My first introduction with swimming was when I was 5 years old and after finishing my B-certificate (US level 3/4) at the age of 6, I got asked my Jaap Tak to continue swimming at the club ZZ&PC De Devel, the club I still enjoy swimming my competitions.

It didn’t take long before I had my first competition in Ridderkerk, but right now I lost count…

When my sight reduces really fast in December 2012, I noticed that training and competing was getting more difficult. I started to swim into the wall, got some headaches, a hole in my head and some concussions. After contacting the Dutch Swimming Federation, they gave us the contact information of the Dutch Paralympic Swimming Team where Mark Faber (Head Coach at that time) invited me to come over to Zeist.

Once I was in Zeist they invited me every 3 weeks on Saturday morning to train with the Junior Selection led by Tineke van Bentum and Uli van Us. After the Junior Selection i became part of the Johan Cruyff Selection led by Jeanet Mulder and later on Linda Huisjes. I had my first international competition with my club in Esbjerg, Denmark, but right now I’ve been all over the planet for competitions and training camps.

Since January 2019 I’m training with the Dutch Paralympic Team at the High Performance Centre in Amersfoort led by Sander Nijhuis and later Bram Dekker.

There are 3 classes for visual impaired people:
S13: this is meant for visual impaired people
S12: this is meant for very visual impaired people
S11: this is meant for people with a severe eye disease and the blind people.

I’m classified in the S11 categorie. Everybody in the S11 needs to swim with black goggles to ensure a fair competition.