Ivanie Blondin, Ottawa’s most successful Olympian ever, was set to give up speed skating at age 19

The career of Ottawa’s most successful Olympian of all-time almost ended before it ever really started.

Ivanie Blondin was depressed and defeated. As a rising speed skating talent, the Orléans athlete had moved to Montreal early in high school to join the national short-track program, with her sights set on earning a berth for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.

But when the Canadian team decided before the big season that they’d take just one specialist in the 1,500 metres, the 19-year-old knew the spot wouldn’t be hers.

Dealing with crushed Olympic dreams was devastating enough, but it was much more than that. Blondin had never felt welcomed as an athlete from outside of Quebec in Montreal, which was especially tough as a teenager living away from home. She’d also undergone tests for breast cancer, she’d suffered multiple concussions and her eating was disordered. It was all way too much to handle.

“Mentally and physically, I was such a wreck, and I was not functioning like a normal human being anymore,” Blondin recalls. “My parents saw that, and so I’d moved back to Ottawa, and I was ready to just focus on my studies and quit sport completely.”

Gloucester Concordes Speed Skating Club coach Mike Rivet had kept in regular contact with Blondin while she was away and was in full agreement that a return to Montreal would not be healthy. But he had another idea that he thought was worth considering – Calgary, the home of the national long-track speed skating team.

During a 2.5-hour meeting at Tim Hortons, Blondin flushed out all the feelings in an endless stream of tears, and ultimately agreed that Calgary could be worth a shot.

“I don’t know, something just made sense, and he just helped me make that decision,” recalls the Garneau high school and Algonquin College grad who suddenly found herself committed to moving across the country.

There was no plan in place, but Rivet said he’d help her figure out the logistics. He called a friend in the moving business and asked him to save some space in the back of the truck for his next trip to Calgary. Blondin wound up heading to South Carolina to meet up with another Gloucester Concordes skater who was visiting his family, and he drove them from there to Calgary.

Fast-forward through 16 years of speed skating crowns and cowgirl hats in Calgary, and Blondin found herself back where it all started earlier this month at the Bob MacQuarrie Recreation Complex – Orléans. A solid stream of fans congratulated her on her third and fourth Olympic medals, asking for photos and autographs for hours as they greeted their hometown hero.

“Coming back to the grassroots, seeing all the young kids get excited just seeing me, it brings me back,” smiles Blondin, who remembers 2006 Olympian Amanda Overland visiting the Concordes when she was young. “It’s pretty cool. It’s a full-circle moment when you think about it. And I’m proud to be from this community. I hope that it inspires younger athletes to follow the same path.”

WATCH CBC NEWS | ‘Never back down from a fight’: Ivanie Blondin shares her Olympic story

Now rewind back to when Blondin first landed in Calgary, and she had another local star to look up to there. The great Kristina Groves of the Ottawa Pacers was just about to wrap up her storied career, which included four Olympic medals (two silver and two bronze).

With little preparation on long-track skates, Blondin showed up to the 2010 Olympic trials and managed to place fourth in the 5,000 m, just behind Torino 2006 medallists Groves and Cindy Klassen.

The performance left a big hint of what may lie ahead for Blondin, who appeared at the world junior short-track and long-track championships in the same season.

Having gone five years without skating on an oval, it took a few years for Blondin to fully hit her stride at the senior level. She was prone to having a great season followed by a down season early in her career, but she eventually developed astonishing consistency and sustained success at the very highest levels.

Blondin won her first World Cup medals – five of them – in 2012-2013. She only reached one podium in 2013-2014, but got to make her Olympic debut at Sochi 2014 at age 23.

In 2014-2015, Blondin found her calling in the mass start event. The new race on the international circuit resembled short-track with many skaters racing at once instead of in pairs, but on the longer oval, for 16 laps.

She dominated the discipline, which allowed the fierce competitor inside her to become unleashed, as she earned the overall World Cup title with medals in five of her six races.

Blondin followed that up with six World Cup podiums the next season and four more the year after. In 2017-2018, she ranked second overall for long distances and third in the mass start with an impressive haul of eight medals, but had a letdown as she was held off the podium at the PyeongChang 2028 Olympics.

After five medals in 2018-2019, Blondin then set the tone for a spectacular run that cemented her spot as one of her sport’s all-time greats.

In 2019-2020, she earned 11 World Cup podiums and the mass start overall crown – including gold medals in five consecutive races in five different events.

From there, it was rare that a World Cup weekend would go by without Blondin winning a medal, or multiple medals, while she maintained a demanding schedule of races over 1,000 m, 1,500 m, 3,000 m, 5,000 m, in the team sprint, team pursuit, mixed relay or mass start.

