Dame Katherine Grainger, DBE Olympic champion 2012, 4 x Olympic silver medallist, 6 x World Champion, Chair UK Sport

Sarah stands out as a world class practitioner for many reasons.  She is a very welcome calm presence in a frequently highly charged atmosphere of intense training.  She will bend over backwards to find a way for every athlete to complete a training session, even if that involves setting up a completely different piece of equipment in a different location at a different time. Sarah is very conscientious and never gives the impression that as an athlete you are creating a problem or being difficult with any request.  She accommodates any athlete with every request and doesn't make the athlete feel awkward about it.  Sarah gives the same priority to our training needs as we do ourselves and she will persevere until things are done to our own exacting standards.  It is fantastic to have someone working in the team who demands from themselves the same level of performance as we do and who takes the same level of pride in her work as we do.  And above all, one of the special things that Sarah exhibits is genuine care and concern for the athletes - she sees us all as individuals and will try to help in any way she can to make our lives a little bit easier. She doesn't just ask how our training is going but she also takes a moment to ask how we are doing, she understands that how we are feeling can impact on our performance.  She displays respect for what we do every day and that makes a big difference to athletes that work with her.

Lisa Artis, Deputy CEO, The Sleep Charity

I have had the privilege of working alongside Dr Sarah Gilchrist since 2020. She is an incredible source of knowledge around sleep and the effects on performance and one of the reasons she was invited to be part of our esteemed Advisory Board – to drive forward the message about how important sleep is to health and wellbeing. Sarah has an enviable combination of fierce commitment and passion about sleep health, constantly striving to further her own skills and knowledge. I love working with Sarah and our partnership is built on trust, integrity and motivation and I hope we continue working in partnership for many years.

Dr Clare Spencer, My Menopause Centre

Sarah has been great to work with. She is responsive and professional. She has immense depth of knowledge on her subject and is able to communicate it effectively to a wide audience. We, at My Menopause Centre, would be delighted to work with her again.'

The Active Women’s Clinic

We have had the privilege of working with Sarah for many years, firstly within the English Institute of Sport with our Olympic and Paralympic athletes and now in collaboration with our Active Women’s Clinic at the Circle Hospital in Reading. Sarah has always delivered exceptional care and shared her expert knowledge to help support many world class athletes to train and perform at their best. The ‘team behind the team ‘ is often referred to in elite sport and Sarah is definitely one of those key people who has positively influenced so many athletes’ journeys. 

In recent years, we have worked with Sarah as part of our team to advise and support recreational female athletes to train to their maximal potential . Her wealth of knowledge and experience in understanding the physiological demands of training and performance and in particular her specialist area of sleep health has hugely benefited many of our patients. 

Sarah’s professionalism, dedication and passion for delivering high level education to all our athletes is a credit to her and we look forward to working along side her for many years to come.

Tanya Saunders, Operational Lead, Occupational Health & Wellbeing, Skanska

As a construction company, we have employees working in safety critical roles, and often long unsociable shifts – it is crucial that we educate our workforce on the importance of Sleep and Fatigue. Working with Sarah, we developed a focus campaign on Sleep, that ran throughout 2022. Sarah hosted several webinars for us, looking at different aspects of sleep, and even produced a series of bitesize podcasts focused on Sleep and Shiftwork, that our night shift workers could listen to whilst travelling or at home, as they were unable to join live webinars. She was able to provide strategies, tips and tools that everyone can dip into to support their sleep. Sarah’s in depth knowledge and expertise has been invaluable to our workforce, and her approach and delivery has been well received across Skanska UK. She has been instrumental in embedding the importance of sleep into our Wellbeing ‘Care for Life’ value and linking it perfectly to our ongoing strategy to raise awareness of Fatigue.

Dan Buchanan Director, GoPerform

We thoroughly enjoyed our workshop on Sleep and Performance: optimising your secret weapon. Our training community consists of lots of athletes and individuals striving for improvement and as a consequence this workshop was popular and well attended. Over an hour, we received lots of practical information on how to extend and improve the quality of our sleep and recovery, it was pitched perfectly to our group. One of our distance runners contacted us the following morning to say that she had just had the best nights sleep in years! We would highly recommend Dr Sarah Gilchrist to any teams or individuals looking to optimise their sleep &
performance in all walks of life.

Switch the Play

Sarah has been a friend of the foundation for some time and when we had a client request some expertise on sleep, it was obvious who we should partner with. Sarah provided some written content for over 2000 athletes and delivered a Masterclass on Sleep and Performance. The Masterclass landed so well; the content was appropriate for the athletes, it was delivered engagingly and interactively, and it gave the athletes information that they could implement straight away. The feedback was excellent and we will definitely be working with Sarah again. 

