By Austin Stanton
When Angus Mortimer was 10 years old, he didn’t know how to swim and avoided kayaking at all costs. Nearly two decades later, he’s retiring from a decorated international career in the sport he grew to love.
Mortimer got his start kayaking at the Rideau Canoe Club at Mooney’s Bay. The club is just a few minutes from his childhood home and both his older siblings were involved in the sport.
Not a strong swimmer when he first started paddling, Mortimer would hide upstairs in the erg room to avoid practice.
Everything changed for him during the lead-up to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The Canadian Olympic canoe and kayak team was training at the Rideau Canoe Club preparing for the Games. Getting to meet Olympians at such a young age had a tremendous impact on Mortimer.
“One of the good things in amateur sport is at the club level the top people are accessible to people just starting,” notes the 31-year-old. “If you play hockey, Crosby won’t be at the rink. But when I was 10, the K-4 team was right there. It was inspiring.”
From that moment on, Mortimer dedicated himself to kayaking with renewed vigour and began chasing his own Olympic dream. The Brookfield High School grad would reach his goal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing as a member of the Canadian K-4 boat.
“The Olympic experience was amazing,” recalls the 9th-place finisher. “It was everything I imagined and more. Sometimes things don’t live up to your expectations, but the Olympics definitely did.”
Due to the nature of kayaking, each country is only given one entry per event at major international competitions. This fact, along with Adam Van Koeverden’s dominance in the K-1 1,000 metres for the last 10+ years, meant Beijing was Mortimer’s only Olympics. He did however achieve a tremendous success outside the Olympics during the last decade.
Mortimer won three medals at the Rio 2007 Pan American Games – a gold in his signature event, the K-1 1,000, and a silver in the K-1 500 and K-4 1,000. He would repeat as Pan Am champion in 2013, winning gold again in the K-1 1,000.
When Mortimer fell short of the Olympics in 2012, it pushed him to the brink of quitting kayaking for good. He failed to qualify for the K-2 – opting to try for this race so he didn’t have to go through 4-time Olympic medallist Van Koeverden.
Mortimer would have retired then if not for his brother Ian, who convinced him to get back on the water following an 8-month hiatus after Olympic trials.
“That fall, I worked at a gym, and I had never worked a job in my life,” recounts the Carleton University grad. “I missed being on the water and the teammates, so I decided to come back. I realized kayaking is what I wanted to do and I gave it one more crack.”
Mortimer fell short of qualifying for the Rio 2016 Games – a broken finger half a year out was particularly unhelpful – but he considers the last four years a success. With a gold in the K-1 1,000, he helped Rideau win the overall club title on its home course at the 2015 Canadian Championships, recorded a win over Van Koeverden at the 2015 national team trials, and of course there was the Pan Am gold.
Nowadays, the 2008 Ottawa Sports Awards male athlete of the year is back at his old club as a full-time coach, working with the city’s young rising talent.
“I want to help paddlers,” Mortimer underlines. “I can win a race or help 20 people win a race, which is in the long run more satisfying. I like being part of a canoe club and trying to bring home national titles.”
Kayaking is in Mortimer’s blood. He cherishes the amazing moments the sport has given him. Whether travelling the world for races, or hanging around the Rideau club, Mortimer loved every minute of being a high-performance athlete, but has no qualms about his choice to transition to coaching.
“I won’t miss competition because now I’m directing that to helping the next generation,” he highlights. “I don’t think I’ll miss anything. I’m very satisfied. I wouldn’t have stopped if I wasn’t ready.”