months. We had no idea where the end point was. So for me, in that representative role, it was really about trying to advocate for the athletes and particularly for their wellbeing at that time.”
With training for the Olympics so strictly timed by the four-year cycle, sporting careers literally live or die by the calendar, the postponement by more than a year has been, for many, “a bridge too far”, says Sarah.
“What athletes put themselves through on a day-to-day basis is crazy. To regather your thoughts, your motivation… It’s been a really interesting exercise for people to really get back to, ‘Do I want to do this for another year and a bit? Can my body cope with it?’”
But on the flipside, she says there have been athletes who have benefited from the extra year of training.
Meanwhile, on top of the pandemic,
there was also last year’s Black
Lives Matter movement, which saw Sarah lead our Olympic Committee’s response, encouraging and supporting Kiwi athletes to take a stand against discrimination.
She explains, “We want to empower our athletes to use their platform for good. Whether they like it or not, they’re role models and that comes with responsibility.”
The Games – and the athletes picked to represent Aotearoa – offer a tremendous opportunity to inspire the next generation of Kiwis, says Sarah. “We have all these incredible wāhine doing incredible things and the Olympics provides a platform for these things to be seen, but more powerfully for me, it provides young girls in New Zealand an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, why can’t that be me one day?’ It allows people to dream and empowers people to be active. My heart is in elite sport, but actually, we want a more active New Zealand.”
It’s a beautiful full-circle moment to now be part of the broadcasting team bringing the same magic of the event – with some added challenges – to a new audience, tells Sarah. “That’s how I saw the Olympics, so for me to be on the other side of it, it’s a privilege to be able to deliver these moments back to New Zealand.”
Like Toni, Sarah is thrilled to see more mums competing in the Games than ever this year. The juggle of being an athlete and a mother is one she knows well. After having two children, Sarah has returned to competitive sports in triple jump and took part in the last couple of national championships.
“It’s been really empowering for me to have a physical goal again,” she says. As a mum to Max, five, and Poppy, three, showcasing mothers in athletics is very important to her as it’s still an under-represented part of the sporting world.
“It’s a really difficult dilemma when you’re on the biological clock but you also have ambitions in your sport,” she shares. “If people do want to be athlete mums, good on them – it’s not an easy thing to do. It requires significant resources to support the mum and the baby.”
Working alongside Toni and Kimberlee, Sarah says she’s lucky to be amongst a team who are not only “outstanding at their jobs but also great humans as well”.
And while the Olympics may be very different this year, she insists presenting on live television is just as exciting as competing in the
Games themselves.
“As a former athlete, I get the same competitive rush about being prepared and delivering under pressure while trying to connect with people in a shared love of sport.”
“As a former athlete, I get the same competitive rush.”