About Axel

From a young age, I was already always busy exercising and doing sports. I joined a football club and then went on to do handball, swimming, scouting and gymnastics. In the winter months, as soon as it was cold enough for the Dutch waterways to freeze up, my father would strap ice skates to my boots after dinner and let me skate outside on the skate rink that he had made on the frozen water behind our house, with the street lamp posts lighting up the rink.

My father was a keen outdoors ice skater himself and had already finished the 1954-edition of the 11-Cities Race at only 21 years of age. With just a few longer ice skating tours as his preparation, he was obviously made of stern stuff. He would be glued to his seat to watch every ice skating European or World Championship on the television, jotting down lap times and finish times himself to keep track of the rankings. Obviously, I inherited some of his gene pool and shared his enthusiasm for sports. After finishing secondary school I studied sports at the Amsterdam Academy for Physical Education, aiming to become a sports instructor. At the Academy, I met Jos Geijsel, who later became my personal coach, first at ice skating, but later at bicycle road racing and triathlon. I managed to combine my top sports career that stretched over 12 years with many victories, with a job as a schoolteacher of PE and sports.

After ending the top sports activities in 1994, I founded the fitness and sports school Axel Koenders Fit-Service. I closed it down after 25 years in 2020 to leave myself more time to pursue my hobbies like bikepacking and fly fishing.

But blood’s thicker than water. I still feel a passion for sports and recreation and to share that with other people, be it advising competitive sports people how to best prepare for a 1-day or multi-day event, or to give people that want to switch to a healthier lifestyle simple tips about exercises and their diet.