Skater-runner a one-shoed wonder
Figure skater Bridget Le Donne tried cross-country, got spiked in the heel, lost a shoe and still made OFSAA
IT WAS WHILE WATCHING Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue win the gold medal at the 2010 Olympics that she decided to give ice dancing a try. Sitting there on the couch with her mom, it made sense. What they did on skates looked amazing. And she was already a figure skater.
It clicked with her. The eight years since have taken her and her partner all over the place, including to nationals the past two years and to Austria where they won a gold medal of their own at the International Children’s Games. But the day-afterday practice makes for a somewhat solitary — plus one — sporting existence. So last fall, Bridget Le Donne decided to join the school track team.
“I’d never been terribly involved in school sports,” the 16-year-old says. “I thought I’d give it a try.”
It was a social decision, mainly. Be part of a team, hang out with some friends, do something in Westmount Secondary colours. She ran the 1,500 metres that season, had fun and decided to try out for cross-country this autumn.
With all that skating, she was in shape. But she wasn’t really expecting to be all that good. So she was more than a little surprised when she finished ninth out of 81 runners at her first meet.
“Immediately after, I felt horrible, like I was going to barf,” she laughs.
Yet, within five minutes, she was looking forward to her next race. Which came a week later, in miserable conditions. She wasn’t quite as good. Still, the rain and wind and cold hadn’t deterred her. She’d loved it again. So she was geared up for last week’s OFSAA qualifier in Niagara Falls.
Do well here and she’d go to the provincials, which is a huge goal for anyone in high school sports, let alone someone who’d really not competed much in their sport.
THINGS
WERE GOING WELL,
too. For the first kilometre she stayed with the pack. Everyone was bunched in and not wanting to drop off the pace. That’s when she got her test.
“Someone stepped on my heel,” she says. “Pulled my shoe off.”
Actually, the shoe was only half off. Which, remarkably, was a bigger problem than the hole just below her Achilles tendon from the other runner’s
“I just kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’” BRIDGET LE DONNE
spike that had punctured her.
That didn’t even hurt, Le Donne says. Thanks to adrenalin.
At this point she had a choice. Stop and fix her shoe and fall hopelessly off the pace. Or kick it off, run barefoot and hope for the best. The former would essentially prevent her from qualifying. The latter, well, who knew what it would mean? The day was cold, the ground was hard and part of the three-kilometre track they had to round twice — though she didn’t know about this upcoming surprise at that moment — was covered in gravel.
She went with Option 2.
With one foot now only in a sock, she kept up with the pack. It felt weird, she says. Off-kilter. The pounding wasn’t comfortable. Especially when she got to the gravel stretch. Smartly, she veered off to the shoulder and tried to avoid it as much as possible. Even so, the blisters started to form before long. The friction was leading to bruises. The sole started to bleed. And her foot was freezing.
“I just kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ ” she says.
But she kept going. Never looked down at it. That might’ve made it worse. Weirdly, a teammate with whom she was running nearly tripped over the vacated shoe as they did their second lap. She laughs at how ridiculous a way to miss the cutoff that would’ve been.
It was only when she crossed the line in 25:40, that the foot started to hurt. The pain continued until she wandered over to the timer’s area and checked her time and the standings. She’d qualified for Saturday’s provincial final.
Was she surprised?
“Very,” she laughs.
Her place now secure, she spent the days that followed resting and allowing the foot to heal while ...
Actually, no. Ice dancing doesn’t stop for mere flesh wounds. Especially not in the final days of preparation for sectionals. So she jams her foot into her skate every afternoon at the Hamilton Skating Club and gets at it. For at least two hours a day.
The good news? The only time it really bothers her now is when she bends her ankle in the skate, putting pressure on the puncture wound. The other good news? “It’s just a little hole,” she says. OK, relatively good news.