LockerRoom founder Suzanne McFadden and Olympian broadcaster Sarah Cowley Ross host the episodic podcast, SASS Talk, sparking new conversations about women’s sport and the big issues females are facing.
LISTEN to Episode 4 below or on your favourite podcast app, including Apple and Spotify
Hazel Ouwehand likes to keep busy, through a unique cocktail of vocations: senior accountant, Instagram star, high-performance swimmer and now Olympian.
The 24-year-old Aucklander had a stunning start to the year, smashing national butterfly records and qualifying for her first Olympics in Paris. Also in the last six months, Ouwehand’s Instagram account exploded from 900 followers to almost 42,000.
She makes her hilarious, sometimes kooky, reels to give insights into the life of an elite swimmer. One of her videos has had over 20 million views.
“I have no shame. I don’t care. If I think it’s cool or I think it’s funny or it brings me joy, I just pop it on,” she tells the SASS Talk podcast.
But with that huge following, and hundreds of comments a day, comes the online haters; some abusing Ouwehand for being tall and muscular.
“I love my followers and the ones that support me and cheer me on, but the ones who take the time out of their day to talk smack about someone they don’t even know… why should I care? You mean nothing to me,” she says.
Being bullied in primary school, for her height and her strength in the pool, has shaped her into the woman she is today, and her response to online trolls.
Ouwehand fits her Olympic training programme around a 25-hour-a-week job as a senior accountant with Baker Tilly.
“There’s not a lot of financial support in swimming in New Zealand, so it’s necessary to have a job because someone needs to pay the bills,” she says. “And I think if I were to not have a job and just go swimming in the morning, be home during the day and go swimming in the afternoon, for one, my house would be immaculate all the time because I’d just clean. And two, I just think I’d get bored really fast.”
In this episode of SASS Talk, we also respond to NFL star Harrison Butker’s bizarre commencement speech where the Kansas City Chief’s kicker told female graduates to drop their dreams and become homemakers. And we review the movie, COPA 71 – the greatest sports story you’ve never heard of.
