Student - February 18, 2010

Van der Burgt pleased with his first race

He's still a long way off the form he was in a year ago but even so, Ate van der Burgt was quite pleased with his three-kilometre race at the Dutch indoor championships.

Ate van der Burgt
He ran a time of 8 minutes 29 seconds and came eighth. The PhD student had just returned from a training camp in South Africa when he ran the race on 7 February in Apeldoorn. It was his first race after a fracture to his sacrum, which kept him out of action for months in 2009. The Dutch Championships were a test on the way to the personal record he aims to set in the summer in the 1500 metres. Van der Burgt is currently working on his thesis on comparative genomics in fungi at the Laboratory of Phytopathology. However, the priority will be on sport again from the middle of April onwards.