Joeri Vansteenlant Eerste plaats in Duathlon voor Joeri Vansteenlant.     >>      Belgische athleten Belgische athleten domineren de duathlon.                         >>      Dendermonde Dendermonde swimming team @ Club La Santa                         >>      To Walk again De film van Marc Herremans door Stijn Coninx               >>      An incentive group, the organization BEWEEG and a triathlon group, all through Qualified Travel We are glad to host three Belgian groups this week at CLS. We had a chance to speak with the organiser of all this Mario Vervaeke. Mario Vervaeke has his own travel agency in Belgium called Qualified Travel. He started it three years ago as a normal travel agency. Then they started specializing in sports and he has organized different kinds of specialized trips to many sports destinations in the world. As from last year, his primary destination has become Club La Santa. Qualified Travel's very first focus is triathlon, but he tells us that this year the range has broadened as they have received a lot of requests from other sport groups in Belgium, like football and biking teams who would also like to come to Club La Santa. In all the promotion made by the agent, Club La Santa is and will be mentioned, which is of course very good publicity for CLS. Qualified Travel operates only for the Belgium people and organizes trips for individuals, groups, incentives and training clinics. This week the agency brought three different groups to Club La Santa. First of all, the group called BIK, here as an incentive group. The company BIK is a house building enterprise. Within this group, there's a famous Belgian indoor-biker called Stan Tourné, who stopped professional biking now, but has been World Indoor-racer Number One for a couple of years. The BIK-group is here for relaxation, sports and teambuilding as well. Mario explains us that his agency also travels a lot with big names, which is a good thing for their publicity. Besides this group, we have a Belgian Triathlon group with famous names like Luc van Lierde (Winner Ironman Hawaii, 1996 and 1999), Stijn de Meulmeester (nr 1 in his age group at Ironman Hawaii), Gerrit de Pauw (age group winner as well) and Françoise Wellekens, already a good friend of Club La Santa through her many participations at Ironman Lanzarote and Hawaii as well as her Age Group World Titles. Stefaan Obreno, former coach of the National Dutch swimming team and now trainer of Luc van Lierde is also with them. Furthermore, the group consists of a lot of people who are in the sub-top. They are here now at CLS to train and prepare themselves for the season. Mario tells us that a lot of athletes see the Ironman Lanzarote which will take place in May as a way to check their abilities: if they can't make it here, then they can never do the Hawaii Ironman?    The third Belgian group is the organization BEWEEG (which in Dutch means ?MOVE?), whose goal is to get more Flemish people to move and practise some kind of sport. They also published a book, for sale in the best bookstores, with all the basic principles of every sport. The book also includes an ad on both Qualified Travel and Club La Santa. BEWEEG has a huge exhibition in Belgium, which is moving around the Flanders to different sports centres during the next three years. Mario Vervaeke explains us that together with BEWEEG he wants to bring a group to Club La Santa every two months to get them to move and do sports here. Within this group, the judo legend Gella Vandecaveye has come too - World Champion 1993 and 2001, Silver in Atlanta 96 Olympic Games and Bronze in Sydney 2000. Together with Luc van Lierde they are planning to organise a yearly triathlon-week and a judo-week here at Club La Santa.