She won four World Cup medals out of eight races in COVID-shortened 2020-2021, seven medals in 2021-2022, a full dozen in 2022-2023, nine in 2023-2024, and eight in each of her last two seasons.

Added up, it’s 94 World Cup medals in total – 29 gold, 38 silver and 27 bronze – to go alongside 17 medals from the World Single Distances Championships (five gold, nine silver, three bronze), plus a World Allround Championships silver.

“Little did we know how important that cup of coffee was that day,” Blondin told Rivet years later.

Blondin was among the very best in the world for more than a decade. The record above shows there was hardly a detectable blip in performance, even if the reality away from the bright lights included stresses of all kinds. It was a remarkable run of continued success rarely seen in sport.

“I think a lot of it just came down to keeping things fun and light and enjoying my life as much as I can as an athlete,” Blondin reflects. “It’s not that I wasn’t structured, but if I wanted to go to the mountains, instead of sitting on my bike for three hours, I would just go hiking with my dog.

“I feel like, as an athlete, I took care of my body, mentally and physically as best as I could. Even through the downfalls and periods where I was mentally not well, I always kind of found my way back by surrounding myself with nature, and camping, and just having an outlet outside of speed skating.”

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When difficult circumstances arose, Blondin learned to redirect her focus elsewhere. For example, she was previously the president of her condo board and looked out for seniors in her building before she and husband Konrad Nagy, a retired Olympic speed skater from Hungary, moved into a house in Calgary last summer.

Renovations are already underway and their home would be ready to welcome any new arrivals in future years, but before then Blondin plans to have one “last hurrah” in the sports world this summer with her AUTOMATIC Racing women’s pro road cycling team.

Blondin says she was fortunate not to have any major injuries since she switched to long-track speed skating, helped by the fact that she got to know her body well and knew when she needed rest, particularly in the later years of her career.

Gold & silver medals in Milano conclude Blondin’s Olympic collection

When Blondin won her first Olympic medals at the Beijing 2022 Games – a gold in team pursuit and silver in mass start – it felt like a relief almost as much as a joy. She’d opened those Games with two poor races and the worries of a repeat Olympic meltdown overtook her.

At the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, Blondin knew her competitive spirit would be there, but she also vowed to herself to enjoy the experience.

At her fourth Olympics, Blondin knew that the Athletes Village can be overstimulating, particularly since she’d arrived a week before the Games and wasn’t going to compete until a week in.

“I had my bike with me while I was there, and on one of my very first rides, I found a small town just outside of Milan that was six kilometres away, there was a coffee shop, which was immensely incredible, and I would go there on my bike on almost every single day that I could,” recounts the 35-year-old. “I’d go grab a cappuccino, just sit there with little girls who had no idea who I was, and I would just enjoy the sun out on a little patio. And that was my saving grace, I think, just to kind of stay mentally sane with the stress before going into Games.”

In Blondin’s first event in Milano, she earned gold in the women’s team pursuit alongside fellow Concordes product Isabelle Weidemann, who equalled Groves’ career total of four Olympic medals with her pair of gold, a silver and a bronze.

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On the second-last day of the Olympics, Blondin was a cool character throughout the women’s mass start. She flashed down the finishing straight with the sprint speed that made her such a versatile skater, and added a silver and bring her final Olympic medal count to four, with two gold and two silver.

Read More: Ottawa at the Olympics Day 15: Final chapter in Ivanie Blondin’s Olympic speed skating career yields 4th medal

Blondin now stands as Ottawa’s most successful Olympian ever.

“I mean, wow, I never really thought about it, or I guess I didn’t realize it,” marvels the record seven-time winner of the Ottawa Sports Awards Kristina Groves Female Athlete of the Year Trophy.

“I’m just proud,” she adds. “I’m proud of where I grew up, and if I look back at my entire career, I’m just glad I took those chances and put myself out there.”

Blondin is grateful she gave the Canadian Road Cycling Championships a try – it led her to a pro contract. She even went back to the short-track speed skating nationals a few years ago – with lukewarm results, although she’s still happy she gave it a go. But looking back now, her daring move to Calgary nearly half her life ago stands as her favourite leap of faith.

“Keeping your mind open and taking that chance, whether it’s scary or not, I think if you never try, you’re never gonna really know, right?” reflects Blondin. “That’s kind of what has shaped my entire career.”

Now at the finish line of her storied speed skating journey, Blondin carries a much different perspective on that pivotal meeting at Tim Hortons when she was so filled with pain as a teenager.

“I do think about that moment, and it’s very special actually,” she highlights. “It was definitely a turning point in my career.”