ODMC2025lc Drachten – Day 1 Report

The 21st edition of the ODMC Long Course Championships kicked off at the new Swimming Centre De Welle in Drachten, beginning with the 1500m freestyle for both women and men. After some initial technical issues with the electronic timing system, the heats ran according to schedule. In the end, it wasn’t just the sun that shone brightly ‘in the far north’. The Masters swimmers gave their all to achieve their best performances in the longest indoor event.

The women opened the competition
The event started with seven full heats for the women, where several national records were broken.
• Micky Grulms (W50+) set a Luxembourg Masters record with a time of 20:19.54.
• Liselotte Joling (W50+) swam a new Dutch Masters record with a time of 19:19.23.
• Viktória Háden-Felföldi (W40+) improved the Hungarian Masters record, setting a new benchmark at 19:00.97.

The men continued the session with five full heats
They too demonstrated the results of hard training, leading to strong performances and the breaking of two national records.
• Henk Slomp (M70+) set a new Dutch Masters record with a time of 22:41.67.
• Norbert Nagel (M55+) bettered the Austrian Masters record, finishing in 20:47.15.

At the conclusion of the session, Marten de Groot (Photo above) was inducted into the Dutch Masters Hall of Fame for his many years of outstanding performances in Masters swimming. Congratulations!
Marten swam his first Masters competition in early 2011 at his home pool in Heerenveen. Since then, he has fully embraced the Masters swimming circuit. Apart from two trips to Luxembourg, he has mostly competed in Dutch events, with the 2013 European Masters Championships (EMC) in Eindhoven being a highlight, where he won three titles and a silver medal.
Internationally, Marten ranks highly in the middle-distance freestyle events, having already set 10 individual European Masters Records in these distances. He is not shy about competing in other strokes and distances either, and has performed commendably there as well.
With retirement approaching, we may expect even more remarkable achievements from him in the coming years.