With a fun swimming campaign, Maarten van der Weijden raised more than 10,500 euros for cancer research on Saturday. People could donate while the former top swimmer from Vught was attempting a world record attempt in swimming backwards in the Zaltbommel swimming pool.
After just under 7.5 hours and 16 kilometers of swimming backwards, he had the record in his name. Then he swam for more than half an hour.
The swimming action could be followed live via the internet. For every 11 euros donated, a rubber duck was put in the pool. At the end there were 949. The aim of the campaign was to raise 11,000 euros. So that just wasn’t achieved. Still, Van der Weijden was happy and called the result “amazing”. As he left the pool he uncorked a bottle of champagne.
Former top swimmer Van der Weijden, who was cured of acute leukemia, often holds these types of actions with his own Foundation to raise money for cancer research. For example, in 2019 he swam an Eleven Cities Tour and raised 80,000 euros.