Sarah Ulmer

Sarah Ulmer

Medal record
Representing New Zealand
Track cycling
Olympic Games
	2004 Athens	3000m Individual Pursuit

Sarah Ulmer climbing up a hill during the Twin Falls to Buhl stage of the 2002 Women's Challenge

Sarah Ulmer (born March 14 1976 in Auckland) is a New Zealand cyclist who won a Gold medal and set new world records at the 2004 Summer Olympics at Athens, the first New Zealander to win an Olympic cycling gold medal.

When she left Athens at the end of the games, Ulmer held the Olympic title, the Olympic and world records, the Commonwealth Games title and the Commonwealth Games record for the 3000m individual pursuit.

Ulmer showed exceptional potential in the pursuit as a youngster and rose to prominence when placing second at the 1994 Commonwealth Games at Victoria. Although continually improving her times, she was still maturing as a cyclist when she finished seventh at the Atlanta Olympics with a time of 3 min 43.176 s.

Two years later she won the gold medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur with a time of 3min 41.667. She looked a fine medal prospect for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but although she improved her time to 3 min 38.93 s, she didn't quite realise her potential and took fourth place.

Two more years on, Ulmer showed she was a big improver when she took six seconds off her Sydney time to win the gold medal at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth games, in the record time of 3min 32.467s.

On March 27, 2004 she set a new world record of 3 min 30.604 s when qualifying for the women's 3000 metres individual pursuit at the World Track Cycling Championships in Melbourne [1].

Ulmer went to the Athens 2004 Olympics to compete in the women's 3000m individual pursuit. She duly broke the world record in qualifying with a time of 3 min 26.4 s. She astounded the spectators when in dominating the final on August 22 she slashed almost two full seconds off that time when recording 3 min 24.537 s to win the gold medal and set a new world record time. It was subsequently revealed that while training in Europe for the Athens event, Ulmer had broken the world record more than once, but this was deliberately not made public to reduce the pressure on her from the media.

Ulmer reduced the world record by more than six seconds on the Athens track, and two other competitors, Katie MacTier from Australia and Leontien Ziljaard-van Moorsel from the Netherlands, also competed in under 3 min 30 s world record times.

Sarah Ulmer trains at the velodrome in the small rural town of Te Awamutu and is a prominent figure in both Te Awamutu and her resident, home town of Cambridge.

Ulmer was criticised by some in 2003-2004 for appearing in TV advertisements for McDonald's.

Sarah Ulmer announced her retirement from cycling on the 24th November 2007

Photo gallery

• 
  2001 Women's Challenge circuit race
• 
  2002 Women's Challenge - time trial

External links

• Cycling News interview with Sarah Ulmer
• ABC News Australia online story article about world record ride
• TVNZ News Retirement announcement