In the summer of 2025, Stijn van de Bunt gave an interview to the regional channel RTV Utrecht. The 21-year-old skater noted that he was “aware” that the Games in Milan were “still out of reach”. The 2030 Games were a “slightly more realistic goal.”
Eight months later, Van de Bunt is the Dutch hope for the long distances in Milan. At the Olympic qualifying tournament, he won both the 5 and 10 kilometers by force majeure, ahead of established names such as Chris Huizinga and Beau Snellink, and earned four starting places. The Team IKO rider also competes in the mass start and the team pursuit, but starts with the 5 kilometers on Sunday.
Van de Bunt had been a bit too modest in his statements, says his coach Martin ten Hove. “You noticed in the summer from the atmosphere in the team that everyone was secretly looking forward to the 2026 Olympic Games.” Not that they at IKO assumed that Van de Bunt would make it to the Games ‘just a little while’: “But you can dream. Although I understand that you don’t say that right away.”
Van de Bunt qualified for the general public out of nowhere. He himself did not want to contribute to a profile in the run-up to the Games, but people around him always saw his talent: “Stijn has enormous content and a will from here to the day after tomorrow,” says former trainer Marcel Scheperkamp, who had him under his wing both as a roller-skating teacher and as a skater. Yet it took a while before this also led to success among the seniors.
By chance on irons
At the age of nine, Van de Bunt, born and raised in Lopik, started skating at the inline skating and skating club SVO Oudewater. His first trainer Joyce van Vliet certainly saw “no Bambi on the asphalt”. “His motor skills were good, he could immediately get away on rollerblades.” By chance he ended up on two irons. There was a seat available on the bus that carried about sixty children every week from Oudewater to the Vechtsebanen in Utrecht, and Van Vliet asked young Stijn to join him. “We thought: that could be something on the ice.”
Van de Bunt was also good at skating. He trained with older children and also started competing when he was ten. A move to the Amersfoort ice skating club soon followed, where he could train at a higher level with peers.
Yet roller skating remained the most important thing for Van de Bunt as a young teenager. “On the long distances he ran over everyone in the Netherlands,” Scheperkamp recalls. “When inline skating you ride on a track of 200 meters. He overtook everyone with two fingers in his nose.”
That success also had a downside. When Van de Bunt started participating in international competitions as a fifteen-year-old, he had to get used to equal competition, according to Scheperkamp. “He was sometimes too nonchalant. By winning so much, he had an air of ‘I can do this’. But in a skating platoon of thirty people you can’t be nonchalant. He literally went overboard.”
A bit stubborn
Scheperkamp often talked about it with his pupil, who took the lessons seriously. Van Vliet also saw a boy who wanted to learn: “If someone rode faster on roller skates, he analyzed that and tried to imitate it.” She calls him “a bit stubborn”, in a positive way: “Stijn knew what he wanted.”
Through the Amersfoortse IJsvereniging he ended up with the talent team Midden-Oost of the KNSB skating association. When Stefano Donagrandi met him there, Van de Bunt was still “a little boy,” says his former Italian coach. “A bit introverted, not someone who likes to be the center of attention. But he had a good mindset.”
Van de Bunt also wanted to continue to improve under Donagrandi. “He asked for a lot of feedback and did not come to the training just to tick it off.” Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, Van de Bunt did not compete in many matches, in which he did not always perform well. “Stijn had so much fire that he often took off too quickly and fell silent in the last two or three rounds.”
Stijn van de Bunt after the 10,000 meters during the Olympic qualifying tournament in Thialf.
PHOTO Robin van Lonkhuijsen / ANP
It was more or less a coincidence that the then 16-year-old Van de Bunt came into the picture in 2021 at TalentNED, a training team set up by skating coach Gerard Kemkers that prepares young skaters for a top sports career. “Due to the lack of competitions, they had little reference as to which juniors were good,” says Donagrandi. Beau Snellink, who had previously left the regional talent team for TalentNed and now drives for Team Essent, recommended Van de Bunt to the team.
For Van de Bunt, the switch meant a final farewell to skating and a move to Enschede, where he moved into the TalentNed villa. In the stately building on the Boddenkampsingel, Van de Bunt lived under supervision with thirteen other teenagers who were focused on a top sports career.
In terms of sport, TalentNED took “a small risk” with Van de Bunt, says coach Kemkers. “He wasn’t up to standard right away.” Van de Bunt had to get used to the training volume, his coaches refined his technique. “It was only in the winter that he was able to join the train during training.”
Van de Bunt also had to find his place in the villa. According to Sijmen Egberts, who joined TalentNED at the same time as Van den Bunt, he was a modest boy, just as he stood in front of the cameras in Thialf during the OKT. “But if you get to know him better, he has his talk ready.” Ultimately, says Egberts, “Stijn fit in beautifully with the group.” In the villa they played games like FIFA or Fortnite, on the ice they traveled together as long-distance riders to the World Cup competitions for juniors.
Bokitos
When Stefano Donagrandi started working at TalentNED a year after Van de Bunt’s arrival, he saw a different Stijn: “He was much more self-confident. With guys like Joep Wennemars around him, a bit of a bokito, he had to stand up for himself.” Kemkers: “He learned from us what it is like to live as a top athlete.”
Although his last season at TalentNed did not result in great results due to a groin injury, the commercial skating team Team IKO was convinced of Van de Bunt’s development in 2023. Other teams, such as Team Zaanlander, also showed interest.
The 18-year-old Van de Bunt “thought carefully” about his next step, IKO coach Ten Hove remembers. “He approached his choice systematically and asked a lot of questions. We are looking for athletes who enjoy determining a route together and can also be independent. That’s him.”
Van de Bunt has continued to improve his fitness at Team IKO in recent years, so that he can maintain high speed for longer. He did this with a training schedule derived from the manual that the Swede Nils van der Poel wrote after his golden Olympic Games of 2022. Van de Bunt himself read how to skate a 10k about three times from front to back, he said after his 10 kilometers at the OKT.
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For a moment, a collision during a training camp in Andorra seemed to cost him his Olympic season last summer. Van de Bunt broke his spine and some ribs. But a miraculously fast recovery followed. Former roommate Egberts sees a parallel with an earlier fall from his racing bike in Inzell, in which he broke his collarbone: “He can deal with such a setback well, although he is not someone who talks about it much.”
Donagrandi believes that Van de Bunt can aim for a place among the best five at the Games, “but everything has to be right.” At the same time, he says, Van de Bunt is still young and the competition over the long distances is fierce: “The pressure is not on him. He should see the Games as a good experience, perhaps that will lead to a good performance.”
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