He was nominated for his work in athlete representation and sports integrity as a sports lawyer, chairman of the World Anti-doping Agency Athlete Committee for 10 years, member of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation, and more.
Sandford advocates to make "sure athletes have a strong voice at the table".
"It's really important that athletes have a say in decisions that affect them."
Sandford's skeleton journey didn't begin till he was 22 with the help of his uncle, Bruce Sandford, who was a skeleton athlete at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Canada.
"I just knew about this ... uncle that I had that competed in the Olympics in skeleton."
While his uncle tried to get him involved when he was younger, it never worked out.
But when he was 22 Sandford went to Austria for the University Squash World Championship and thought it was a good place and time to try skeleton racing.
His uncle "wrote me a top-secret book on how to do skeleton and gave me that at the airport and sent me on my way".
While there are no tracks in New Zealand, Sandford was able to go to a school in Austria to learn the basics and learn on the tracks.
"The first time I did it I just absolutely fell in love with it, I thought 'This is the only thing I wanna do. This is it'.
"From then it was all I did and everything was around trying to do more skeleton. It's pretty addictive."
Four years after beginning skeleton racing, Sandford competed at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy.
Sandford had a standout experience that lead to his involvement in athlete representation.
In his first season the international federation was looking at changing the rules around how many training runs athletes had.
The athletes originally had six training runs before competing however with a newly signed TV deal, the federation tried to "cram" more races into the week only allowing for four training runs.
Sandford said this would have allowed for a "massive home track advantage".
"If that's your home track, you're gonna win ... coming from New Zealand, we don't have any tracks so suddenly we've got even more disadvantaged.
"Ninety-nine per cent of athletes want a fair competition ... They want to be able to stand on the start line and know that the same rules apply to them and everyone else.
"A lot of the decisions that are made, whether it's in anti-doping or sports integrity, they are really important and athletes need to be involved in making those rules."
An award ceremony was held on Zoom on Saturday morning to officially induct the athletes as Olympians for life, a pin and certificate were mailed to Sandford.
Sandford is currently developing the Rotorua Athlete Development charitable trust which started last year. The trust pays young athletes to do charitable work.
"They get some money and the community benefits because they're out there coaching kids."
Sandford wants to spend more time on the trust this year.
