Schermer Bas Verwijsen from Oss has ended his career. The 38-year-old Verwoonen, a specialist in the sword fencing section, participated in the Olympic Games four times.
“I took the time to make my decision”, says Verijlen against the AD† “And it feels good that way. The past few years have been tropical years with full-time fencing, a full-time job and my family. The alternative was to go through another Olympic cycle. That could have been done, but the chances are that you just won’t make it I’m looking forward to having more time for other fun things.”
At the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, Verlijken reached the quarter-finals. At the 2012 games, he made it to the last sixteen and in both 2016 and 2020 he lost in the second round of the Olympic fencing tournament.
Olympic farewell at corona games
The 2020 corona games in Tokyo, which were eventually held in 2021, were therefore his last games for Verwoonen. He called the circumstances under which the athletes had to take action when they returned to the Netherlands ‘not fun’ at the time. He was on his way to Japan on the infamous KLM flight. The flight on which six of the seven positively tested Dutch people in Tokyo were afterwards.
The only athlete with whom he had contact at a distance of one and a half meters tested positive: taekwondoka Reshmie Oogink. “When I heard that, I thought it was done,” he said when he returned.
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