More than 36,000 people from dozens of different countries completed the 94th Nijmegen Four-Day March on Friday, and received their brightly-coloured medals.

Cheered by tens of thousands of spectators, and with broad smiles on their faces, the walkers reached the finishing line on the festive Via Gladiola, as St. Anna Street in Nijmegen is re-named every year during the four-day event, because the walkers are welcomed with large bouguets of gladioli as a reward for their achievement.

The long distances (30, 40 or 50 km a day), the blisters, the heat, the cramp and the exhaustion: at the finishing line, all those things are (almost) forgotten. For, tired feet or not, there's a lot of dancing to the music of the various orchestras.

Many participants celebrate the fact that they have completed the greatest four-day event in the world, and it has the atmosphere of a a carnival. But the organisers of the event view it quite differently: "The four-day march is explicity not a carnival, but a sporting event!".