December 24, 2010

Holiday food and skating fever news

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:35 pm

Here it is again, the tree I found in the trash a few years ago that adorns the office. The 24oranges crew has enough food and drinks to fill a bunker, and so pics will surely follow.

There are rumours that the Elfstedentocht (‘Eleven Cities Tour’), the outdoor Frisian skating marathon will possibly be on this year, the last one of which took place in 1997. Not only will we write about if it happens, but we plan on attending and taking pictures.

Read more about the Elfstedentocht on 24oranges:

Elfstedentocht stronger brand than Olympic Games

Winter fever Dutch style and time off

He brought a piece of his toe to the reunion

Tags: , ,

December 21, 2010

Dutch foot stickers by Nike instead of shoes

Filed under: Design,Fashion,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:47 pm

Dutch designer Frieke Severs has come up with ‘Footstickers’ for Nike. She’s probably better known for her FiveFingers made by Vibram, but either way, her footware looks pretty cool to me. Footstickers are made of a flexible material and a unique shape are are meant for activities such as yoga and cardio excercises.

I can’t help but add two cultural comments for the non-Dutch speaking crowd. First, in Dutch, gloves are called ‘handschoenen’, which literally translates to ‘hand shoes’. Second, ‘halve zolen’ (singular, ‘halve zool’), two words in the title of the link below, means ‘idiot’ in Dutch. I love a good linguistic coincidence.

(Link and image: idealize)

Tags: ,

October 31, 2010

Highest climbing wall in the world

Filed under: Architecture,Sports by Branko Collin @ 10:06 am

What do you do if your countryside is so flat, even the holes duck for cover? Why, build the highest climbing wall in the world of course.

Meet Excalibur, the 37 meter climbing extravaganza of Bjoeks Klimcenter in Groningen. The tower was built in 2004 by Polsar, also from Groningen—the same owners in fact.

(Link: Damn Cool Pics, which has some interesting photos of the tower made by cameras dangling from kites. This photo by Jan Lafeber, who released it into the public domain.)

Tags: , ,

August 30, 2010

Wiel Kuypers breaks fishing record

Filed under: Animals,Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:01 am

Yesterday Wiel Kuypers set the new world endurance record for recreational fishing at 160 hours.

Kuypers had started the Sunday before at fishing pond De Bus of his home town Mill in Noord-Brabant with his daughter Marjolein and his son-in-law Rick who both quit their attempts during the week. According to Omroep Brabant, an inflammation in Kuyper’s foot nearly threatened a happy end to the record attempt on Friday night.

The old record was set at 157 hours by Jan van de Bovenkamp in 1987, Sportvisserij Nederland writes.

After his successful attempt Kuypers went home to catch some sleep. He and his buddies had made plans to get up bright and early today, to go fishing. “By now I am pretty sure I know how to.”

(Photo of the completely wrong kind of rod by Qrodo Photos, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

August 22, 2010

Johan Voskamp scores 8 goals in professional match

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:23 pm

The second Dutch football league may not exactly be known for the defensive capabilities of its teams, but when the oldest Dutch professional football team Sparta Rotterdam (1888) relegated last year they probably did not expect the red carpet either.

Yet in its second game this season Sparta routed Almere FC 12-1, and 25-year-old striker Johan Voskamp scored 8 of those goals. Voskamp had just been bought from Helmond Sport who play in the same league. A video of his goals can perhaps be viewed at Youtube.

The second division is called Eerste Divisie (‘first division’) because the first division is called Eredivisie (‘honorary division’).

Henk Schouten scored nine goals for Feijenoord in 1956, in what was then still called the Hoofdklasse. The Eredivisie and Eerste Divisie were introduced a season later. All time top scorer for a single match in the Eredivisie is Afonso Alves (Heerenveen) with 7 goals in a match against Heracles in 2007. The previous record holders for the Eerste Divisie were Jerry Taihuttu (1997) and Ugur Yildirim (2003), with 6 goals each. Both players went on to play in the top tier the next season.

(Photo by Kralinger, some rights reserved)

Tags: ,

August 4, 2010

Solo sailing girl off to sail around the world

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 10:13 am

It sounds a lot like a soap opera: daddy was all for it, mommy was too, then she changed her mind. Lawyers got involved, child services got involved and stalled last year’s plans, and then the girl ‘threatened’ to emigrate.

Then, the Dutch public had their opinion, which ranged from ‘let the girl do her thing, you only live once’ to ‘what kind of horrible parents lets a teenager sail alone it’s dangerous’, as if the parents couldn’t vouch for their daughter’s talent. I couldn’t resist mentioning that Mike Perham and Zac Sunderland, both boys, were encouraged for their feats and wondering if Laura Dekker was a boy would that have made a difference.

And to ward off future criticism, if and when Laura Dekker does become the youngest person to sail around the world solo, all the Dutch, including the ones with the forked tongues will be all thrilled that she did it after all. If she crashes and burns, I’ll let you go all out in the comments, but for now, let’s see what happens first and comment later.

(Link: dutchnews.nl, photo of an entirely unrelated boat by the US Navy)

Tags: ,

July 22, 2010

Sports park lit up entirely with LED lighting

Filed under: Dutch first,Science,Sports,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 11:26 am
LED

As of September, a sports park in Eindhoven (three football pitches, four tennis courts and the rest of the place) will be entirely lit using LED lights, made popular in its mordern-day version sometime around 1999 by Dutch firm Philips, headquartered in Eindhoven.

Local newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad claims that this is a world first, as they couldn’t find anyone else who did this. LED lighting is much less energy consuming that regular lighting, up to 60% according to measurements quoted in the newspaper.

(Link: nuzakelijk.nl, Photo of LED lighting project by Velo Steve, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

July 13, 2010

Oranje gets orange-clad welcome from fans

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 5:32 pm

As I write this, some 500,000 people are currently not at work and partying with the Dutch football team back from South Africa at the Museumplein in Amsterdam almost like they actually won the World Cup. The team first took a boat tour through Amsterdam’s canals and I can see them drinking beer and dancing to our beloved techno-trance music on telly.

Why bother when your team has lost? Because getting that far in the World Cup feels like a win. Because it was planned in case we won, and hey, people want to party. Because it’s summer and nobody really wants to be working.

Because the newly elected goverment can’t agree on a coaltion formation, meaning we have no government at the moment and therefore, not too much news.

Here’s what it looked like in 1988 when the Dutch won the European Cup:

Tags: , ,

July 12, 2010

US news site claims Netherlands won World Cup

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:09 pm

WK-CBS1

Sloppy American journalism from ‘trusted’ news source CBS.

Surely this was a draft that never should have gone online, but the sloppy people at CBS news are making headlines and freaking people out with their glaring incompetence.

Read the whole sloppy story.

Tags: ,

July 11, 2010

Researchers pay fans to watch the World Cup final

Filed under: Health,Sports by Branko Collin @ 3:29 pm

heart_rate_monitorResearchers of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam will be paying both Dutch and Spanish fans 150 euro a person to come over and watch the final of the 2010 World Cup football between Spain and the Netherlands at an on-campus bar tonight.

The scientists wish to find out more about stress. Subjects will be hooked up to equipment that tracks their heart rate. The fans had to show up yesterday for a pre-measurement, and have to stay for an hour and a half after the match, so it’s not all fun and games.

(Link: Telegraaf, Photo by Mike Gebbis, some rights reserved)

Tags: ,