By Lisette van der Geest
Ireen Wüst once stood in the middle area, shouting loudly for a NOS camera. She thought she had to rise above the noise of the crowd in Thialf, was still a teenager and above all very enthusiastic. Then came the question of whether she needed media training. “We were like: please let her be who she is, experience her own process. We have always looked at it with a smile”, says her father Wim Wüst.
“She has been a child for a very long time. In Turin she stood as an Olympic champion, a woman actually, but also a girl with chubby baby cheeks. The Netherlands has seen her change into a woman who knows what she wants.” That media training never materialized.