Why I wrote De laatste slag
Why I wrote this book now
I wrote this book because at some point in 2024 I noticed that the stories I had been telling on stage for years no longer matched who I had become. I was still talking about perseverance, about seeking out pain, about giving everything. But in the meantime my marriage had broken down, my best friend Sebastiaan had died of the cancer I had been swimming for all those years, and my father had slipped further and further away because of Parkinson's. The man who always said that life is what you make it could, in the end, no longer get up out of a chair on his own.
I no longer wanted only the hero stories. I wanted to write down the other side too. That you can train, plan, gather a team around you, give everything… and that it still doesn't work. Not because you are weak or did something wrong, but because bad luck and good luck play a bigger part than we like to admit.
What people didn't know about me yet
De laatste slag contains a lot that people didn't know about me yet. How in 2018 I stopped after 163 kilometres and felt like I was making a fuss over nothing, while the doctor pulled me out of the water. How for years I thought I was responsible for Diede's happiness, because I wanted to be the captain who brought us safely home. How Sebastiaan's death suddenly made my survivor's guilt unbearable. And how, after all the extreme swims, I slowly learned that I don't have to rescue anyone. That I am allowed to stop. That compassion for myself is not a weakness, but the only way to be able to keep going.
Feel, think, compassion, act
At the heart of the book is a simple model I discovered during long swims: feel, think, have compassion, and only then act. First let the pain or the disappointment in completely, without judgement. Then look at it with your head: where does this feeling come from. Next, be kind, to yourself, to the other person, to the situation. And only after that, act. Not out of guilt or a need to prove yourself, but from what is really needed right now.
What I hope readers take away
I hope readers take that away. That when something doesn't work out in their team or organisation, they don't immediately go looking for someone to blame. That they dare to say: "We gave everything we could, and it still wasn't enough. And that's okay." That they make room for bad luck, for limits, for the reality that not everything can be controlled. And that this makes them stronger, not weaker.
Because if there is one thing I have learned: the journey is never finished. But you are allowed to make the last stroke somewhere.
De laatste slag (Ambo|Anthos, 2026) is written in Dutch: more about the book. Maarten also gives a keynote on resilience based on this story. Read about the 22-cities swim as well.