The Dutch Marteen van der Weijden, which today won the trial of 10 kilometres open water in Beijing 2008, is a swimmer who has survived leukemia that was diagnosed in 2001. Van der Weijden will go down in history as the first athlete who wins a gold medal in the specialty of open water, which now competed for the first time in male category in the Olympic Games in rowing canal of Shunyi, 36 kilometres of China's capital.
There is no doubt that this specialty is for people with special and a great spirit of personal improvement. If yesterday was the surafricana Natalie du Toit, who suffers from a partial amputation of his leg, which was the sixteenth in the women's 10 kilometres from the first day, today was Van der Weijden under a flood which showed its ability to sacrifice and their race.
Born on March 31, 1981 in the Dutch city of Alkmaar had to withdraw from the competition in 2001 when she was diagnosed with the disease and thought that his sporting career came to an end. He was 20 years.
Van der Weijden, which measures 2.05 and weighs 92 kilograms, took only two years to overcome this cancer in 2004 and returned to the competition.
At the World Championships in Seville last May in the Guadalquivir River, the Dutchman who lives in downtown swimming in his country, Eindhoven, won the fourth position at 10 miles an arena for the Olympic Games in Beijing . Check the complete medal standings at BSNblog.
Van der Weijden resides Eindhoven, like his friend Pieter van den Hoogenband, gold medal in the 100 meter free at the Games in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, and today approached Shunyi to see him compete.
In Seville not only won a place in the capital in china is the only Olympic distance, 10 miles, but that was proclaimed world champion in the longest, 25 miles, and was third in the 5-kilometers.
The swimmer from Alkmaar has also had time during these years of remembering those who suffer the disease that has suffered. In 2004 swam 17 miles in Lake Yssel, in Holland, in order to raise money in the fight against leukemia. He donated 50,000 euros.
Patience is one of their characteristics, the same as that used to overcome his illness and that today it served to win the gold.
A swimmer who flee the melee in the top positions in the competition, he hoped his time and that this morning surprised the favourites, Russian Vladimir Dyatchin, the German Thomas Lurtz, and the British David Davies, who made all career in art.
