Manon van Rooijen

Manon van Rooijen (born July 3, 1982 in Leerdam ) is a Dutch freestyle swimmer.

Career

Van Rooijen began swimming at the ZC'90 club in Culemborg in Gelderland . In 1997 she left the club to continue her training at clubs in Nieuwegein ( Aquarijn ) and Amersfoort . In January 2001, she went to the United States for three years and began studying underwater biology at the University of Miami . There she also found ideal training conditions. After three years and a bachelor's degree , she returned to the Netherlands in January 2004 and joined the Topzwemmen West-Nederland association in Dordrecht , where she trained with Dick Bergsma . After the European Swimming Championships in Budapest in 2006 , she moved to TopZwemmen Amsterdam, where she trained with Martin Truijens .

successes

Van Rooijen's greatest sporting success was winning the silver medal with the 4 × 100m freestyle relay around Inge de Bruijn , Wilma van Hofwegen and Thamar Henneken at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney . With a time of 3:39:83 min. a new European record was set with the success . During her time in the US, winning the bronze medal in the 4 × 100 m freestyle at the European Championships in Berlin in 2002 was her greatest success. This was followed by several years in which she did not swim at the highest level internationally. She returned to the top of the world in 2007 when she finished eighth in the 4 × 200m freestyle relay in Melbourne . The Dutch team finished fourth at the 2008 European Championship over the same route. However, Van Rooijen was not part of the final, she only appeared in the preliminary run.

In August 2008 she took part in the Summer Olympics in Beijing and contributed as the final swimmer of the Dutch 4 × 100m freestyle relay in the run-up to the final qualification. In the later Olympic victory of the relay, she was not used.

Web links

• detailed portrait at zwemkroniek.com (in Dutch)
• Portrait on the website of the IOC ( Memento from March 16, 2009 in the Internet Archive )