 van Soest in 2022 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | 23 April 1987 Nijkerk, Netherlands | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Team information | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Discipline | Road | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Role | Rider | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Marieke van Soest (born 23 April 1987) is a Dutch para-swimmer and cyclist. In cycling, she competes on a tricycle.
Marieke van Soest was born and raised in Nijkerk, the third child in a family with four children. She is a member of a Reformed district church that belongs to the Evangelical Church in the Netherlands. In 2014, she fell into a coma at the University Medical Center Utrecht due to an aneurysm, when she was actually there because of an infection in her ankle. Since she was already in hospital, an operation was able to save her life. Rehabilitation lasted two years and she had to have an artificial skull inserted. She is dependent on an electric wheelchair because she is paralyzed on one side. [1]
After her rehabilitation, van Soest devoted herself to swimming, which she had already done before her illness. She taught herself to move in the water with one arm and one leg, and she became Dutch champion in the individual medley in 2017 and 2018. Despite these achievements, the Royal Dutch Swimming Federation (KNZB) did not nominate her for the 2020 Summer Paralympics; she herself believes that she was given preference over athletes with less disabilities: "You would have had to take the wheelchair with you and someone would have had to help me change for the swim." [1]
In the spring of 2019, van Soest therefore decided to start cycling. To do this, the Royal Dutch Cycling Union initially loaned her a tricycle, which was not suitable for international competitions. [1] In March 2020, she received a bike specially built for her by frame builder Ben de Ruiter. [2]
In 2020 and 2021, van Soest became Dutch champion, and in 2021 she became European champion. In May 2022 she won three World Cups and two European Cups. In August 2022 she became (as the first Dutch woman) tricycle world champion in the road race and time trial, and in September 2022 Dutch champion in both disciplines. [3]
Approximately 5 million of the 17 million people in the Netherlands are registered to one of the 35,000 sports clubs in the country. About two thirds of the population older than 15 years participates in sports weekly.
Nijkerk is a municipality and a city located in the middle of the Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland.
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Madhavi Latha Prathigudupu is a former para-athletics sportswoman who advocates for inclusion of persons with disabilities in sports and society. In 2011, she founded the Paralympic Swimming Association of Tamil Nadu, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that aims to "create awareness about the importance and rehabilitation impact of swimming". She is also the founder of the Wheelchair Basketball Federation of India (WBI), India's national wheelchair basketball body, and the founder of Yes, We Can Too, a charitable trust focused on persons with disabilities. in sports.
Lucas Rijneveld is a Dutch writer. Rijneveld won the 2020 International Booker Prize together with their translator Michele Hutchison for the debut novel The Discomfort of Evening. Rijneveld is the first Dutch author to win the prize, the first non-binary person to do so and only the third Dutch author to be nominated.
Cher Korver is a Dutch wheelchair basketball player and a member of the Netherlands women's national wheelchair basketball team. With the national team she competed at 6 consecutive Summer Paralympics between 2000 and 2020. She won with the team the gold medal at the 2020 Summer Paralympics, and the bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Paralympics and 2016 Summer Paralympics. She became world champion in 2018 and European champion in 2017 and 2019.
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