The life of Sander de Graaf (29) from Made was upside down when he took a silver medal with the Holland Eight at the Olympic Games in Paris. More than eight months later, the 2.06 meter long rower is again taking part in a championship. At the NK this weekend he is in a skiff, a single-rowing boat. A story about a marathon without much training, brackish football players and abandoning the water.
After the Olympic medal, Sander’s life was a madhouse. “I went on holiday after a period of parties, but I did take my running shoes,” he says. “With a number of teammates, we had joked for the Marathon of Amsterdam. Maybe a bit not to fall into the black hole after the Games. During my vacation the realization came that I only had eight weeks to train.”
That marathon in October became tough. “In the boat a race takes six minutes and then you sometimes feel that you can no longer. At the marathon I had that the last hour. I made the classic mistake by starting too fast. It was a super fun experience afterwards and the time of 2.57 was good, but this was totally different than I was used to.”
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Only at the beginning of 2025 did he resume his life as a top athlete. “I gave my body enough time to rest, but the start in the rowing boat was pretty heavy. Suddenly I lived with a schedule again. I couldn’t get a top level right away, I had to build it quietly.”
“It seems cool to go for a gold medal.”
Sander is again top fit and at the NK in the Skiff compete with many men with whom he normally sits in the boat. “It’s nice to test myself in this way.”
His main goal is not the NK, but the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. “It seems very cool to go for a gold medal. I do keep a blow to the arm, after all, there may be reasons that it is not going on. But if I am still in the selection next year, then I will be there too Los Angeles.”
He now combines full -time rowing with a job as a mechanical engineer. “I have been traveling the world as a top athlete for six years. If I have to start on the labor market after Los Angeles at the age of 33, it will be difficult.”
Sometimes he realizes what special career he has. In 2013, as a student in Eindhoven he got into a rowing boat for the first time. “As a child I sometimes thought of what it would be like to live as a top athlete, but I had no idea which sport with. I only knew rowing through the Olympic Games on television.”
“Only later did I love the sport.”
Because of his height and strength, he turned out to be talented. A world of difference with his football years at Madese Boys, where he was not known as the new Lionel Messi.
“At my football team, almost everyone was broke on Saturday. I suddenly sat with rowing with a group of big guests who all wanted to go for it, that appealed to me. The good classification of a race was difficult. I have come across myself so often that I no longer knew what was ahead or behind. A terrible feeling. Only later did I love the sport.”