Indo icon of courage and perseverance
Sports career
This inspired her to start an 8 year lobby for a snowboarding medal event at the paralympic Winter Games, which was achieved in 2012. In 2014 she competed herself and consequently won her first gold medal. Through medical complications from recurring cancer she wasn’t always able to compete and by 2018 most sponsors had given up on her. She however had not given up on herself. While the Dutch Olympic Committee and Dutch Sports Federation had given up support for Mentel and the Dutch Skiing sports federation would only sponsor a small part of her expenses, she acquired the necessary money through crow funding. At the 2018 Winter Paralympics in PyeongChang, a 45 year old Mentel showed the world, once again, what she was made of, winning no less than 2 gold medals. | |
Family
At the age of 18 Mentels mother was married to her father, who was an Indo that had also spent the war years in a Japanese concentration camp. They moved to Ghana for almost 5 years, where she had two miscarriages. Due to the malnutrition in the warcamp Mentels mother’s utures wasn’t fullgrown. After succesfull medical treatment Mentel was born in the year 1972.
At one point Mentels father decided to move to Sri Lanka, where he said he felt at home. As a young traumatized boy after the war he and his family were able to recuperate on Sri Lanka, former Ceylon, which left him with beautiful impressions of the country. Mentels mother did not agree and her parents soon divorced. Mentel herself was 19 at the time and chose to stay in Holland and pursue a snowboarding career.
During her snowboarding career and her tenacious battle with cancer Mentel raised a family. Mentel was a motivational speaker and in 2012 she set up her own "Mentelity foundation", to stimulate, motivate, and inspire children and adolescents with a physical disability (to continue) to engage in sports, both in general, as well as in extreme board sports in particular, making a positive contribution to the mental and physical development of the physically handicapped.
In her lifetime she's given us the definition of the word...