A striking appearance in the station hall of Eindhoven Central Station: in a glass house, students will row 24 hours a day on a rowing machine in the next ten days. Goal: Collecting fifty thousand euros for the Hartstichting. More than two hundred students from Rowing Association Thêta alternate each other on average every half hour.
It is not for nothing that money is collected for the Hartstichting. The reason for the promotion is the death of Claudia van Lieshout. She was a member of the association and died totally unexpectedly in her sleep four years ago.
Rower Sander de Graaf from Made kicked off on Tuesday. The Tree -Lange Sportsman, who won a silver medal at the Olympic Games last summer, thinks it is important to participate: “It is already four years ago, but it is nice to do something in this way to commemorate her . “
Claudia is still missed, says Sander: “She was in a group of top rowers and you really feel that when someone falls away. Nice to be able to do something like that.”
No less than ten days and seven hours there is no-stop rowing. With that, the Eindhoven students hope to beat the rowers from Oxford, England, who held a similar action, by going on for just a little longer.
In the glass house, now Niek Fleerakkers is in the rowing device. He wants to row no less than two and a half hours. To alleviate physical exertion, he has his favorite music on. Between the companies he says that things are going fine and that he really likes to participate.
A young man looks at the Glass House with admiration and finds the action of the students ‘Cool’. The students who participate only like the attention of spectators and an incentive.
In the meantime, the donations for the Hartstichting are going fast. Within one hour the counter is already more than four thousand euros. “I think most people think it’s a nice promotion. I get a lot of positive reactions,” says Fabian Lucas-Luijckx, one of the organizers
During the day and in the evening the glass house attracts enough attention from train travelers, but at night the station is locked and the rowing students are designated in themselves. That is very different from during the day. “We arrive together with a permanent team of eight students all night. And that just makes it very cool that you can go all night with a very small club,” says Fabian.
According to Fabian, rowing for half an hour seems long, but it is not so bad: “What helps is to change pace and in the end pretending to make a sprint of five hundred meters. Then it will be over.”