Bart Swings the best in Berlin
Bart Swings won the marathon of Berlin 8 times of the last 9 times. In doing so he improved twice the record time of that marathon. Since 2022 the record stands on 56.45 minutes. This means that he has skated the marathon with an average speed of 45 km/h. The fastest 10km on perfect artificial ice in an indoor stadium was skated with an average speed of 48 km/h. If we take into account that a marathon is 4 times longer than the 10km and that the surface is much worse because the people skate through the city and the record was made on a day that surface was humid by drizzle in the morning, then we have to conclude that this record at the marathon of Berlin was an incredible result.This record was made by a person who is an excellent skater. In the video below one can see how powerful his skating is using the socalled double push..
Bart Swings is born in 1991 in leuven in a family with 4 children. When he was 4 years old, all four children received inline skates as a present of their parents. Because Bart liked skating he became a member of a skating club in his town. When he was 7 years old he won his first cup for inline skating.
He reported: "Our parents have always been very supportive of us. On Wednesdays, my mother only worked half a day to drive all four of us from one sports club to the next. Our family holidays have also long been dominated by sport. If I had a European Championship in Italy, we would go on holiday there with the family and it was only hoped for my sisters that the location was not too bad. But they also saw a part of the world: For my World Cup in Colombia, they first traveled through the country for ten days.”
In inline skating he was very succesful.. On a very young age,he was already competing in the worldchampionships in inline skating. One of his serious compatitor was the Dutch inline skater Koen Verwey who was one year older than him.
In the winter the family was normally watching on the Dutch television the speed skating championships on ice. To his surprise he saw, two months after he had become world champion in inline skating that Koen Verwey participated quite succesfully in the skating championships on ice. This made him think that he would like to do this too if it would be possible. However in Belgium there were no ice rinks for speed skating. So for the time beeing he continued with the sport he liked a lot and he had a lot of succes. Below we can see that he was also succesful on short distances on inline skates.. This video presents the final of the 1000m during the world games in Barcelona in 2019.
He reported: "Our parents have always been very supportive of us. On Wednesdays, my mother only worked half a day to drive all four of us from one sports club to the next. Our family holidays have also long been dominated by sport. If I had a European Championship in Italy, we would go on holiday there with the family and it was only hoped for my sisters that the location was not too bad. But they also saw a part of the world: For my World Cup in Colombia, they first traveled through the country for ten days.”
In inline skating he was very succesful.. On a very young age,he was already competing in the worldchampionships in inline skating. One of his serious compatitor was the Dutch inline skater Koen Verwey who was one year older than him.
In the winter the family was normally watching on the Dutch television the speed skating championships on ice. To his surprise he saw, two months after he had become world champion in inline skating that Koen Verwey participated quite succesfully in the skating championships on ice. This made him think that he would like to do this too if it would be possible. However in Belgium there were no ice rinks for speed skating. So for the time beeing he continued with the sport he liked a lot and he had a lot of succes. Below we can see that he was also succesful on short distances on inline skates.. This video presents the final of the 1000m during the world games in Barcelona in 2019.
Altough he was very good in inlne slkating and won many championships and marathons there was not the possibility to participate in the olympic games because inline skating isstill not an olympic sport.Therefore, he started also to train on ice during the winter time. He participated in the Dutch marathon skating competition and in this way he could also prepare for participating in European , world championships and the Olympic championships. That this did not happen at he costst of his inline skating will be clear given his succesful participation in the Roller world Cups and the marathons like the one in Berlin. We will see later that it was especially in races which were developed comparable with marathon skating in which he got his olympic medals.