Olympic and Commonwealth Games heptathlete Sarah Cowley Ross carves out a new career
WORDS Nicky Adams PHOTOS Graeme Murray + Supplied
The Olympic and Commonwealth Games heptathlete’s journey to redefine herself is about leaning hard into her core values and carving out a career where sport still takes the centre stage.
To reach the standard required to represent your country as an Olympic and Commonwealth Games athlete is extraordinary. To reach that standard across multiple disciplines is, in my view, verging on superhuman. To be so talented, disciplined and dedicated, and still be a well-balanced, grounded and thoroughly lovely person – surely that’s impossible? Apparently not.
Aotearoa heptathlete Sarah Cowley Ross is all of the above and more. If you’re a little hazy as to what a heptathlon actually involves, to clarify, it’s a combination of track and field events that requires both speed and power. Over a period of two days, athletes compete in a total of seven events: A 200m and 800m run, the 100m hurdles, and the high jump, long jump, shot put and javelin. Heptathletes are given points for their best performance in each, then ranked according to the highest overall score.
Sarah competed in the heptathlon event at the London 2012 Olympics, where she placed 26th out of 38, having previously placed 10th out of 12 at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. At the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, she narrowed it down to the high jump, placing ninth out of 24. Although these are the events that have garnered her the most attention, they’re only the pinnacle of myriad incredible achievements during the course of her career.
I’d presumed the world-class athlete would be a certain type of person, perhaps buzzing with pent-up energy. In fact, I found her to be warm, relaxed and only identifiable as an athlete by her long, lithe legs and an aura of fitness I sometimes fantasise about possessing myself. So deceptive is her demeanour, it’s hard to imagine her out on the field, mentally slaying her opponents one by one.
With a smile, Sarah tells me, “A lot of times people have said, ‘You’re too nice to win – you’ve got to be more mongrel.’ But I can turn it on and off when I need to. I’m very competitive. I always want to win, but that’s changed in the sense that I’m quite comfortable with who I am, so I don’t need to win Pictionary every time! I’ve also changed in that now I want to win for the collective – for communities.”
Sarah was born and raised in Rotorua; her mother Robyn Cowley is New Zealand European and her father Jerry Cowley moved to New Zealand from Samoa when he was seven. Sport was always an integral part of family life; Jerry (who sadly passed away when Sarah was 19) represented New Zealand in basketball, and her brothers Garrick and Richard are also blessed with more than their fair share of sporting prowess. Sarah says that when they were children, there was an expectation that they incorporate sport into their daily life, but not at the expense of other things.
“Looking back, we were allowed to be kids, and play was a big part of our lives. I was just fortunate that I had brothers who were better than me physically and who unconsciously pushed me. I was just always trying to keep up. Later, they’d join in my training sessions. My brothers are two of my closest friends, and when I reflect on my journey, it’s been a family one.”
By the time Sarah reached intermediate, she was keen to shine at netball. In fact, it was her love of netball that initially sparked her passion for sport. “I really wanted to be a Silver Fern – Bernice Mene was a hero to me. Half Samoan, she played netball and did athletics at a young age, and that was it – I wanted to be her. When I was 12, I went on my first representative trip to Dunedin and sat next to her on the plane, which was amazing. Then she came and watched us compete; she’d been in the same competition when she was young. Seeing your heroes is powerful – and Sandra Edge and Chantal Brunner are others I really looked to as well.”
At high school, it was clear that rather than just excellent, Sarah was gifted. She began representing New Zealand at 16, and life became very busy with events and the overseas travel that came with it. That’s not to say her studies took a back seat, though. “I was never not expected to go to university,” says Sarah. “Sport is a vehicle. I got awarded the Prime Minister’s Scholarship, which funded two degrees, and I would’ve preferred to have been training. But I know the value of education, so I got a Bachelor of Health Sciences so I can work as a physiotherapist, and I’ve also got a BA in Communications.”
It’s hard not to be blown away by the sheer commitment that would have been involved in juggling study and part-time work with training and competing as a heptathlete, which is essentially a case of taking the top level of each code and multiplying the expectation by seven. The sheer physicality involved is mind-blowing, and alongside this the mental capacity required to keep up the momentum not just for a short burst, but for 48 hours. Adding into the mix the recovery time for each event and the fact that different sports are known to “peak” at different ages, how is it possible to excel?! I feel exhausted even contemplating it.
“It would’ve been a lot easier to pick one sport,” admits Sarah. “When I was eight, I watched the 1992 Olympics and I knew that’s what I wanted to do. My greatest potential in athletics was heptathlon as I was a natural jumper. I was resistant for a long time because I knew it would be hard and I’m not naturally a thrower, but in 2005 I roomed with a heptathlete and realised it was what I was most suited to. Five months later, I made the Commonwealth Games.”
Throughout this time, neither Sarah’s dedication nor her family’s support wavered, something that brought both amazing highs and undeniable lows. “Everything was focussed on the performance,” she says. “My friends were buying houses and I had a dollar in my bank account because I’d spent it all on supplements and massages. There were times when I was like, ‘I’m 28 and I haven’t done what I want in athletics yet, I’m single – what am I going to do with my life?’ You finish in your 30s with a lot of great skills but very little job experience.”
