Sarah Ulmer’s Relationship With BNZ Pays Off

Media release – for immediate release

Sarah Ulmer’s Relationship With Bank of New Zealand Pays Off in Commonwealth Games Ambassadorship

A good deed gets returned. At least, that’s the way it seems for Olympic and World champion cyclist Sarah Ulmer. She says in the mid-1990s, when she was a promising teenage cyclist without much money and long before she was a household name, Bank of New Zealand provided her with a credit card that was a financial lifeline when she went on her first international cycling competition.

Now Sarah Ulmer has been appointed a Bank of New Zealand Melbourne Commonwealth Games Team Ambassador as part of the Bank’s sponsorship of New Zealand’s team to the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Sarah is the Olympic and World Champion individual pursuit cyclist and New Zealand Sportsperson of the Year.

“I doubt if the Bank saw it that way, but it was a courageous decision by them,” says Ulmer of the credit card and the international trip. “I was an outside prospect from nowhere but I needed to pay for that trip somehow. I think that credit card was like the cycle; it got a really good work out on that trip.”

Ulmer later briefly worked for Bank of New Zealand in its Newmarket branch, in Auckland, before committing to a fulltime career in cycling. “Bank of New Zealand keeps popping up in my life,” she says.

Ulmer, who is currently training in the south of France in preparation for the World Championships, says her connection with Bank of New Zealand goes back as long as she can remember when she first began banking. She is a longstanding customer of the Bank.

“So a formal relationship with Bank of New Zealand is a natural progression and I’m really stoked to be involved as one of the Bank’s Melbourne Commonwealth Games Team Ambassadors,” she says.

As one of the Ambassadors, Sarah will be appearing in Bank of New Zealand advertising and promotions leading up to the Games. Bank of New Zealand is a principal sponsor of the New Zealand team to the Games.

Bank of New Zealand’s General Manager of Marketing, Distribution and Strategy, Andrew Whitechurch, says the Bank is delighted to have Sarah as a Commonwealth Games Team Ambassador.

“As Bank of New Zealand’s Commonwealth Games sponsorship slogan is ‘together in the pursuit of excellence’ it is appropriate that we have the Olympic and World pursuit champion in our team in the lead-up to the Games,” says Mr Whitechurch.

Ulmer will be appearing from this weekend in print and television advertising for Bank of New Zealand’s special new Commonwealth Games Term Deposit, which is available in branches from next week.

ENDS

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