Many people are looking for the sun these days, but Maaike Bennink from Den Bosch will soon be skiing in Switzerland. And that while she only sees two percent. She gets a kick out of it when she skis down a mountain at high speed. “I just let myself go and know no fear.” Ultimately, she wants to shine at the 2026 Paralympic Games.
Maaike worked as a nurse, until in 2006 she saw almost nothing from one day to the next. An optic nerve infection caused only eight percent vision. “At first I assumed I would recover. After three years, however, I had to conclude that it was no longer getting better. In fact, I only had two percent vision. Compare it to looking through a straw and then out of focus.”
She found it difficult to accept her visual impairment. “I could walk, but with aids. And it was a huge fight to use those tools.”
“I almost wet my pants with fear.”
She could no longer work as a nurse. She decided to retrain as a sports masseur and started her own business. “In my spare time I started cycling and then rowing, but that wasn’t my thing. Through a trip for the blind and visually impaired in 2012, I took a ski lesson. Before that I had never been on skis in my life. I remember well that on the conveyor belt going up I almost wet my pants with fear.”
She was talented and not much later an invitation from the union followed. She became the first Dutch visually impaired international competitive slalom skier. “I am guided by a buddy. He helps me with everything: tells me what the hotel looks like and what’s on my plate. The same goes on the track. When I go down, I follow my buddy’s directions in my earphones and I hear which way we’re going.”
“I keep pushing my limits and get the most out of myself.”
Maaike is in the top ten worldwide. “Most of the competitors were already on skis as a child. I don’t, although I had seen it on television. Since I had no experience with it, I never paid attention to the technical part of the sport. Due to my visual impairment, I can no longer view images. I just let go and have no fear.”
That came in handy when she went downhill recently. “I reached high speeds and sometimes came off the ground. I keep pushing my limits and get the most out of myself.”
Her sport is very expensive, because she has to pay for the trips and her buddies, for example. “In the winter I hit the slopes, in the other times of the year I work hard to get it done financially. That’s how I got the Maaike Bennink Foundation set up. It is a busy life and it requires the necessary challenges, but I do it with passion.”
Her ultimate goal is the Paralympic Games in 2026. “My big dream: I want to shine there. Then it is time for the new generation. I’m trying to get them excited too. You can go far if you persevere.”
