Referee
When Dennis was still a little man, no one could have imagined that there would be such a glorious career in the offing for him. The joke in the family was, Van der Geest admitted, that Father Cor, a praised judo trainer, always said, “Dennis, who will probably be a good referee later.”
Only at the age of fifteen did that hidden talent flourish. “When I got into puberty and started to grow a little, everything fell in the right place. Then I started throwing people and suddenly came back from competitions with a medal.”