Pete Reed, 3 x Olympic Champion, 5 x World Champion

Sarah is hugely experienced in the high performance sport environment.  She has a great ability to empathise with athletes, in particular her technical knowledge of sleep and performance has been insightful and extremely beneficial to me as an athlete and the wider world of elite sport. Sarah is highly dependable and works to the highest standards of professionalism.  She leads by example and was instrumental in delivering a world class physiology laboratory service to the GB Rowing Team over successive Olympic cycles.  She can be guaranteed to ‘get the job done’ and is a valued member of any team. 

Tom Dyson, British Rowing Head of Olympic and Paralympic Performance Delivery

I worked closely with Sarah throughout the London 2012 Paralympic cycle. As lead physiologist to the Paralympic Rowing Programme I looked to her for both support and leadership on key rower centred projects such as sleep health or monitored return to training post illness and injury.  Sarah always had the ability to see the bigger picture and map out opportunities for interventions that fitted with the conflicting demands of a four year training and competition cycle.

Joanne Elphinston, Elite performance movement and rehabilitation consultant

It is easy to focus on an athlete support professional's knowledge and skill, and Sarah is completely committed to her own development and application of these aspects of her profession at elite level. However, it is communication that is at the heart of both the successes and the dysfunctions in multidisciplinary teams. Sarah has an openness and approachability which keeps others in the multidisciplinary team on board with her, and makes the athlete feel that she is completely present with them. This is not easy to achieve when time is tight and the pressure is on, but Sarah's demeanor and level of self awareness in her dealings with others, combined with her extraordinary capacity for organisation and planning, creates a sense of calm which is priceless in an elite setting.

Dr Jeanne Dekerle, Principal Lecturer, School of Sport and Service Management. Sport and Exercise Science and Sport Medicine Research and Enterprise Group. University of Brighton.

I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Sarah when we designed some scenarios from the ‘real world’ of the applied sport practitioner for problem-based learning sessions we co-delivered on our Applied Exercise Physiology and Applied Sport Physiology MSc courses (University of Brighton). Sarah was great with our MSc students. It was evident, in class but also outside the classroom, that Sarah had at heart to support the development of our students, inviting them to aspire to great things, to believe in themselves and dare attending to their dreams. She was very inspirational. I often thought she would be a great lecturer! In student’s group discussions, aside of the problems students would be working on, Sarah also shared some examples of problems she had to find solutions for when she was working as a physiologist for the English Institute of Sport (EIS). There was so much knowledge to be shared! Sarah taught me one thing: Be solution- and not problem-focussed! I always thought this approach was such a great way of embracing life. Sarah is a solution-seeker and it is very refreshing! Sarah was also extremely honest yet kind, in her constructive feedback to our students. I think students realised how straightforward, sincere, and truthful one must be to work in the fast-going world of elite performance. Sarah would also share some challenges she had to face as a sport practitioner and the difficulties such position might bring. There was an authenticity that I truly appreciated when working with Sarah. From the first meetings we had, it struck me how organised, efficient, and enthusiasm Sarah was. I often think of our work together when I have to set up meetings and it takes ages... “With Sarah, it would be different”. I keep fond memories of our collaboration.

Achievements

2023 British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences Volunteer of the Year Award (member’s vote)

2020 - Present Advisory Board member to The Sleep Charity

2020 British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences Fellowship

2019 - 2024 UK Antidoping Education Delivery Network: Projects and National Trainer

2019 - 2022 Chair British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences Accreditation Advisory Group

2019 Professional Doctorate in Sport and Exercise Science, University of Kent

2016 British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences Conference: ‘’Sleep and movement behaviour characteristics of an international Olympic rowing squad and the influence of domestic living location’’.   Awarded the Routledge Recently Qualified Researcher Free Communication Presentation Award.

2012 British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences: Applied Practitioner of the Year. ‘‘The award acknowledges outstanding and innovative service delivery in sport and/or exercise science by BASES Accredited Sport and Exercise Scientists.”

British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences: Accredited since 2000, achieving High Performance Accreditation and Re-Accreditation in 2012, 2017, 2022 

Associations

The Active Women’s Clinic A specialist service designed to specifically address common sporting injuries and related women’s health issues in physically active women.

Bourne Sports Medicine A team of Specialist Sport and Exercise Medicine Consultants dedicated to managing sports injuries and musculoskeletal problems. Our goal is to provide expert assessment and treatment of your injury to enable you to return to your physical activity safely.

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