Olympian to entrepreneur: Sarah Lindsay’s rise as Dubai’s fitness icon

Quiet power, that’s what comes to mind when you see Dubai-based Sarah Lindsay walking through her own gym, ROAR. Clad in a crisp grey pantsuit, Sarah Lindsay exudes a quiet positivity that shines through in the little things, whether it’s the way she speaks to her colleagues or offers a hand with someone’s weights. Fittingly, that’s how she describes Dubai too: A city full of warmth, where people genuinely want to help one another. She moved to the Emirate in 2022, and she’s here to stay.

But long before Dubai, there’s a different story, too, that defines her. Today, we see the ROAR fitness entrepreneur and bosswoman. But behind that is the former UK speed skater and the fiercely determined woman who fought her way back from a career-threatening injury and still found a way to win. She shares her story with admirable composure, almost matter-of-factly, as if grit and grace were second nature.

Lindsay’s journey begins on ice, at the age of seven.  “I was actually figure-skating, which means ice-dancing,” she recalls. At a talent-spotting, she was asked if she would like to try speed-skating. “That’s more athletic and less graceful, which suited me, personally,” she says. There was a joy, racing in tight circles at a high speed, and it was a dream that she took forward.

By the age of 14 or 15, she had made it to the British National Team. “I started competing internationally, quite quickly,” says the European gold medalist, 2x world silver medalist and 10x British speed skating champion.

Yet, it wasn’t just the love of skating that motivated her to keep moving forward. It was being surrounded by achievers, who were just so determined to win. “When you look around you, and you see people achieving, and I think you are the product of the people you surround yourself with,” she says. And this very normalcy, is what built her belief that the Olympics were a part of her path.

Nothing felt extraordinary; it just felt inevitable.

She made her way through the ranks, and by the time she was 21, she had qualified for her first Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Over the course of her career, she went on to win European silver medals and compete in the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2010 Games in Vancouver.

Yet, as she calmly narrates, in the time between her last game in Vancover, she suffered an accident that grounded her for almost a year.

 But she knows how to rise back after a fall.

She describes it with no drama, no embellishment. Just truth. “Speed skating is unpredictable and crashes fairly common. I had a particularly awkward crash, headfirst at high speeds, and had a serious injury to my vertebrae,” she explains. She spent five weeks in hospital, and found it difficult to walk.

The recovery was gruelling, a total of a year and three months. “It was a hard hit,” remembers Lindsay. She knew that she had only a few years of skating left, and she had to somehow get back on her feet. As she explains: For most four years is a lot. For Olympian trainers, it’s not much. Time flies. “After my injury, I just had two years to prepare and that I was starting from scratch and the world was ahead of me,” she says.

And so, she worked hard, harder than she had ever done before, surpassing her own standards. “I left no stone unturned,” she says. I worked myself to the ground to get to the next Olympics, and I qualified for that and I raced, the fastest that I had raced,” she says. She had told her coach that if she broke her own personal record, she would retire.

And she did, by a few hundredths of seconds. At this point, Linday almost beams with pride as she remembers that moment, of breaking her own record.

It was the perfect high on which to close that chapter of her life.

But the lessons of power, resilience, discipline, never left her. They would form the foundation of something new: ROAR.

She fell in love with Dubai, she says. “We arrived in 2022 and we spent time building the gym and opened the doors in 2023,” says Lindsay.  What drives her isn’t just fitness—it’s witnessing transformation. There’s an inexplicable joy in watching people build themselves, push themselves, and become the best version of who they are. “The first time someone lifts their own body weight, you give them that strength and power, and you know you’ve achieved something special. That confidence carries over into every other part of life, and that’s where I get my job satisfaction from.”

Though she still feels relatively ‘brand-new’ to the city, Lindsay says there’s so much to appreciate about Dubai, especially its emphasis on women’s safety. “As women, we’re always worried. But here, it’s so safe,” she notes. What also stands out is the kindness of the people. “Everyone genuinely wants you to succeed. They’ll offer help, connect you to someone, whatever you need.”

 In Dubai, she adds, you never have to be afraid to ask for help. “It feels like everyone is moving in the same direction—and they’ll help you get there too.”