Sarah Ulmer

Thursday night I received an invitation to attend the ITM (International Track Meet) luncheon at the Christchurch Casino.

Honestly, there’s was nothing, aside from the person whom had invited me, that thought this would be something of interest. Except, Sarah Ulmer. A gold medallist Olympic cyclist. Never met her, never heard her speak, but liked her “image”. And these days I have a philosophy of saying “yes” instead of “no”, you just never know where that will take you.

Well, aside from the fantastic lunch, and wines, what an awesome event. Sarah Ulmer. Wow, she is truly amazing. Here’s why.

She was the classic rebellious teenager. Would do the opposite to what her parents suggested. Yes, I have noted that, we’ve got at least one like that, already. So her parents didn’t push her. At 16 she “discovered” cycling. She’d cycled for a ew years, in part to be independent and get away from her parents, as in not need them to drop her off etc. A friend suggested that she seemed to love cycling, so at 16 she joined the school team. Later she discovered her father and Poppa had been noteworthy cyclists. She thinks her father never told her, as it would have driven her away from the sport. Interesting ...

She did well and eventually climbed by 2003 to be 4th in the world for her discipline, 3000m individual pursuit. I never knew however, and I suspect many don’t, that in 2003 she retired from the sport, she felt after “training her guts out” that 4th was the best she would do, and that was enough.

But one day in 2003 her husband came home and said he’d quit his job, he was going to help her to the Olympics. He became her coach, mentor, massage therapist, psychologist, and of course partner!

She trained in Te Awamutu on a basic outdoor track, she had a ground breaking bike built in Christchurch in carbon fibre by a guy that had never built a bike, and she choose a gear that had never been used before. I didn’t know this, but track cyclists are single speed, small gear if you’re aerobic and want to go fast, large gear if you’re strong and have the power. Sarah choose a larger gear that anyone, and trained to it … it was a first, all around.

And the strategy was success, or failure. Challenge everything, and change it as needed, and everything changed. But she won.

10 years later, could you do that now? Who knows, she admitted that even. But the lesson applies to every industry … are you doing the same old thing and expecting different results? Or are you actually changing things.

Change I say.