Canada’s Spencer vows to fight her way to Rio
When Mary Spencer shadowboxes, she springs forward behind a stiff jab, or angles to rip left hooks at the body and head at a ghost of an opponent, but she rarely moves backward.
And when her new coach, Chris Johnson, leans on the ring apron at HUF gym in Mississauga for a closer look at his new protege, he approves.
“I like that you’re staying here,” he says, placing his hands about 20 centimetres apart to indicate a tight space. “You’re staying in the danger zone. You’re getting comfortable. That’s the key.”
But Spencer, a three-time world champion and 2011 Pan Am Games gold medallist, is sharply aware that comfort isn’t the only key to winning.
Because more often, she says, it’s discomfort.
Three years after her heartbreaking opening-round loss at the 2012 Olympics, Spencer said her training had become perfunctory, her results lacklustre. After a loss at a late April tournament, she called Johnson, and by June she had moved from Windsor to Mississauga to train with him.
Spencer was featured in a CIBC marketing campaign for last week’s Pan Am Games, but Canada’s most accomplished women’s boxer didn’t qualify for the tournament. Instead, she spent the time training in a new gym with a new coach, believing the changes have reignited her desire.
“This is about Rio — it’s to get to the top of the podium,” Spencer says of her move to Mississauga. “It’s important to stick with what got me to the top . . . just grinding in the gym.”
Three years ago, Spencer achieved fame unheard-of in Canadian women’s boxing.
She was the co-protagonist of a documentary titled Last Woman Standing, which followed her and then-friend Ariane Fortin as they faced off for Canada’s lone Olympic berth in the 75-kg weight class.
Spencer won the spot via controversial decision, and in the months leading up to the London Games became one of Canada’s most marketable Olympic athletes. She appeared in fashion magazines and signed a sponsorship deal with Cover Girl that led to a series of commercials showcasing beauty over boxing.
But in her opening round bout in London, she dropped a 17-14 decision to China’s Jinzi Li, who went on to win bronze behind a silver medallist from Russia and teenage American phenom Claressa Shields, who claimed gold.
“When I was14 I thought (Spencer) was the best fighter in the world,” Shields says. “I fought her when I was 16 and I beat her, but I think she’s still just as great. She’s a nice person and we always talk whenever we get the chance.”
But after London, Spencer’s endorsements melted away, and so did her confidence and the quality of her training.
She split with long-time coach Charlie Stewart before reuniting with him in 2013. But by then, Fortin had supplanted her as Canada’s top women’s middleweight, and Spencer lost financial support from Sport Canada and Own the Podium.
Before London, Spencer says spirited training led to big wins, which inspired high quality training and led in turn to more wins. But Spencer says the loss to Li broke that virtuous cycle, and that she has spent the past three years trying to overcome post- Olympic inertia.
“It’s hard to train like a champion when you’ve been losing for three years,” she says. “How do you push through the pain when the losses are fresh in your mind?”
Enter Johnson, who won Olympic bronze in1992 and remains Canada’s last Olympic boxing medallist.
Eight years ago, he guided Steve Molitor to a world super bantamweight title partly by making the skilled southpaw more aggressive, and partly by imbuing him with a rock-solid self-assurance. He says Spencer is a similar project.
“This sport is 90 per cent mental and 10 per cent physical,” Johnson
“It’s hard to train like a champion when you’ve been losing for three years.” MARY SPENCER
says. “She’s lost that mentality somewhere along the way. We just have to bring it back. She knows how to win.”
Today’s training load is light — half an hour of shadowboxing, pad work.
But the previous day, Johnson pushed Spencer to the point of exhaustion with sprints and conditioning drills, then sent her into the ring for a few rounds of sparring.
For Johnson, the point was to force Spencer’s brain to keep working in the ring even as fatigue wracked her body. And for Spencer, the bigger point was that she overcame selfdoubt to conquer a workout as demanding as any fight. Looking ahead Spencer knows she’ll have to defeat Fortin, who won bronze at the Pan Ams, to qualify for Rio. And winning gold will likely mean unseating Shields, who at 20 is the favourite in any tournament she enters.
But first she has to topple her most persistent opponent.
“I don’t think of beating Ariane and Claressa,” she says. “Ariane and Claressa were never my biggest obstacles. I was my biggest obstacle.”