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Joeri Vansteenlant
Eerste plaats in
Duathlon voor Joeri
Vansteenlant. >>
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Belgische athleten
Belgische athleten
domineren de duathlon.
>>
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Dendermonde
Dendermonde swimming
team @ Club La Santa
>>
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To Walk again
De film van Marc
Herremans door Stijn
Coninx >>
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To Walk again
Movie Marc Herremans by Stijn Coninx!
Obsessed by becoming the fastest and strongest athlete of the planet, the sports career of the Belgian young elite
sportsman Marc Herremans turned dramatically on January 28th 2002, when he fell during his training on Lanzarote.
One week after the accident, he said: "What I want now is trying to be happy and make my environment
happy, my girlfriend, my family, my friends. Doing sports in a wheelchair? Never!"
But from this wheelchair, he saw life in another way...
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Together with film director Stijn Coninx, also from Belgium, Marc Herremans is going to make a
movie: ‘To Walk Again’. Stijn is not ‘just’ a director: he made several well-known movies, was
nominated for an Oscar and he won some other prizes and awards. He also had to deal with
handicaps in his own family, so he knows what it’s all about. Some years ago, he saw himself
confronted with the fact that two of his three children were born deaf: his world collapsed for some
time. "I wasn’t even the victim myself. As parents we partly share the handicap of our children..."
As Marc says: ‘We all have somehow or somewhere a handicap. In life there’s only one goal you
must fight for: life itself.’ For Stijn and for many other people, Marc’s story deserves a worldwide
acknowledgement. As a film director, he wants to share that feeling and contribute the best he can
for this case.
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The story in the movie ‘To walk again’ consists of 4 different elements. First item: the personal history of Marc
Herremans. A film crew will follow him this year and they’ll record his weak and strong moments during his activities.
This crew is also here at the island, for the Ironman Lanzarote! It’s the first time Marc is participating in this Ironman
again, after his accident. He has already finished the Ironman Hawaii 3 times as a wheelchair athlete, and now it's time
to finish the toughest Ironman in the world! "I am the only athlete in a wheelchair here. I know that some years ago,
somebody else did it as well on this island and he finished just approximately 45 seconds before closing time of the
race... My goal is to finish in about 14 hours, but you never know on Lanzarote. It’s hard and everything can be
different than you expect before. I’ll see what I can do!" Marc will do the race together with the Belgian Dirk van Gossum, winner of the Ironman Lanzarote 2000 (see pics). He will accompany him during the whole distance.
Secondly, there will be testimonials of for example elite sportsmen and actors, and other people with the same
will-power and goal as Marc. Because will-power, that’s something Marc really has!
The third level contains fragments of victims in revalidation with the same goal and an image of the meeting centre
for users of wheelchairs in Tongerlo, Belgium, and the ‘Foundation Marc Herremans, To Walk Again’. He namely set
up this non-profit organisation, which is used to collect money for the spinal cord research and to help people
in a wheelchair to work out and do sports.
Finally, we’ll see people with all kinds of handicaps, adversities, with the same will-power of just in search of this
will-power and capacity to continue.
It’s not that this is the order of the movie: the main story is Marc’s and the other three elements interweave
themselves meanwhile.
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The premiere of the movie will be in the beginning of 2007, and if you want to see it in the cinema, you’ll have the chance in February and March. If you missed this, you have to wait till September when the film will be broadcasted at the Belgian television and the DVD will also be available in the same month.
The profits of the movie will go completely to the foundation ‘To Walk Again’, so if you’re going to see the movie next year, you’ll do something for a good organisation! As mentioned before, the goal is to collect money to support and to stimulate the medical investigation to heal the injuries of the spinal column. Moreover, the funds are used to create a centre, in collaboration with Sporta, where (young) wheelchair users are helped and assisted to participate in every kind of sports. The integration of these wheelchair users into the society has an important place here.
We wish Marc all the luck for this Ironman Lanzarote and his other activities and we hope that his film crew can make a nice report during this week at the island!
If you want more information about these projects, please check:
* www.towalkagain.org
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