Kiwi icon Sarah Ulmer retires

Reuters

HAPPY TIMES: Champion cyclist Sarah Ulmer has retired from the sport after struggling with a leg injury for the past year.

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Olympic champion and New Zealand sporting great Sarah Ulmer has announced her retirement from cycling.

New Zealand's first and only Olympic Games cycling gold medallist has been battling a perplexing sciatic nerve injury in her leg since it forced her out of last year's Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

A recent visit to a surgeon convinced the 31-year-old it was time to end the most frustrating period of her glittering career.

She will be remembered for her golden year in 2004 when she set a world record in winning the women's 3000m individual pursuit at the world championships in Australia.

Several months later she bettered the record in claiming gold at the Athens Olympics.

After a year's break from the sport, she switched to road cycling and was consistently impressive there before injury struck.

"I've been toying with retirement for longer than I actually expected," Ulmer told TV3 today.

"It's been a pretty frustrating year from the cycling side of things. I've been in and out of doctors and medical specialist and MRI machines.

"The crunch with the actual decision was a trip to a surgeon in Christchurch who didn't give me a greater than 50 per cent chance that he could improve me.

"I needed more than that to improve this crazy problem that I've had."

Ulmer rose to prominence as a teen, showing exceptional potential in the pursuit when placing second at the 1994 Commonwealth Games at Victoria.

She was still maturing as a cyclist when she finished seventh at the Atlanta Olympics.

Two years later she won the gold medal at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur with a time of three minutes 41.667 seconds.

She looked a fine medal prospect for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but although she improved her time to 3min 38.93sec, she placed fourth.

Two more years on, Ulmer showed she was a big improver when she took 6sec off her Sydney time to win the gold medal at the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth games, in the Commonwealth record time of 3min 32.467sec.

On March 27, 2004 she set a new world record of 3min 30.604sec when qualifying for the women's 3000 metres individual pursuit at the world track championships in Melbourne.

She improved that during the qualifying rounds at Athens and astounded spectators when in dominating the final on August 22 she slashed almost two full seconds off that time when recording 3min 24.537sec.

Ulmer reduced the world record by more than 6sec on the Athens track and two other competitors - Australian Katie MacTier and Dutch hero Leontien Ziljaard-van Moorsel from the Netherlands - also went under 3min 30sec.

She spent the later part of her career based in Cambridge and training at the velodrome in the small rural town of Te Awamutu.

Ulmer said the decision to retire left her with the chance to focus purely on her business and other interests.

-NZPA