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By Keiran Gorsky & Dan Plouffe
The summer of 2026 will undoubtedly go down as one of the most memorable for local artistic gymnastics coach Lauren Mooney, with many of those moments concentrated in a one-week whirlwind.
First was a sudden trip to Brazil when her athlete Mackenzie Grant was called in at the last minute to represent Canada at the Pan American Gymnastics Championships (to great success). Then came her beautiful backyard wedding two days after landing back in Ottawa. And four days later came the devastating Canada Day storm, which destroyed the Edge Gymnastics club where she coached.
“It was a lot,” understates Mooney, still a little in disbelief. “It just came back-to-back-to-back.”
Edge Gymnastics, along with other tenants in the same Kanata North business park complex, were hit by an enormous flood on July 1, with water in the parking lot rising above the door level of a delivery truck. Most of the club’s equipment was a loss, the total value estimated at $850,000.
“It’s devastating,” owner Connie Groom told CTV News just over a week after the storm. “I’m heartbroken because I worked so hard building that family and building that place where people feel safe.”
Early on, Groom hoped to reopen Edge come fall. But with so many people and businesses affected, insurance claims proceeded too slowly for that to be possible. And then towards the end of August, parents of Edge gymnasts were informed that the young three-year-old club would have to shut down for good.
For Mooney, there were a flurry of emotions, but she prefers to focus on the positive ones. She was grateful that many Edge coaches and athletes were able to find places at other clubs in the area.
Mooney, Grant and their group of high-level gymnasts hardly missed a beat as they quickly moved to UniGym Gatineau, where Mooney now works as a high-performance coach.
“It was extremely easy for me and for my athletes to go there,” recounts Mooney, whose athletes had often been welcomed to train at UniGym during the past three years.
“The facility at UniGym, it’s the best in Canada,” she adds about the 7,000-member club that’s hosted past Olympic team trials. “It’s a massive, massive organization.”
Mooney reports that her star pupil has been progressing well in the new and improved surroundings since concluding her 2025-26 season with the unexpected trip to Rio de Janeiro.
Grant hadn’t initially been part of the Canadian junior team made up mostly of athletes who were a year older than her, but the 14-year-old was asked just days before departure to replace another gymnast who was injured.
Having previously competed for Canada at international invitationals in France and Germany, Grant stepped right up for her first international championships and helped Canada win the silver medal in the junior team competition. She also qualified for the event finals for uneven bars and balance beam – particularly impressive for an athlete who’d been slated to stay home.
“It was a really big meet and she did really well,” underlines Mooney. “We were ready. I think we peaked at the proper time for sure.”
The mid-June Pan Am meet came just a few short weeks following the Canadian Championships, where Grant had been somewhat disappointed with her performance. She placed third all-around on the first day of competition and then eighth on the second day, which gave her alternate status for the Pan Am team.
But the 2024 Canadian novice champion has long had her sights set on bigger objectives – to reach the highest level in her sport and compete at the Olympic Games.
“It’s always on my mind,” Grant says of a future Olympic berth. “Every day when I go into training I’m like, ‘OK, you’re one step closer.’”
Grant can announce, with relative nonchalance, how she has trained with four-time Canadian Olympian and three-time world medalist Ellie Black, which makes it a fair bit easier to dream big.
Mooney is most definitely a fan of the five-ring pursuit, although she cautions that the L.A. 2028 Games may be a little early for Grant since she’ll just become eligible for the senior level a few months before the team is chosen.
“It’s not the same days of Nadia Comaneci when she was 14 when she won,” Mooney says of the Montreal 1976 Olympics legend. “The sport has changed significantly. I think the average age of most of the Olympians that you see now are around 22 or 23 years old.”
For the coming season, when she will be among the older junior-aged athletes, Grant will be shooting for more international appearances with Team Canada while looking to build towards the 2027 Junior World Championships in Egypt.
“We’re already trying to start preparing for that 12 or 13 months out,” Mooney signals.
Sam Zakutney back in shape after questioning whether he’d have to call it a career
Much closer on the horizon are the Sept. 10-13 Canadian senior team trials in Montreal for the 2026 World Championships, which will be staged from Oct. 17-25 in the Netherlands.
Paris 2024 Olympian Sam Zakutney of Ottawa will be gunning for a spot on the team, which is a significantly improved outlook from earlier this year when rotator cuff tears in both shoulders forced him to miss February’s Elite Canada meet. He couldn’t put any weight on his arms for a month.
“If you asked me a few months ago, I would have told you I was pretty nervous, because I wasn’t really doing much gymnastics-wise,” reflects the 27-year-old. “I told myself I’ll try my best to make it to L.A., but if I have to go through another surgery or something to get there, I don’t know if I’m really up for that.”
A severe pectoral injury in 2023 nearly cost Zakutney a chance at the Paris Olympics, but he’s now feeling back to form with his shoulder problems under control.
“I feel fairly confident, despite the time off,” the Montreal-based athlete says about the possibility of competing in his fifth career senior men’s worlds.
Zakutney’s confidence was boosted at June’s Canadian Championships, when he placed third all-around – a podium finish for the first time in many years – while earning bronze medals for pommel horse and parallel bars.
Zakutney would have likely been in line to be selected for Canada’s 2026 Commonwealth Games team following his nationals success, but he’d already made important plans. On July 11 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the Penn State University grad celebrated his wedding to Nina Macelko. The couple legally married last year after Zakutney had proposed in Paris.
Macelko’s affirmative answer amplified Zakutney’s already extraordinary visit to The City of Love. At the Paris Games, he helped Canada to its best-ever finish in the men’s team event, qualifying for the finals for the first time on the way to an eighth-place finish.
Zakutney vividly recalls the feeling he experienced during the high bar event, where he was first up for his team. He remembers sticking the dismount and his arms shooting down to his sides. Feeding off the adrenaline of a roaring crowd, all of his career seemed to play out in his head in a single moment.
“In the blink of an eye, my life flashed, if that makes sense, like a quick timelapse of every experience, every tribulation, every memory of the gym just super fast,” he recounts. “Right after I stuck the landing, I was just overwhelmed with pure, pure joy.”
It’s the kind of feeling countless young gymnast are keen to live themselves. Oliver Fong is among them. The Rideau Gymnastics athlete also brought home national medals while competing in the novice division at the same venue as Zakutney in Oshawa.
After performing near-flawless routines with simplified skills to win the Ontario novice title in dominant fashion earlier this year, Rideau coach Michael Figotin pushed him to go all out for the nationals.
Fong spent a great deal of time preparing a range of high-difficulty novice skills such as a double back on the floor event and a Tsukahara layout for vault. He wound up improving on his winning provincials score of 66.599 to hit 67.031, which was good for second place all-around on the first day of competition, with a silver medal for floor and a bronze for pommel horse.
Fong and other youth gymnasts are now preparing for the upcoming 2026-27 season. The first local gymnastics meet of the new season will take place from Dec. 4-6 when Ottawa Gymnastics Centre hosts the first Ontario Cup men’s competition.
– with files from Martin Cleary