Still, Sarah says her ultimate high was when she qualified for the Olympics in Götzis, Austria. “I knew I was in good shape, but a really significant moment was in the high jump when I jumped 191; at the time my best had been 184. I was really free. For a long time, I’d put a handbrake on my life, and for the five years previous I hadn’t improved in the way I wanted to. For a long time, something had been holding me back. A year before, I probably wanted to quit, but I managed to turn it around, and in that high jump I finally unleashed what I was physically capable of. It was one of the purest moments of my life.”
The decision to step away from the world of international athletics in 2014 was similarly momentous, but at the same time natural. There was no big blow-out, no horrendous injury – the timing just seemed right. “I felt done,” says Sarah. “I was 30 and it seemed like a good time to retire. I got married the next year and in 2015 we had our first child, Max.” He was followed by daughter Poppy two years later. Nevertheless, going from training for five hours a day to a desk job was a huge shift, which Sarah says she struggled with.
“For so long in my life, I knew what I was aiming for, so to then have a blank canvas was hard. Immediately after retirement, I worked in marketing for one of my sponsors, Asics, and I loved the job, but I wasn’t expressing my physical gifts through a sport I love with people I love around me. And not being outside was a massive thing too.” Part of Sarah’s journey became identifying a new set of goals to satisfy her competitive nature. The excitement of becoming a mother was also part of the process, and the physical changes of pregnancy meant another mental shift. “It was a transition out of elite sport and out of a body I was used to being in, so I didn’t recognise myself,” says Sarah. “In some ways, it was a release for me to eat anything because I’d been on a performance diet.”
Fuelling her body differently was freeing, “but liberation created a disconnect about who I was and who I was becoming. I had no control – well, I had control over the chip packet! – but not over what was happening to my body.” Throughout this challenging period, Sarah was supported by her husband Angus Ross, a former Olympic sportsman who competed in bobsleigh events. Now a sports scientist, Angus was the perfect person to guide her on what she needed to do to stay well and nurture herself.
For the past few years, Sarah has been on a journey to redefine who she is. Her days are very different and elements of her psyche have undoubtedly changed, but acknowledging her core values has been central to her next chapter. “Self- acceptance became a really big part of who I wanted to be,” she says. “I ‘do’ athletics, but it’s not who I am. There’s a lot more to me than I realised, and sport is a mechanism for living my values, which are legacy, and love and courage.”
These days, Sarah says, her life is like a heptathlon. She’s equally passionate about all her projects, including Olympics- related governance positions, work as a marriage celebrant and as a columnist for online forum LockerRoom (at newsroom. co.nz), for which she exclusively covers women, advocating for them in sport. “I’m really grateful to shine a light on people and provide a platform for these stories to be heard,” Sarah says. As she well knows, it’s vital that young athletes coming through the ranks can find someone to identify with. “I know the power of seeing women in sport.” Sarah also acts as an Olympic ambassador in schools. Through talking about her own journey, she brings the Olympics to life for our youth and encourages kids to be active.
An exciting upcoming role is covering the Tokyo 2021 Olympic Games for TVNZ. Sarah’s thrilled to be a part of this; she’d watch the Olympics regardless, but in this capacity she gets to communicate what’s going on to our whole country. Plus, she says, she’s constantly looking for ways to stretch herself, and the buzz of live TV is similar to the rush of competing.
Despite moving out of the international arena, Sarah certainly hasn’t left sport, and still trains for and competes in triple jump events. “In 2017, I needed something to train for,” she says. “I always really wanted to do the triple jump, and I was highest ranked in Aotearoa. After I had Poppy, I thought I’d try it again, so last year I did and came second at the Nationals. This year, I had a back injury and got third.”
I marvel that she can switch back to the training and diet regime required. “It’s amazing that I still have that,” she concedes. “I can still turn it on. Saying no to things I know won’t help me is empowering.” That’s just another reason why Olympian Sarah Cowley Ross is a cut above the rest.
You can follow Sarah’s behind the scenes journey covering the Olympics on Instagram: @SARAHCOWLEYROSS
Tokyo 2020 TVNZ Presenter
“For the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, I’m excited to be presenting alongside Toni Street and Scotty Stevenson on TVNZ. We’ll bring all the top sporting moments to you every hour, as they happen. All the Kiwi news and more will be beamed straight back into our homes in Aotearoa. I’ll be cheering on my friends like Emma Twiggs in the sngle skulls. and all my sisters in the Black Ferms sevens team. And, of course, I can’t wait to see how the athletics events unfold.”
Governance roles
“A significant part of my work right now is as a board member of the New Zealand Olympic Committee and as chair of the NZOC Athletes’ Commission. The advocacy work in this role has created meaningful change for Team Aotearoa and the wider sports high-performance system. I enable athletes’ voices to come through the commission and into the boardroom. Athletes are very goal-oriented people, and want to see action come out of mahi. It’s vital they see their opinions being voiced.”
