Mieke Sterk

Mieke Sterk was born on 5 January 1946 in Haarlem, North Holland. She grew up in a family firmly committed to the Labour Party (PvdA), a background that shaped her later political life.

As a girl she played korfball and basketball. At the age of seventeen, in 1963, she was spotted as a runner at a race on the beach and was persuaded to take up athletics with the Haarlem club Atmodes. At her first meeting she set a junior club record of 5.21 metres in the long jump and ran the 100 metres in 12.7 seconds.

Sterk developed into one of the most versatile Dutch athletes of her generation, competing in the sprints, the hurdles and the pentathlon. In 1966 she ran the 100 metres under 12 seconds for the first time. From 1967 she was coached by Wil Westphal, who also coached the national relay team, and in 1968 she won her first national title in the 100 metres hurdles. Over her career she won twenty Dutch titles and set twelve national records, individually and in relays, including a national pentathlon record in 1970. Her personal bests were 11.6 seconds for 100 metres (1968), 23.5 seconds for 200 metres (1973) and 13.2 seconds for the 100 metres hurdles (1973).

At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City she was eliminated in the heats of the 200 metres in 24.0 seconds. In the 4 x 100 metres relay, Wilma van den Berg, Mieke Sterk, Truus Hennipman and Corrie Bakker won their heat in 43.4 seconds, equalling the world record the American team had run shortly before. In the final the Dutch team again ran 43.4 and finished fourth, just behind the Soviet team. The time, later converted to an electronic 43.44, remained the Dutch record until 2012. At the same Games she drew attention by shortening the skirt of the official Dutch uniform herself before the opening ceremony.

In 1969 she made her first political statement, refusing to take part in the European Championships in Athens because of the military dictatorship in Greece. In 1970 she reached the final of the 60 metres hurdles at the European Indoor Championships in Vienna, finishing fifth in 8.6 seconds, and won the bronze medal in the pentathlon at the Universiade in Turin with 4,828 points. She competed at six European Indoor Championships in total and was named Dutch female athlete of the year in 1973.

After her sporting career she worked in education and youth work, with marginalised young people, young asylum seekers and people with intellectual disabilities, and taught in Zaandam. After the 1994 election she entered the House of Representatives for the PvdA, one of a group of newcomers recruited under party chairman Felix Rottenberg to give the parliamentary party a fresh look. Her portfolio included sport, care for disabled people, vocational education, defence personnel and public health. In 1997 she sharply criticised the parliamentary party and its leader Jacques Wallage, including in an interview with Vrij Nederland. She was then given an unelectable place on the list and left parliament in 1998.

From 1972 to 1988 Sterk was married to Hans van Wissen, sports journalist for de Volkskrant, and the couple had a daughter. After Van Wissen's death in 1999, she helped table tennis player Bettine Vriesekoop, his later partner, with raising their son, according to her former coach Wil Westphal. She lived in Amsterdam.

Mieke Sterk died in her home city of Amsterdam during the night of Monday 26 to Tuesday 27 October 2026, at the age of 80. No cause of death was made public. Her death was announced on 28 October by the Royal Dutch Athletics Federation (Atletiekunie), which remembered her as a versatile athlete and an Olympian, and was reported by Parlement.com, De Telegraaf and the Algemeen Dagblad. Her former coach Wil Westphal said she never let anyone push her around and always took a leading role.

Sterk belonged to the Dutch relay team of 1968 whose national record survived for 44 years, until it was finally broken in 2012. She is also remembered as an athlete who mixed sport with conviction: her protest against the Greek colonels in 1969 and her quarrel over the Olympic uniform made her one of the more outspoken Dutch sportswomen of her era. She received the gold Unie Erekruis of the Dutch athletics federation in 1978, and her later work with vulnerable young people and in parliament continued the social commitment she had shown as an athlete.