Tatjana Smith swimming for the Netherlands, Digi Mart USA News: Two-time Olympic breaststroke champion Tatjana Smith is switching from South Africa to the Netherlands with immediate effect. She will make her Dutch debut at the short-course World Championships, held from December 1 to 6 in Beijing.
The 29-year-old Smith holds both South African and Dutch passports and competed internationally under her maiden name, Schoenmaker, during the first part of her career. Her father is Dutch, and she said her family grew up listening to Dutch-language music, singing along to songs by André Hazes and André van Duin.
Smith announced her retirement from swimming after the Paris Olympics, shortly after winning gold in the 100-meter breaststroke. She then won silver in the 200-meter breaststroke, where she stood on the podium alongside Tes Schouten, who took bronze.
Three years earlier, at the Tokyo Games, she won gold in the 200 and silver in the 100 breaststroke. She also became world champion in the 200-meter breaststroke in 2023.
In September of this year, Smith announced a comeback. Two years earlier she had described her career as complete, saying she had won everything there was to win and wanted to stop at her peak.
She said she had spent two years living an ordinary life, including hiking, surfing, traveling and sleeping late, and that it was wonderful to be free of the pressure she had felt for years.
Smith said that as a top swimmer in South Africa she often felt anxiety tied to her status as a “Golden Girl.” She noted that athletes in South Africa do not receive financial support from the state and must secure their own sponsors, and that not winning meant having no income. She said this situation left her physically and mentally burned out in 2024.
“In the Netherlands I am free of that rat race. Here the athlete is central, and I can rediscover my Dutch heart.
I am looking forward to it,” Smith said.
Jacco Verhaeren, currently performance strategist at the KNZB, the Royal Dutch Swimming Federation, said he was surprised by how quickly the switch was arranged. He said Smith competed at the Dutch Qualifiers, a selection meet in Rotterdam, two weeks earlier, where she won both the 100 and 200 breaststroke.
She then asked about the possibility of swimming for the Netherlands, and everything was agreed within a little more than a week.
Smith will join the Dutch swim team around major international championships and will train in Eindhoven under Australian coach Pete Bishop on those occasions. For the rest of the time she will mainly stay in South Africa.
Verhaeren said, “Although she has barely swum for about two years, she remains a world-class swimmer. With an eye on the 2028 Games in Los Angeles, we will mainly focus on the 50 and 100 breaststroke.”
The sprint event is on the Olympic program in the United States for the first time. The Netherlands has previously produced two Olympic breaststroke champions: Marie “Zus” Braun, who won the 100 breaststroke at the 1928 Amsterdam Games, and Nel van Vliet, who won the 200 breaststroke at the 1948 London Games.
At the most recent Games in Paris, Caspar Corbeau also won bronze in the 200 breaststroke alongside Schouten. Smith hopes to add a new chapter in Los Angeles, laughing: “Though first I still have to qualify for the Olympic Games.”
