By Michael Lapointe
There are peaks and valleys in any athletic career, but there may not be anyone who’s gained an understanding of this better in the past year than Angus Mortimer.
From the depths of an eight-month post-Olympic funk to a gold medal atop a mountain in Puerto Rico, it’s been a wild ride for the Rideau Canoe Club paddler this season.
At age 22, Mortimer made an unexpected Olympic debut at the 2008 Beijing Games in a K-4 crew where he “jumped into the boat at the last minute.” He was definitely on the rise, but wasn’t able to crack the London 2012 Olympic team in his signature K-1 event.
“In our sport, you only get one entry at the Olympics in each event from each country, and from 2006 to 2011 I was second in Canada in the 1,000-metre singles event,” explains Mortimer, who’s always carried the unenviable task of unseating four-time Olympic medalist Adam van Koeverden in the discipline. “I kept coming second – I did well internationally, I was always in the finals, but could never get to the world championships.”
Missing the London 2012 Games was a stinging disappointment for Mortimer, who’d become accustomed to training six days a week at 8 a.m., hitting the weightroom, napping, and getting back on the water in early evening, while mixing in studies at Carleton University.
“From the Olympic trials I took seven or eight months off up until this past March since I didn’t make it,” the 28-year-old recounts. “Everything was great up until 2012, and when I didn’t make the Olympics I honestly didn’t do a thing – didn’t go on the water, didn’t touch a boat until March of this year.
“For the first time in my life, I took a big break.”
Big brother steps in
The inspiration to return to the sport came from his older brother, Ian Mortimer, a 15-time Canadian champion who retired from the sport himself in 2012 and moved into a coaching role at the Rideau Canoe Club.
“I was in a big rut for a few years there, and then my brother suggested we should go down to the club to start paddling and see how it feels and take it one day at a time,” the Brookfield High School grad recalls. “The next thing I know, he’s writing my training program and then he’s my full-time coach. It’s something I wouldn’t have predicted two years ago but now it seems like there would be no other way.”
It’s proven to be a fruitful partnership. A strong performance at the Canadian championships in Montreal netted Mortimer a trip to the Oct. 18-20 Pan American canoe-kayak championships in Puerto Rico where he competed in 45-degree heat in a “man-made lake on top of a little mountain,” as he describes it.
Mortimer topped the field by around five seconds, completing the 1,000 m in 3 minutes, 43.74 seconds, to earn gold. He promises to use the performance as fuel for his drive towards the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto and the Rio 2016 Olympics.
“Now I’m the most motivated I’ve ever been,” Mortimer signals.
Fellow Rideau paddler Maddie Schmidt capped a remarkable season with another dominant performance at the Pan Am championships. On the heels of a world junior bronze medal, a five-medal Canada Games and a seven-medal Canadian championships, the 18-year-old Woodroffe High School student easily won the junior women’s 200 m, 500 m and 5,000 m gold medals in Puerto Rico.
Rideau’s Drew Hodges and Troy Chown were also members of Team Canada for the Pan Ams.