Epke Zonderland
My name is Epke Zonderland (16 April 1986). I am a Dutch top gymnast and my most memorable result so far is Olympic gold.
- Height
- 173 cm
- Weight
- 69 kg
- Place of birth
- Lemmer
- Nationality
- Dutch
- Date of birth
- 16 April 1986
Family of gymnasts
I started gymnastics when I was four years old, at the local gymnastics club DOS in Lemmer. My sister Geeske (1981) and my brothers Herre (1983) and Johan (1984) were already members and at one time I thought it would be fun to join them. Apart from the fact that I liked gymnastics very much, I also turned out to be talented. That is why I was given the opportunity to train at the national gymnastics support centre in Joure once a week. One year after that, the support centre in Joure ceased to exist and a new men’s team was started in Heerenveen. My brothers and I all took part in that. By then, I was six years old.
New gymnasium in Heerenveen and first European Championship
In Heerenveen, at that time in 1993, a brand-new gymnastics hall was being built. This provided a huge boost for the development of elite gymnastics in the entire region, for both men’s and women’s gymnastics. From that moment on, the number of training hours was gradually increased, eventually reaching about 30 hours per week. At the age of fourteen, I participated for the first time in the Junior European Championships in Bremen. Four years later, in 2004, I had my international breakthrough at the Junior European Championships in Ljubljana, where I competed in both the all-around final (4th place) and the horizontal bar apparatus final (2nd place).
Sportstad Heerenveen and first Olympic Games
Since 2005, Sportstad Heerenveen has been the home base for my training and coaching. From that period on, I achieved my best all-round classifications, among others during the World Championship Melbourne 2005 (eleventh) and the European Championship 2007 Amsterdam (sixth). Unfortunately, mainly because of injuries in preparation for the Olympic Games 2008, I had to focus more and more on the apparatus speciality. In the documentary “Op nei Peking”, my Olympic preparation of that period is nicely captured, with both highs and lows. Although there were no successes for me at the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, I was seventh in the finals. With this experience I made a significant step forward as an athlete. Four years later, by the way, my preparation for the Olympic Games 2012 in London was also captured, this time in the NOS documentary “Operatie Zonderland”.
Speciality parallel bars and horizontal bar: Gold in London
The advantage of specializing is that I can now focus more on my favourite disciplines, the horizontal bar and parallel bars. By doing so, my performance since 2008 has been more stable, resulting in a few highs, like the two silver medals at the World Championship London 2009, the World Championship Rotterdam 2010 and the European title at the European Championship Berlin 2011. But my best sports moment by far, was at the Olympic Games in London 2012 by achieving gold. I also think it is a great honour that the Dutch athletes chose me as Athlete of the Year at the NOC*NSF Sportgala in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013, based on my achievements.
Wax sculpture at Madame Tussauds
6 months after winning the gold medal at the Olympic Games in London, I was unveiled in wax in Sportstad Heerenveen on 26 April 2013. After that, my wax work was placed in Madame Tussauds. What an honour!
World Championship 2013 and 2014
Of course, I wanted to be part of the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, in particular to qualify with a full men’s team. I was able to develop further and became World Champion horizontal bar in Antwerp in 2013 and European Champion (Sofia) and World Champion (Nanning) in 2014.
World Championship 2015 in Glasgow
At the World Championship in Glasgow in 2015, the Dutch men’s team reached the eleventh place. That gave us the opportunity to take part in the test event for the Olympic Games in April 2016 in Rio. When we reached third place out of the eight national teams, we could take a complete men’s team to the Games.
Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro
At the Olympic Games in August 2016, we became tenth, a wonderful result. I qualified for the horizontal bar finals, but I missed my second flight element as a result of which I ended up being seventh.
Medicine
In 2006 I started my medical training, which I combined with my gymnastics career. Obviously, I have encountered delays. So, after the Games in Rio, it was time to complete my education. I still had six months of internships planned in orthopaedics and sports medicine. In this period, I was mainly involved with my training. Since the spring of 2017, I have been a physician and in that same year I started working at Sportgeneeskunde Friesland in Sportstad Heerenveen.
World Championship Montreal
In the year before the Olympic Games in Rio, I encountered several health problems, and the World Championship in Montreal has shaped the continuation of my career. I was plagued by chronic sinusitis, which made me so tired, that I could not train enough. Luckily, the symptoms subsided in 2017 and I could resume my training schedule as desired. This resulted in the silver medal at the World Championship in Montreal. Partly due to this success, I decided to continue my gymnastics career to the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Family
In 2016, I married my wonderful wife Linda Steen. We met in 2010 and she has been a key factor in my successes in my sports career. In October 2018, our sweet son Bert Eize Steen was born. A week later, unfortunately, I had to get on a plane to the World Championship in Doha. That was a difficult time, because this is a time you want to spend with your family. Anyway, it was very good that I became World Champion for the third time at that World Championship, with maybe my best exercise ever. In the spring of 2019, I could again claim the European title in the Polish city Szczecin. The birth of our son had given me wings, that much was clear. It was clear that I had been given wings by the birth of our son. In 2021, during the final year of my gymnastics career, our son Jan was born. In 2022, we welcomed our daughter Sophie. Whether our children will one day aspire to a gymnastics career remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: they already have a great love for sports!
Olympic Games Tokyo
To take part in my fourth Olympic Games, I needed to qualify at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart. There, we had the chance to qualify as a team—just as we had done for the 2016 Games—or alternatively, I could qualify as an apparatus specialist on the horizontal bar. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out. On a personal level, my health let me down once again.
There was still an alternative route to Tokyo: the World Cup series, where only the overall winner would secure a ticket to the Olympic Games. It became a thrilling battle with Japanese gymnast Hidetaka Miyachi, who performed an incredible routine featuring the Kovacs with a double twist. I had to skip the World Cup in Cottbus due to inflamed sinuses.
The next World Cup was already in January 2020 in Melbourne. Despite the short preparation time, I delivered an excellent routine and won the World Cup with a score of 14.900, putting me at the top of the rankings. When the remaining World Cups were cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis, my qualification for the Tokyo Olympics was secured.
The Games themselves were postponed by a year because of the pandemic. I still had some excellent training periods here and there, but unfortunately, in the final six months leading up to the Summer Games in 2021, my health failed me again. As a result, I wasn’t able to prepare properly. The routine I performed in the qualification round was of a much higher level than anything I had managed during my entire preparation. Even though it didn’t bring me close to a place in the final, I still look back with pride on the last competition of my career.
Sports Medicine
After ending my gymnastics career, I finally had more time for my family and for my medical career. I was accepted into the training program for sports physicians, which I started in January 2022. This is a four-year program that covers all aspects of sports medicine, such as injuries, exercise physiology, lifestyle, and prevention.
As a sports physician, we provide medical care to everyone—from elite athletes to people who need exercise as part of prevention or to recover from a condition and become fitter or stay as healthy as possible. I have no doubt that the experience I gained during my gymnastics career will be of great value in this work.
You can also book me for presentations on sports and medicine.
