Pieter van den Hoogenband, Leontien van Moorsel and Anky van Grunsven. Exactly 25 years ago, these Brabant sports heroes conquer the Olympic Games with their ‘golden’ performance in Sydney. The Brabant input in Australia is huge anyway: from the then record number of 25 medals for the Netherlands, 20 have a Brabant link.
If the Olympic fire is inflamed in Sydney on September 15, 2000, nobody thinks about a medal for the Netherlands. Also not Pieter van den Hoogenband and Leontien van Moorsel. A few days later, ‘Tinus’ and ‘VDH’ take their first gold medal on the same day. That day, September 18, 2000, is a turning point in their lives. “It has influenced and changed my life,” Van den Hoogenband looks back. In total, he wins two gold and two bronze swimming medals in Sydney.
Van Moorsel does even better in cycling: three times gold and once silver. “You always dream of Olympic gold and in Sydney it became reality. All the performance of Anky (ed. Van Grunsven) and Pieter (ed. Van den Hoogenband), say the Brabant Clan, which motivated and ensured that you remained motivated from the beginning to the end of the Olympic Games,” remembers the in Boekel born in Boekel.
“I am fine with Anky and ‘Tinus’, we have a WhatsApp group.”
The exceptional achievements of course do not go unnoticed in Brabant. “At my old school, the Lorentz Casimir Lyceum in Eindhoven, everyone stopped with the lessons and went to the auditorium to watch the race. Those are in particular the stories I get back where they were when I won. That makes me retroactively,” says Van den Hoogenband.
That especially the Brabanders digging gold in Sydney provides a special bond. Van den Hoogenband: “Because of our comparable background and because we peaked at that moment, we were often invited to TV appearances, for example. And that we defended our titles in Athens (ed. Olympic Games 2004) ensured that we have been with each other over a longer period of time.
The Dutch athletes of course cheer in Sydney for every Orange success, but for Van Moorsel a number of athletes there are just a bit more special. “With some you have just a little more than with others. Especially with Anky and Pieter, in my case. You grew up a bit in the same environment.”
Van Moorsel had in her hunt for honorary metal Down Under Support from two special supporters, her parents. “It is amazing that that people took the trouble to travel. My parents only spoke to Boekels. I was busy with the 3 kilometers of pursuit and I thought like that people But well from A to B. If you can share these moments with your parents, then that does something to you, you will never forget that again. “
Her father has since died, but Moorsel’s mother still lives in Boekel. “Brabant is in my heart,” says Van Moorsel, who now lives in Rotterdam. She will never forget one special moment of 25 years ago anyway. “My father always drank a few beers when I had performed well. When I was honored in the evening in the Holland Heineken House, he was already nicely tipsy. He meets King Willem-Alexander (ed. Crown Prince at the time) and thinks he is an athlete. Who do you, are you that tennis player?, My father said. Then I really cursed him: old man what do you do to me. Now I think: yes that was my father, “Van Moorsel proudly speaks.
Van den Hoogenband, raised in Geldrop, is now Chef de Mission: Boss of all athletes at the Games. Last year in Paris he saw the Sydney medal record broken. “Then there is also a sportsman: Harrie Lavreysen. Coincidentally, he also speaks generally civilized Brabants and he then invites me for the ceremony in ‘his’ Luyksgestel. Then I also see such a village upside down and I proudly think back to the period when I was in his shoes.”