How the Stofwisseltour came about

The very first Stofwisseltour was ridden in 2011 with a total of five cyclists, including the three founding fathers of the Stofwisseltour: Herman ten Brink, Henk Blom and Tom de Koning, all three metabolic specialists. The Stofwisseltour was organized with the aim of raising awareness of metabolic diseases and raising money for faster diagnosis and research into a treatment.

Unfortunately, many metabolic diseases are not yet treated and many patients die at a young age. Scientific research is indispensable. Relatively little money is available for such research, which is why Herman, Henk and Tom came up with a bike ride to raise money. They asked Marike Groenendijk to come up with a good plan for this and to help them realize it.

It turned out to be a 5-day bike ride along all University Medical Centers in the Netherlands: Amsterdam, Groningen, Utrecht, Nijmegen, Maastricht, Rotterdam, Leiden and Amsterdam. A tradition was born! This first year started with the start of the three metabolic specialists in Amsterdam. Along the way, various colleagues and parents of patients joined one or more stages. The Stofwisseltour has since grown into the largest event for patients, their families, doctors and researchers in the Netherlands. What started as a small seed has grown into a large metabolic power family. More than 1 million euros have so far been raised to finance scientific research.

During the first 8 editions of the Stofwisseltour, teams cycled along that originated from parents with one or more children with a metabolic disease. A growing team of metabolic specialists also cycled along with the Stofwisseltour. The Axel foundation joined the Stofwisseltour and so the joining of forces continued to grow. In the past 3 editions, even more foundations and the patient association VKS joined the Stofwisseltour.