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Bahrain schoolgirl Roma Vrijhof is making a huge splash on the competitive swimming scene as she prepares to power to glory at a national championship this month.
The talented teenager will jet off, courtesy of KLM, to her native Netherlands to take part in the Dutch Youth Nationals staged at the Pieter van de Hoogenband Pool in Eindhoven from December 14-17.
The pool is named after the Dutch triple Olympic champion and 15-year-old Vrijhof hopes to make the grade as a top competitor too thanks to gritty determination and dedicated early morning swimming sessions.
Well-travelled expat Vrijhof was born in the US state of Minneapolis but considers Rotterdam her true home town.
Her swimming journey began at the age of four whilst living in Singapore, before making a splash competitively at the age of seven.
She said: “It’s difficult to explain exactly why I love swimming. I have always done it and can’t imagine not doing it. I find swimming to be a good way to clear my mind as I can just focus on the sport without having to worry about anything else.”
In recent years she has won a score of trophies competing at British Schools in the Middle East tournaments, the Bahrain Open championships as well as international competitions in Qatar, Oman and Dubai.
She has also won open water trophies such as the Boost Bahrain last year and this year, where she took the overall female adult category and has just participated in the Ironman where her team came in an impressive third place.
Vrijhof, a student at St Christopher’s School, lives in Jasra with her parents, Paul, a manager of business development company Vopak, and Sylvia, an accountant and international tax consultant, and her two brothers, Vince, 13, and Cesar, 11.
She currently trains at St Christopher’s Saar campus pool with coaches Yavor Zahariev and Hussain Ali. She practices around 15 hours a week, which not only involves swimming but also land training and yoga.
She awakes in the early hours of the morning three times a week, twice before school (5.30am) and once over the weekend (7am) for swimming sessions.
Furthermore, she frequently analyses her race techniques with the help of Dutch coach Martijn, who is part of the swimming team De Lansingh in the Netherlands.
Qualifying for the Dutch Nationals was a long and arduous process, but Vrijhof is delighted that she’s made such giant strokes in the race for success. She explained: “The Dutch Swimming Federation sets the qualifying times, which are very fast as they only want the top 15 swimmers to attend per age and stroke.
“I managed to qualify for five distances and I’ll be competing in the 50m, 100m and 200m back, as well as 100m and 200m freestyle. I’m also trying to qualify for more events as I improve.
“The Nationals are the competitions where the fastest people come together to compete for the national title and spots on the national team, so it’s vitally important to get involved and do well.”
Vrijhof’s specialties are backstroke and freestyle, preferably long course (50m), with her strongest events being 50m and 100m. Her personal best times are 31.01 (50m back), 1.07.34 (100m back), 2.27.17 (200m back), 27.97 (50m free) and 1.02.06 (100m free).
She received an enormous boost when Dutch national airline, KLM, came on board to help cover the cost of her flights. Vrijhof said: “I reached out to KLM myself as I travel to a lot of overseas competitions, which proves quite expensive, asking whether they would be interested in sponsoring me.
“They were very enthusiastic, particularly about sponsoring a Dutch girl as the Royal Dutch Airline! I am thankful and grateful to have them as without the help I wouldn’t be able to attend the Nationals.”
As for the future, Vrijhof is concentrating on her GCSE studies as she enters an important stage of her academic life. She is also studying Dutch at home and is helping her coaches with training other youngsters in the pool to gain experience in that field too.
Her dream is to win a scholarship in the US, where she has automatic citizenship thanks to her birth, and to carry on with competitive swimming in a specialist sporting college environment.
Her parents Paul and Sylvia are fully supportive: “We as parents are very proud of Roma, as swimming is a very demanding sport,” mum told GulfWeekly. “She never skips training and we are impressed by her determination. As always, additional sponsors are very welcome.”
