Bujold goes ‘from the hospital bed to the ring’
Stomach virus undoes years of preparation
About 6 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Mandy Bujold was hooked up to an IV and lying on a hospital bed when she looked at her coach and asked, “Why here? Why now?”
Bujold, the 51-kilogram fighter from Kitchener, Ont., was outpointed by China’s Cancan Ren, the silver medallist from London Olympics, at the Riocentro pavilion on Tuesday and if that’s all you knew about her fight, you’d classify her performance as uninspired.
But some two hours before she climbed into the ring, Bujold was undergoing medical attention for a stomach virus that put her in the athletes’ village clinic. Through the night, she dropped two kilos in body liquid — an impressive feat when you weigh 51 to begin with — and by Tuesday morning it seemed doubtful she’d make the fight.
But the IV gave her enough strength to hop on the back of a bicycle and ride from the village to nearby Riocentro. She answered the opening bell. She hung with Ren, the three-time world champ, for four rounds. Eventually she lost a unanimous decision.
Unfortunately, there was no room on the judge’s card to tell the whole story.
“I can’t even speak about the performance,” her coach Danielle Bouchard said. “I can’t believe she was able to get into the ring. She left the clinic at 9:30 (Tuesday morning). Can you imagine? She left the clinic and came here to fight a silver medallist. Usually we don’t want to give any excuses, but believe me with this one.”
Bujold was the last of the three Canadian fighters in Rio still standing. She was always going to be in tough with Ren but, at 29, the Canadian was also at her peak.
“I was so ready for this,” Bujold said. “I knew how to box (Ren).”
“If she didn’t have the stomach flu, she would have been in the medals,” said Daniel Trepanier, the head coach of Boxing Canada. “I have no doubt about it.”
As for the fight, Ren suffered a nasty cut over her right eye when the two fighters butted heads in the second round and, for a moment, it seemed like the Canadian might pull out a win. But ringside doctors got the cut under control and Ren did enough over the final two rounds to earn the decision.
“I was laying in bed until I came here,” Bujold said. “It was literally from the hospital bed to the ring. I didn’t think I was going to do it. I don’t know how I got in there.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks as she spoke. She took a moment to compose herself, then continued.
“It’s just so frustrating you know,” she said. “You’ve worked your entire life for this. I was looking at my coach. What do I do? Do I even get in the ring feeling like this? I’ve never felt like this in my life.”