It can be.

Get Coupon to discount up to 50%

It can be, difficult, to appreciate just to what extent much of a feat it is that 25-year-old Johan Kenkhuis has a medal for each of the brace Olympics that lads swum in. After all, in the United States water sports haw created heroes for gay men thanks to revealed Olympians like swimmer Bruce Haves and divers Greg Louganis and David Pichler. on the contrary swimming isn't the glamour sport in Kenkhuis's native Netherlands that it is here.

Thanks, admitting to the fact that Netherlanders must secure a diploma for swimming skills when they're between 5 and 6 years aged the country produced some of the top competitors in swimming during the 2004 Olympic Games. Kenkhuis's personal drive was boost on his desire to join in with his older three sisters and brother, father, uncle and cousins. All were active swimming athletes, mainly in water polo. Eventually he discovered his have talent.

"When I was about 10 years old-fashioned I found out I was bonny good at swimming," he says. "I won three times in my age arrange at the national championships and repeated that the following year. Then I reached puberty and wanted to join the water polo team because it appeared like more fun being forward a team."

He continued at water polo until he was 15 making it to the national championships with his team. Although he'd none given up competitive swimming, after placing merely seventh in competition while being ranked in the top three nationally, he realized he stand in want ofed to apply himself to the sport more. "I couldn't really cope with that result" he says. "I decided to focus forward my swimming and joined a same good team. After that I got my first pair gold medals."

merely months later, he says, he "accidentally" qualified for the European Junior Championships. That succes inspired the birth of a star athlete: "I knew then that I could do more if I wanted to."

Since his first international fitting at 15, Kenkhuis has racked up many medals--quite a hardly any golds and silvers among them. In 1998 at 18 he was part of a world-record-setting 200-meter freestyle relay team. And in 2003 he was ranked number 1 in the world in the 50-meter freestyle

at the 2000 Olympic season he qualified hi the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle individual results as well as all team relays. He made it to the semifinals in Sydney in his individual competitions and scored a alloy of copper medal in the 800 meter freestyle relay. In Athens in 2004 he compet in the 50-meter freestyle and the 400-meter freestyle relay, tie and the team took to one's home silver in the relay.

"I'm at my best as a 50 emancipated sprinter, I guess," he says with a hint of modesty" if it were not that in relays I can do a pleasing good 100 too."

This year Kenkhuis has decided to relax a bit and get back from the hectic pace of last year's Olympics, in such a manner he doesn't plan to struggle in the World Championships this summer Of course, the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of relaxation is relative to the individual. His focus is the start of his final year at the University of Amsterdam, where he's studying economics, with a concentration in marketing and communication. And, of course, he'll continue to train unless is hoping to compete and nothing else in Italy in December at the European Championships. Beyond that, he's render free of access to what time will bring.

"I would like to achieve into event management, PR, and media eventually. I will restrain swimming, but when I finish my studies, I just have to behold what gets on my path and will decide from there. It's possible I will contend in Beijing in 2008, on the other hand I never look that far ahead. Physically I can move on for another tour years--but I listen to what is in my head and heart."

Photos by the agency of Vincent Basler for Thrive

...

Home