Maarten van der Weijden is a Dutch (Olympic gold medal winner) swimmer. He got leukemia in 2001 which took him over 4 years to recover trough several transplants and chemo's. He was declared healed in 2005.
Since his illness he set his self the goal to get as much attention as possible for cancer as possible to raise money to find a cure for this terrible disease.

So he wanted to swim the Eleven cities tour , this is a Dutch Ice skate event which is only is organised when there is enough ice on the waters in the Province Friesland. The last one was in 1997. It is a ride of 200 KM trough eleven villages in Friesland and is worldfamous event.

Maarten wanted to swim this trip (200 KM?!?!) to fundraise for the research of cancer. The swim would take about 60 hours without pause. A real admirable achievement.

Imagine yourself swimming for 60 hours, day and night... without real pauses... It is exhausting as you can imagine...

Today he had to give up, couldn't finish his attempt... But he has swum 163 KM....... I have great respect for this guy... For his performance and his cause... His body was to exhausted to continue.

although he did not make it, he is of course honored in Leeuwarden, the capitol of Friesland...
It was a emotional service because he was exhausted but was overwhelmed by all the people who came to honour him... It was great to see and indeed emotional, the entire nation had so much compassion with him...

Finally they revealed the sum of money he raised with his performance:

More than € 2.5 million euro

Amazing...... Great respect for this man !!!!

Have a great day

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