Dutch hero swims 200 km to fight cancer: nation comes together in support!

Maarten van der Weijden swims the 200 kilometers of the ‘Elfstedentocht’ in order to raise money for cancer research. Dutch people are absolutely loving it!

 

EDIT: Noooo, he got sick shortly after 12 and had to cancel – nevertheless, an amazing effort!

One Dutchman has been swimming into the hearts and souls of the Netherlands this past weekend. Long distance swimmer Maarten van der Weijden started out this Saturday at 4.30 in Leeuwarden on an epic swim throughout the province of Friesland in an effort to swim the full length of the fabled ‘Elfstedentocht’ (11 cities tour) which is normally ice-skated.

He hopes to finish this coming night again at Leeuwarden and all Dutchies and everybody and his dog who read about his heroic effort are rooting for him and cheering him on. Let’s have a look at the live-feed now! (its a 360 feed, so turn the screen a bit to see Maarten still swim)

Maarten van der Weijden is swimming against cancer

He’s doing all of this in an effort to raise money for cancer research. This hero survived leukemia in his youth himself and now takes the country along for this heartwarming heroic swimming tour, raising more and more money for cancer research in the process. The support yesterday was crazy as you can see:

If you want to help him in the fight against cancer, here’s the website to donate (loving the ‘Iet giet oan tegen kanker’  tagline).

What’s this elfstedentocht that Maarten van der Weijden is swimming?

Basically, it’s a legendary ice-skating tour throughout Friesland through 11 Frisian cities, starting and finishing in Leeuwarden.

It hasn’t been held since 1997, and there’s a big chance that this ’11 cities tour’ was the last one due to global warming and such.

We’ll be following and cheering Maarten on all day, so should the rest of the world, so share this article!

GO MAARTEN GO!

Source cover pic: Twitter – still – Robbert de Rijk

PS. Special thanks to the good people at Stentec (sailing navigation software) for helping out with reporting in Friesland and sponsoring Maarten van der Weijden!

Abuzer van Leeuwen 🇳🇱
Abuzer van Leeuwen 🇳🇱http://www.abuzervanleeuwen.nl
Abuzer founded DutchReview a decade ago because he thought expats needed it and wanted to make amends for the Dutch cuisine. He has a Masters in Political Science and IT but somewhere always wanted to study history or good old football. He also a mortgage in the Netherlands and will happily tell you too how to get one. Born and raised in Rotterdam, Abuzer now lives in Leiden but is always longing back to his own international year in Italy.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Related posts

Latest posts

Dutch PM Schoof joins emergency EU summit to discuss Trump-Putin negotiations

Dutch Prime Minister Schoof and NATO Secretary General Rutte will join several European leaders in Paris today (February 17), to discuss both the situation...

The Netherlands is warming up, just in time for early spring

Over the upcoming days, you can expect bright sunshine and temperatures ranging from 2 to 6 degrees Celcius. 🌞 With spring just around the corner,...

Simple, smart, secure: How bunq’s trading feature makes investing easy

Interest rates in the Netherlands (and the rest of the world) keep dropping while living costs keep rising. How are we meant to deal...

It's happening

Upcoming events