Sarah's Story
Sarah Banting made her Olympic debut at the Rio 2016 Games as the cox of the women’s eight. The crew had only two weeks to prepare for their Olympic campaign, after the Russian boat was banned from competing at the Games.
In their first heat, the Aussies flew out of the start in a bid to chase down favourite USA, as well as Netherlands and Romania. The crew of Fiona Albert, Jessica Morrison, Alexandra Hagan, Meaghan Volker, Molly Goodman, Olympia Aldersey, Lucy Stephan, Charlotte Sutherland and coxswain Sarah Banting made a competitive start however with limited race preparation managed a fourth place finish. The boat required a top four finish in the repechage to qualify for the A-final. As they approached the final 500 metres, the top four crews pulled ahead and the Australians were left to finish fifth in what was a valiant effort for a crew that had only been training together for 10 days.
Banting represented Australia in both the Women's Eight at the World Rowing U23 Championships in 2013 and 2014.
In 2013 she coxed the men’s University of Melbourne eight crew to victory and also saw success with the women’s university crew.
She was a part of the crew that finished eighth at the 2015 World Championships and then third at the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta where they just missed a Rio 2016 spot. The boat was a late call up to the Games after Russia was removed from the competition.
Banting has aspirations of becoming a doctor having completed a Biomedicine degree.
