An indomitable sportsman for seventy years

When ten-year-old Henk Rookhuiszen accidentally ends up at a swimming club, he is immediately sold. From that moment on, his life was forever dominated by sports. He has been swimming at the competition level for years, co-organized the first New Year’s dive in 1960 and met his future wife during a foreign sports exchange. Even now that he is 82, he cycles about two hundred kilometres a week. “Recently, a fifteen-year-old cyclist had to do his best to keep up with me. Then I thought: no, that old Rookhuiszen has not yet been finished!”

Henk Rookhuiszen’s sporting life begins in the summer of 1950. In the Haarlem outdoor swimming pool De Houtvaart, he and his friends take turns jumping off the high diving board. “Most of us could not swim, so we floated ourselves to the steps after the jump in the water. We climbed out, after which we jumped off the diving board again. This worked fine for us, but the lifeguard thought otherwise. He urged us to come to the swimming club to learn to swim.”

The friends answer the call and join the association. From that moment on, Henk throws himself enthusiastically into swimming. He soon mastered the basics and spent hours in the water every week. “I trained three times a day, six days a week, and competed in weekend youth class competitions. I had to rely mainly on perseverance and less on talent, but in the end, I participated in the Dutch youth championships for several years. I may not have been the best, but I came along nicely!”

"Sometimes I am shocked by my age. Then I think: gosh, I'm already 82!"

Henk Rookhuiszen Nog altijd even fanatiek

In the freezing cold into the sea

When Henk was twenty, he started the swimming club Njord ’59 together with friends. To raise awareness of the new club, trainer Ok van Batenburg devises a unique stunt: what if the members took a New Year’s dive in the North Sea on January 1, 1960? “We immediately thought it was a great idea,” says Henk. “Something like this had never been done before, so it would undoubtedly generate publicity. Moreover, when we dived into the sea with twenty men at Zandvoort, there was even a television crew filming. Not surprising because, at that time, nobody was crazy enough to dive into the sea in the cold! Nice, isn’t it that New Year’s dive more than sixty years later has become a national tradition?”

Love on the bus

With the Njord ’59 swimming club, Henk not only participates in competitions and the New Year’s dive but also in foreign sports exchanges. When he travelled to the former Yugoslavia in 1962, he met a young volleyball player from Deventer, with whom he has a unique click. “It soon became clear that we wanted to keep seeing each other. Once back in the Netherlands, we maintained close contact. One week I visited her in Deventer, and the next week she came to Haarlem. It led to a marriage in 1965, and to this day, we are still together!”

French mountain stages

In the years that follow, Henk is busy with his family and his job as an architecture teacher, but sports remain a constant in his life. In addition to long-distance swimming, a new hobby is added around his forties. “I kept swimming but stopped competing. The time I had left, I decided to fill with cycling. With several boys from the swimmer, I got on my bicycle and covered long distances. We called ourselves the Swimming Cyclists! Soon I also got on my bike during camping holidays with my family in the south of France.

Then I drove over the Col de Vars, Col d’Izoard or Col d’Allos, where the Tour de France often passes. I made those trips for over thirty years but stopped doing them a few years ago. The great thing about it is that you are rewarded with beautiful views after every bend. That is fantastic! At some point, you run into limits. Sometimes I am scared of my age. Then I think: gosh, I’m already 82!”

Cycling specialist

However obvious Henk’s sporty lifestyle may seem, he is forced to stop at the end of 2016. If he finds blood in his stool, he is sent to the hospital for a colonoscopy. The diagnosis follows soon after: Henk has ulcerative colitis. “According to the doctor, it rarely happens that people my age get this disease, so I am an exception in that regard. I felt terrible then, and I lost more than twelve kilos.

“You don’t want to know!”

Henk has now returned to his old level with cycling. “I still cycle fanatically and ride three times every week, usually between forty and seventy kilometres. Then I go to Noordwijk, for example, or I do a tour around the ring canal of the Haarlemmermeerpolder. Unfortunately, my regular cycling group has fallen apart because everyone is getting older, but I always meet other cyclists along the way. Sometimes they look up to my age. Recently someone drove up next to me and had to do his best to keep up with me. When he looked at me, I saw that he was surprised, and he asked me how old I actually was. I said, “Man, you don’t want to know!” Then I mentioned my age, and then he started cursing because he was fifteen years younger than me. At such moments I think: no, that old Rookhuiszen has not yet been written off, it is still doing quite well!” I took medication that worked and could carefully build up sports again. My treating specialist turned out to be cycling himself, so I was able to discuss with him very well what I could and could not handle. Fortunately, things are going well now and I do not notice anything of my illness anymore.”