Isabelle Sauve

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Isabelle Sauve (also spelled Isabelle Sauvé) is a Canadian ultramarathon runner and writer who worked as a police officer with the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP). In 2018 the race organiser RacingThePlanet named her the female 4 Deserts Champion, She wrote a health and wellness column for the Canadian police magazine Blue Line and is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario.

Early life and education

Sauve was born and raised in Astorville, in East Ferris Township near North Bay, Ontario.

She graduated from Nipissing University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology. She worked as a research assistant while a student and credits her mentor, Peter Chow, with research and publishing opportunities. Author biographies she supplied to Blue Line in 2019 and 2020 describe her as holding a master's degree in psychology and as a doctoral candidate.

Career

Sauve identified herself as an OPP constable with about ten years of service and a member of the emergency response team at the Almaguin Highlands Detachment in Burks Falls. She has been a Sergeant Investigator with the Nunavik Police Service. Her author biography described her as a 12-year veteran at the Lanark County Detachment, and her August 2020 biography as a psychological services advisor in the OPP's Healthy Workplace Bureau. The OPP Association's podcast introduced her in October 2022 as a former OPP provincial constable.

Sauve competed in the RacingThePlanet 4 Deserts series, a group of multi-day, self-supported ultramarathons. In 2016 she finished third among women at the Atacama Crossing in Chile, a 250-kilometre race run in six stages, in 35 hours, 30 minutes and 4 seconds.

She was first among women at the Sahara Race in Namibia in 2018, second at the Gobi March in Mongolia, and first at The Last Desert in Antarctica. RacingThePlanet named her the female 4 Deserts Champion for 2018. The title goes to the runner with the lowest combined ranking across the series’ four races. In April 2019, how she fitted training around police shifts of 12 hours or more.

Recognition

In July 2024, Sauve was inducted into the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame and had earlier been honoured by the Perth and East Ferris sports halls of fame.

References