De Bruijn, Inge

▪ 2001

      Four years after having nearly quit swimming altogether, Inge de Bruijn of The Netherlands turned in a phenomenal performance at the Olympic Games in 2000. De Bruijn won gold medals in the 100-m butterfly, the 100-m freestyle, and the 50-m freestyle in Sydney, Australia, and set new world records in each of these events. She also earned a silver medal as part of the Dutch 4 × 100-m freestyle relay team. Although she qualified for the Dutch Olympic team in 1996, de Bruijn was asked to leave the squad because of her bad attitude. By her own admission, she was suffering from burnout that affected her approach to competitive swimming, but she later regretted missing the Games. She went on to find a new coach, new equipment, and a rigorous new training regimen, and she was able to turn her career around.

      De Bruijn was born on Aug. 24, 1973, in Barendrecht, Neth. She began swimming at age 7 and participated in her first international meet at age 12. She joined swimming's elite when she took four medals at the 1991 European championships in Athens. Food poisoning almost forced her to miss the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, but she competed and finished eighth in the 50-m freestyle and ninth in the 100-m butterfly. As the 1996 Games approached, however, de Bruijn's enthusiasm for swimming was waning. Even after making the national team, she skipped practices or showed up late. Jacco Verhaeren, her coach and boyfriend, asked her to leave the team.

      In 1997 de Bruijn began training under noted swimming coach Paul Bergen. The workouts he tailored for her involved weight lifting and other strength exercises as well as swimming. The regimen did not yield immediate results, but at the 1999 European championships, de Bruijn began showing new signs of life, taking two gold medals and setting a European record in the 100-m butterfly. Then, in the spring and summer leading up to the 2000 Games, she went on a furious winning streak. By the time the Sydney Games began, de Bruijn held world records in the 50- and 100-m freestyle and the 50- and 100-m butterfly events. As had been the case with other women swimmers, de Bruijn's surprising success at the relatively advanced age of 26 brought with it suspicions of the use of performance-enhancing drugs. De Bruijn, who had never failed a drug test, denied the allegations and attributed her success to coaching, training, and the use of new swimwear that had been proved to improve her times as well as those of other swimmers.

Anthony G. Craine

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