Edith van Dijk
Edith van Dijk (born 6 April 1973 in Haastrecht) is a Dutch swimmer and 6-fold world champion. She is Holland's most successful open water swimmer and long distance swimmer, whose career started in 1990 taking part in the Dutch IJsselmeermarathon. Biography She starts out at Gouda's swimming club DONK, the swimming portion of the soccer team of the same name. At DONK teammates gave her the nickname Piaf, due to her having the same first name as Edith Piaf. She was invested as a Knight of the Order of Orange Nassau and was awarded a Doctorate in Economy from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. In the years following the 1990 IJsselmeermarathon she finds her place between the world's top. Her definitive breakthrough is during the European championships of 1995 in Vienna, where she wins the silver medal on the longest distance in open water swimming, that of 25 kilometer. The next high is reached in less than three years in Perth, where she wins two medals at the world championships: silver on the 5 kilometer and bronze on the 25 kilometer. Another two years later, when first separate open water world championships were held off the coast of Hawaii, she hit