page_title: Summer Mortimer
section_title: London Paralympics
hierarchical_section_title: Summer Mortimer / Sports career / Paraswimming for Canada / London Paralympics
caption_attribution_description: English: Night view of the London Aquatic Centre on 5 May 2012.
context_page_description: Summer Ashley Mortimer is a former Canadian-Dutch paraswimmer who competed internationally for Canada, and later the Netherlands national paralympic team, an artist, and a performing artist.
  Mortimer won seven world-championship finals for Canada and the Netherlands, and four medals for Canada at her first Paralympic Games in London: two gold, one silver and one bronze.
  Mortimer competed in the 2008 Canadian Olympic Trials as an able-bodied swimmer, and retrained as a paraswimmer after a trampolining accident. She began competing at the international level in 2010 with an SM10 classification, setting world records in the process. Competing in six events, Mortimer won medals in all four individual races. She holds world records in the S10 50- and 100-metre long-course freestyle and the 50- 100- and 200-metre backstroke. In 2013 Mortimer applied to join the Netherlands national team, and announced her transfer in June 2014. Winning three medals at the 2014 IPC championships, she set two European records. She did not compete in the 2016 Summer Olympics, citing "serious health reasons."
context_section_description: Mortimer qualified for six women's SM10 events at the 2012 London Paralympics—the 200-metre individual medley, 4 × 100 m freestyle relay 34pts, 4 × 100 m medley relay, 50- and 100-metre freestyle and 100-metre backstroke—and expectations for her were high. On August 30, the first day of the competition, Sophie Pascoe of New Zealand won the SM10 200-metre individual medley; Mortimer took the silver medal. For a half-hour before the competition, Mortimer was "bawling her eyes out"; she told The Canadian Press, "[Being] here and meeting all these people made me realize I am so incredibly grateful for the experience I’ve had as a result of my accident. I don’t know if this was part of the journey I was supposed to walk in life but I wouldn’t take it back for the world". The next day, she won the S10 50-metre freestyle gold medal in a record time of 28.10 seconds. Mortimer's time was .07 second faster than her April Trials record, and .14 second faster than Pascoe's time; she went into the race "a bit annoyed" and "mad at anyone who was going to take it from me".
  In the preliminary round of the 100-metre backstroke Mortimer placed third, and hoped to be away from "the main people" in the finals to maintain her focus. She won the gold medal in the final on September 4, setting a world record of 1:05.90 after overcoming Pascoe's half-second lead at the turn. Mortimer noted that her time was faster than her best able-bodied time.
  In the 100-metre freestyle (her final solo event) Mortimer finished third, 0.69 second behind Pascoe and France's Elodie Lorandi; Canadian Aurelie Rivard finished fourth. Mortimer's bronze was Canada's only medal on day nine of the competition.
  As part of the Canadian women's 34-point 4 × 100 m freestyle relay and 4 × 100 m medley relay teams, Mortimer did not medal. Although her freestyle-relay team clocked 4:38.23 (missing the 2000 Canadian record by 0.22 second), they placed seventh in the finals. With Katarina Roxon, Morgan Bird and Brianna Nelson in the medley relay, Mortimer's team finished seventh and last. Her times of 32.35 for the 50-metre and 1:06.37 for the 100-metre were the fastest for her legs of the events. At the 2012 Olympics, Mortimer's four medals were the most for any Canadian athlete or para-athlete.
caption: The London Aquatics Centre, where Mortimer won four Paralympic medals
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