HIGH ACHIEVERS: Ivanie Blondin, Jared Schmidt named Ottawa Sports Awards’ top athletes

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By Martin Cleary

Ivanie Blondin and Jared Schmidt live on the edge – the former on long-bladed speed skates and the latter on much longer alpine skis.

It took time for them to find their proper place on the international winter sports scene, but once they did, they discovered their fast lane on the highway to happiness.

Their 2023 competitive seasons, which covered January to March and October to December, were extraordinarily rewarding and will reach a final apex on Feb. 7.

On that night, Blondin and Schmidt will be honoured as the respective women’s and men’s Athlete of the Year at the 71st Ottawa Sports Awards Dinner, which was first staged in 1953.

Organizers of the dinner, which is considered the largest amateur sport recognition celebration in Canada as well as the most comprehensive and inclusive program in the country, announced its top performers in the athlete, coach and team categories on Monday night.

For the fifth time since 2014, Blondin was voted the women’s Athlete of the Year and winner of the Kristina Groves Trophy. Groves, who also was a long-track speed skater, won the female Athlete-of-the-Year honour a record six times between 2004 and 2010 before having the trophy named after her.

It also was the fourth straight year over the past five years Blondin was recognized as the city’s best female athlete. There was no Ottawa Sports Awards Dinner in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For a city with limited long-track speed skating options and skaters having to train the sport on arena hockey rinks, the Ottawa speed skating community has seen three of its best win the female Athlete-of-the-Year award 12 times in the past 21 years. Isabelle Weidemann won the award outright in 2018 and shared it with Blondin in 2021 and 2022.

While Groves entered the sport through the Ottawa Pacers Speed Skating Club and Blondin and Weidemann through the Gloucester Concordes Speed Skating Club, they needed to train in Calgary to develop into accomplished international athletes.

Blondin, who trained and competed in figure skating and short-track speed skating before discovering long-track speed skating, had an exceptional 2023 season. An ambitious skater, competing in four individual events from 1,000 metres to 5,000 metres and three team races, Blondin has won seven World Cup medals (one gold, five silver and one bronze) in team races during the first half of this season.

She finished her 2022-23 with 13 World Cup medals (four gold, five silver and four bronze) in two individual and three team competitions.

Blondin wrapped up her 2023 season with a career-best effort at the world championships, winning gold medals in the team pursuit and team sprint, which is a non-Olympic event, as well as a silver in the mass start. She also was fourth in the women’s 1,500 metres, missing the bronze medal by 0.32 seconds, and was ninth over 3,000 metres.

Meanwhile, Schmidt was an alpine skier before he transitioned to ski cross, which sees four skiers blast out of start huts and battle each down bumpy and turn-filled courses.

After winning a pair of World Cup bronze medals in 2021-22, but no medals in 2022-23, Schmidt shocked the ski cross community in December. During a 13-day stretch, Schmidt scored a remarkable three first-place finishes in the men’s races.

In each instance, he needed to place either first or second in his elimination-round races to stay alive and challenge for the medals. Schmidt raced a combined 13 times in Val Thorens, France; Arosa, Switzerland; and Innichen, Italy, winning nine times and posting four second-place finishes.

His victory in Arosa was extra special as his sister Hannah was the women’s champion, making the Schmidts record setters as the first brother-sister team to win a World Cup ski cross race on the same day and at the same site.

Jared’s early-season success also put him No. 1 on the World Cup point standings.

The Ottawa Sports Awards Dinner also will honour Fabienne Blizzard and Scott Faithfull as the respective female and male coaches of the year.

Blizzard made her international head coaching debut with the Canadian women’s team at the 2023 FIBA U16 Americas Basketball Championship. Canada reached the final undefeated, but settled for the silver medal, after a 79-59 loss to the United States.

The silver-medal effort also qualified Canada for the 2024 U17 World Cup.

Last season, Blizzard, the Capital Courts Academy head coach and co-founder with Merrick Palmer, also saw three of her former players represent Canada at the international level – Merissah Russell, women; Cassandre Prosper, U19; and Achol Akot, U19.

Akot also was selected by Ottawa Sports Awards’ committee as the winner of the Spirit of Sport Award. During her youth growing up in low-income housing in Ottawa, Akot would travel four hours a day on the bus to and from Cairine Wilson Secondary School to attend classes and be part of the Capital Courts Academy program.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she almost left basketball. Around the same time, she also had to struggle with the death of her cousin and the near death of her brother.

By staying with basketball, she played for Canada internationally and earned a scholarship to attend the University of Central Florida. In her freshman season with the Knights, Akot has started all 13 games and averaged a team-high 9.2 rebounds as well as scoring 7.8 points a game.

Faithfull made big strides in his career as a swimming coach and guided his top athlete to international glory.

The head coach of the Nepean-Kanata Barracudas, he was named to Canada’s six-member coaching staff for the 2023 World Junior Swimming Championships. Swimming Canada also selected Faithfull to its Next Wave Coaches Group.

In the water, he guided Julie Brousseau to another memorable season. Brousseau won two silver and five bronze medals at the world junior meet and captured a pair of gold medals at the Pan-American Games.

The Carleton University basketball program will be honoured not once, but twice as the men’s and women’s Team of the Year. Carleton is only the third school to sweep both national basketball titles in the same year.

University of Victoria achieved that double national championship feat in 1980, 1981 and 1982, while the University of British Columbia was the first, when women’s basketball celebrated its inaugural national tournament in 1972.

The Carleton Ravens men’s team was pushed to the limit in all three games before winning its record 17th U Sports Canadian university championship. The gold-medal game was the most challenging as the Ravens escaped with a 109-104 victory over host St. Francis Xavier X-Men.

The Ravens, who were selected men’s Team of the Year for a 14th time, advanced to the final by winning their quarterfinal by two points and their semifinal by six points.

On the same day the men’s team won its national title, the Carleton Ravens women’s squad also emerged as U Sports champions.

The Ravens earned their second women’s national gold medal with a 71-59 decision over the Queen’s University Gaels and completed their season with a 35-2 win-loss record. In the semifinals, the Ravens posted a 65-46 win.

After winning the OUA conference championship, the Ravens entered the U Sports women’s basketball final tournament as the No. 1 seed.