Legend built on determination
IRONMAN legend Dean Mercer was running a surf club fitness camp just hours before his shock death on the Gold Coast yesterday.
As sporting greats remembered Mercer as the champion who never gave up, surf lifesaving was last night rallying around one of the sport’s first families.
Mercer died following a medical episode at Mermaid Waters on the Gold Coast.
He had just dropped his eldest son to swimming training and headed to a local shopping centre to pick up some groceries after an early morning fitness training session for veteran Kurrawa surf club members, when his car veered across four lanes of traffic and ploughed into a suburban fence about 7am.
The 47- year- old, who with his brother Darren one of the stars of surf lifesaving’s golden era through the 1990s, suffered massive cardiac arrest.
Despite the best CPR efforts of a passer- by and attention from paramedics, he later died in the intensive care unit at Gold Coast University Hospital.
His wife Reen, herself a former golden girl of surf sports, was left to break the devastating news to the couple’s four boys, aged six to 13.
Mercer had only just returned to the Gold Coast the previous night from his grandmother’s funeral in Sydney.
A supremely fit athlete who continued to enter the iconic Coolangatta Gold torture test into his 40s, Mercer had no known medical conditions.
Yesterday, stars from surf lifesaving joined legends from other sports to pay tribute to Mercer as “a little Aussie battler with a heart the size of Phar Lap”.
Growing up in the small NSW town of Thirroul, near Wollongong, Mercer had a 40- year involvement with surf lifesaving.
He won two Australian Ironman titles, an equal record five NSW state championships, was awarded an OAM for services to lifesaving and was a member of the NSW Sporting Hall of Fame alongside legends such as Dawn Fraser and Don Bradman. He was that big a deal. Most recently, he had been coaching the next generation at Kurrawa on the Gold Coast, where he was a member of the club’s hall of legends.
In a statement, the family, which includes his niece and current women’s star Jordan Mercer, told of losing a legend.
“Dean was an amazing husband and loving father who loved nothing more than sharing his and Reen’s love of life and love of the surf,” the statement read.
“No surf was too big and no opponent too tall as he tackled the biggest and best in the business.
“He will go down in history as one of Australia’s greatest Ironmen, who represented both NSW and Queensland and wore the green and gold of Australia.” HE WAS one of surf lifesaving’s brightest stars in its most golden era.
Dean Mercer gave true meaning to the term Ironman, pushing his body to the limit and beyond during a 20- year racing career that drew universal admiration from the surf lifesaving movement.
While it would seem difficult to believe today, there was a time when Sunshine State Ironmen were as famous as the Queensland State of Origin team. And Dean Mercer was front and centre.
Along with his brother Darren, they were the public faces of the Kellogg’s Nutri- Grain series during the sport’s ver- sion of the Super League war in the 1990s, when top- line competitors defected to the rival Uncle Toby’s series, lured by bright lights and big money.
But the Mercers were resolute, turning down offers approaching six figures – extraordinary sums in an era when many “professional” sportsmen still had day jobs – to stay loyal to Kellogg’s.
Their pictures were on billboards and TV commercials.
Kids, including some who would go on to become future champions, wanted to be them.
While some would argue older brother Darren was the better athlete, Dean Mercer was the fiercest competitor.
Surf Life Saving Queensland’s Stuart Hogben remem- bers the victory that defined Mercer’s career.
It was the 1995 Australian Titles Ironman final and Kurrawa Beach was packed.
Mercer was leading but Trevor Hendy, already on his own path to becoming an immortal of the sport, was reining him in.
Somehow Mercer held on in the final sprint to seal a famous victory.
“It was pure nation,” Hogben said.
But for all his fierce determination, there was a larrikin lurking too.
Surf lifesaving identity Ian Hanson said Mercer was one of the sport’s most loveable characters, even when he had to face court after being busted stealing bed sheets from Myer. determi-