Sergeant Brigitte O’Driscoll Becomes an Ironman in Ottawa
Westmount, Quebec – 09 August 2026: For the third summer in a row, Sergeant Brigitte O’Driscoll of The Royal Montreal Regiment (RMR) has pushed herself through one of endurance sport’s toughest challenges. This time, however, she went all the way.
On 02 August 2026, O’Driscoll crossed the finish line of IRONMAN Canada-Ottawa, completing the full-distance triathlon in 13 hours, 20 minutes and 38 seconds. The event consisted of a 3.8 km swim, a 180 km bicycle ride and, just when most people would be perfectly content to call it a day, a full 42.2 km marathon.
For O’Driscoll, however, the real story is not simply what happened during those 13 hours. It is what it took to get to the starting line.
She originally registered for IRONMAN Ottawa in July 2024, intending to race in 2025. A broken heel suffered during training derailed that plan and forced her to postpone the full Ironman for a year. Remarkably, she still completed the 2025 Mont-Tremblant 70.3 while dealing with the injury, following her 2024 Mont-Tremblant 70.3 finish of six hours and six minutes.
Then came everything else.
Over the two years between registering and finally reaching the Ottawa finish line, O’Driscoll completed a five-month military deployment, balanced two jobs, worked through her injuries and endured another injury only three weeks before race day. Training meant countless early mornings and late nights, with some sessions stretching four or five hours. It was a demanding commitment that required not only exceptional fitness, but discipline, time management and a willingness to keep going when the original plan had long since fallen apart.
That makes the Ottawa result particularly fitting for an RMR soldier.
The Regiment’s previous articles on O’Driscoll’s 2024 and 2025 races emphasized the connection between endurance sport and the physical robustness demanded of Infantry soldiers. Her 2026 achievement takes that lesson one step further. Soldiering is rarely about executing a perfect plan under perfect conditions. It is about adapting when circumstances change, recovering from setbacks, continuing to perform when tired and uncomfortable, and refusing to let adversity determine the outcome.
O’Driscoll had set herself a target time when she first registered two years earlier. She did not achieve it.
That ultimately mattered far less than finishing.
As she reflected afterward, the emotion of approaching the finish line came not simply from earning the title, but from remembering the injuries, setbacks, hours of training and people who had supported her and made sacrifices of their own along the way. Her conclusion was characteristically straightforward: “I am an Ironman.”
There is an equally straightforward lesson in her experience: “Do hard things.”
Not because success is assured, but because deliberately placing ourselves in difficult circumstances forces us to discover what we are capable of. For O’Driscoll, two years of setbacks ultimately made crossing the finish line more meaningful than the race time she had originally imagined.
From two strong performances at Mont-Tremblant in 2024 and 2025 to becoming a full-distance Ironman in 2026, Sergeant O’Driscoll has provided the RMR with an impressive example of physical fitness, determination and, above all, resilience.
Congratulations, Sergeant O’Driscoll. You are an Ironman. You set the standard!
