Canadian Olympian Emilie Mondor killed in car accident near Ottawa
By LORI EWING
(CP) - Emilie Mondor was never more at home than when she was alone on a run, a ferocious athlete who thrived on the lonely life of a long distance runner.
The Olympic athlete from Mascouche, Que., was killed over the weekend in a car accident, cutting short a promising career. She was 25 years old.
Members of Canada’s track and field community were stunned and saddened by the news of her death, and fondly recalled an athlete whose love of the sport was unparalleled.
“That kind of passion is tough to describe, I haven’t seen that very much in my whole career,” said Martin Goulet, chief high performance officer for Athletics Canada, and a longtime distance coach. “She had that very passionate way about her, it was so deep in her we could feel that fire just being around her. Running was very special to her, to the point where it was almost a spiritual approach.”
Mondor was the first Canadian woman to dip under the 15-minute mark in the 5,000 metres, accomplishing the feat at the 2003 world championships in Paris where she finished 12th. She led the Canadian women’s team to a bronze medal at the world cross-country championships in 2004, and ran for Canada at the Athens Olympics later that year, finishing 17th in the 5,000.
“She really, really loved to run, purely for running. There’s not a lot of athletes out there that absolutely love just the motion of running,” said three-time Olympic middle-distance runner Leah Pells.
“Obviously Emilie was unbelievably talented, but she would have always run no matter what. She was an intense athlete, but her love of running always came through,” added Pells, who lived and trained with Mondor when she ran for Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.
“You could just feel that in workouts, she was just glad to be there, glad to be running, glad to be part of the sport.”
Provincial police say Mondor was travelling alone on Highway 417 on Saturday when her vehicle overturned around 4:30 p.m. ET near Hawkesbury, Ont., about an hour east of Ottawa.
Constable Pierre Dubois said Mondor was not wearing a seatbelt, and was ejected from the car. She was taken by air ambulance to Ottawa Civic Hospital where she died Saturday evening of massive chest trauma.
Mondor’s career had been plagued by injuries the past couple of seasons, a bone condition similar to osteoporosis sidelining her with numerous stress fractures. But the five-foot-six runner recently decided to return to competition as a marathon runner, a perfect fit it would seem for an athlete who loved to log countless kilometres on the roads.
She announced the decision on her website, saying it had always been her goal to one day run a marathon.
“I always had that idea in my head. I live my dream now,” she wrote.
She moved to Ottawa to train for the marathon, and was to make her debut at the New York City Marathon on Nov. 5.
“There’s no doubt she would have been an unbelievable marathon runner,” said Pells.
Mondor finished second at the Sporting Life 10K last month in Toronto, in her first race back after being sidelined for several months.
“I do not care being second here, it is a victory overall for me,” Mondor said after the race. “My comeback is unbelievable.”
Mondor took up track when she was 14, and quickly made a name for herself on the national scene, winning gold at the Canadian junior cross-country championships in 1997.
She attended SFU where she dominated the distance events, winning the NAIA cross-country championships twice - one of the victories in course record time - and won the NAIA track title in the 1,500 metres.
“I don’t know if the racing was the pleasure of her life, I think most it was just the running part of it she enjoyed,” said Mike Lonergan, who coached Mondor for four years when she lives in B.C. “She was really easy to coach, she was so self-motivated, you didn’t have to work at that. In fact you had to work more at tempering it.”
She wore her love of her sport in the numerous tattoos that decorated her wiry body.
She had Canadian flag with wing on the inside of her left ankle to commemorate the first time she was named to a Canadian team.
She celebrated her sub-15 minute performance at the world championships by having the No. 15 tattooed on the inside of her right ankle. Her time of 14 minutes 59.68 seconds was a Canadian record at the time. It held up briefly, as teammate Courtney Babcock ran 14:54.98 a couple of heats later.
Mondor had the Olympic rings tattooed on the inside of her left forearm after she was named to the Athens Olympic team. She also had a tattoo of a wolf emblazoned on her shoulder blade, which signified her love of nature.
“I want to express my deepest condolences to the family of Emilie Mondor,” Mondor’s agent Ray Flynn said via e-mail from the World Athletics Final in Stuttgart, Germany. “Emilie had an extreme passion for running and the sport of athletics and it was contagious to all around her.”
“Emilie had a bright future ahead of her and was very much looking forward to making her debut in the 2006 ING New York City Marathon. We will all miss her dearly.”
“On behalf of Athletics Canada, our sincere condolences to the Mondor family and many friends,” Jean-Guy Ouellette, chairman of the board of Athletics Canada said in a statement Sunday. “Emilie’s loss is even more difficult because we didn’t just lose a great athlete; first and foremost we lost an outstanding individual.”
Mondor is survived by her two younger sisters Veronique and Marie-Christine, mother Nicole and father Francois.