600 transplant recipients gathered, and nobody felt special anymore

Robert Lindemann, a 32-year-old accountant from Germany, spent a week in Arnhem this June feeling gloriously unremarkable. He had a heart transplant less than two years ago, an experience shared by only a few hundred people in his country each year. At the European Transplant Games, where 600 athletes gathered, that stopped being the whole story. "It sounds a bit weird when I say you don't feel special here, because everybody has a special story," he says. The event is open to transplant recipients, dialysis patients and living donors, and Lindemann chose bowling and shotput. Edelle Collins, 50, from Ireland, arrived hoping only to make it there after a double lung transplant in 2021 and dialysis three times a week. She left with a bronze in darts. "Nobody's really interested in your big, long sob story," she says, "because we all have sob stories, every single one." Lynne Holt, the U.K. team manager, watched from behind sunglasses, hiding what she calls her "leaky eyes."