DUTCH SKATING IS FABULOUS

By Tom Kando

(first written on 2/10/2014)

Now that the Dutch skaters are raking in the gold medals in Sochi, I want to share with you some very fond memories.

Dutch skaters such as Irene Wust, Sven Kramer and the Mulder twins are dominating Olympic speed skating. Wust is phenomenal. She won gold at the 2006 winter games in Turin, Italy, again in 2010 in Vancouver, and now for the third time in Russia! Over the years, the Dutch have won 90 winter Olympic medals, 86 of them for skating!

Let me tell you how I experienced the beauty of long-distance skating. I grew up in Holland. By Dutch standards, I was a mediocre skater. But by any other standard I was reasonably good. Good enough to play intra mural ice hockey for my college fraternity.

When I went to high school in Amsterdam back in the 1950s, it was before global warming. The Dutch winters were still rugged. Like many other folks in Amsterdam, we lived on a canal. So in the winter, I was sometimes able to skate to school. Early on, I had so-called “Friese Doorlopers.” This type of skate consists of a wooden platform with the metal blade/skate under it. You simply tie the thing underneath your shoe. That way, you are still wearing your shoes while you skate, and you can get on and off the ice and walk around in your shoes whenever necessary. So I would tie my skates under my shoes, step on the frozen canal in front of our house, and off I went toward my high school near the Beethovenstraat. Later, I replaced my antique skates with a pair of fine, state-of-the-art “Noren,” the regular sort of skate used by professional speed skaters today, similar to ice hockey skates, except that the blade is nearly twice as long, jutting out far in front of the shoe.

The canals of Amsterdam would freeze over most winters, sometimes for months on end. The trick was to know when the ice was thick enough to be safe. We often skated even when the ice was still so thin that it “undulated” a bit.

Bridges presented a danger: The ice was always thinner underneath bridges - sometimes it was non-existent. And of course, Amsterdam’s grid of canals passes under bridges at just about every city block. Whenever you passed under a bridge, you took your chances. Here you approached the bridge at full speed, aiming to pass underneath. But if you broke through the thin ice under the bridge, you could shoot forward under the ice and never come back up.

I never experienced or witnessed any such tragedy, only heard about them. I only experienced and witnessed the joy of Dutch skating.

The most glorious form of skating was out in the countryside. There, you could skate over vast distances, towards the horizon. The entire country is cris-crossed by canals. Every cow field is separated from the next one by a canal or a ditch. You can skate for hundreds of kilometers in every direction, from one corner of the country to another. And there are dozens of lakes, up in Friesland near Sneek, all over North Holland, everywhere. Just outside of Amsterdam, there are “plassen” (lakes) everywhere - Vinkeveen, Loosdrecht, Westeinderplassen, you name it. You could skate to these lakes from the city’s canals, starting for example at the Boerenwetering.

Once you were outside the city, you just kept going. It was grandiose. Small as Holland is, it had grandeur. Eventually, you’d reach the lakes, skating over deep black ice, a surface as smooth and slippery as a mirror. With one arm behind your back and the other one swinging back and forth for balance, you’d aim for the other side, distant and dotted with tiny and barely discernible people, as in Breughel’s paintings. The only things interrupting the perfectly flat landscape were a couple of  church steeples  and  windmills, far away. The sky could be low, with threatening clouds, the way  Ruysdael depicted it, or brilliantly blue and  sunny,  with crisp sub-zero temperature. It  was utter silence and solitude, just you and the world.

But for any of this to happen, it has to freeze. One of Holland’s great traditions is the “Elfstedentocht.” (The Eleven Cities Race). This is a 200-kilometer ice skating race that has been held throughout the 20th century. It takes place in the Northern province of Friesland, and it goes through Leeuwarden, Sneek and nine other cities. Alas, the last time that the race was possible was 1997, due to global warming. It almost happened in 2012, but had to be canceled at the last moment.

The Dutch ice skating tradition will not die easily, witness the country’s Olympic prowess. Thanks to state-of-the-art training facilities and a true love for the sport, the country continues to cherish and excel in this marvelous activity.

© Tom Kando 2013
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