This image is a top down view of the Burgplatz (platz = square in German) in Leipzig on June 11, 2006 as seen on Google maps. We know the date, because all the people on the square are clad in orange, the colour that Dutch sports fans don whenever they wish to cheer on their national team. On June 11, the Dutch national football team was in Leipzig to play the team of Serbia-Montenegro during the 2006 world championships. The Dutch team won 1-0. (The red, white and blue flag across what I presume is the podium is a dead give away too, but probably not as visible from higher up as the orange square.)
February 13, 2008
Dutch sports fans as seen from space
January 20, 2008
He brought a piece of his toe to the reunion
Tinus Udding kept a piece of his big toe that he lost way back in 1963 during the very harsh Elfstedentocht (Eleven-cities Tour speed skating competition in the province of Friesland when it’s cold enough) of 1963. Competition skater and all-round tough guy, Udding brought his left toe bit to the Elfstedentocht reunion held two days ago, commemorating the 45-year anniversary of the 1963 edition. The toe will get its own spot in the Schaatsmuseum (Skating museum) in Hindeloopen. The Elfstedentocht of that year took place in -18 degree weather with ice cold wind. Only 69 people made it to the finish out of the almost 568 competition skaters that took part. Tinus Udding was 31st, minus one toe.
(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo: tvglorie)
Tags: 1963, Elfstedentocht, Frieland, Schaatsmuseum, toe
January 14, 2008
Bernice Notenboom reaches South Pole on skis
On 13 January, after 923 kilometres of skiing in 38 days, Bernice Notenboom has become the first Dutch woman to reach the South Pole on skis, having endured harsh conditions, including -45 degree winds. Reaching the South Pole on skis pulling a huge, heavy sled was no easy task. Bernice also had pneumonia apparently not entirely gone yet, which she thought was altitude sickness.
“Every day it was 2 hours and 10 minutes of skiing, then a break, then another 2 hours and 10 minutes of skiing, then a short lunch break and again 2 hours and 10 minutes of skiing and so on until the night. Then we set up tents, melted snow for water, filled thermoses, etc. Whew! Now its all over. No more mandatory kilometres a day.”
(Link and photo: ourfernie.com, link: arcticalert.nl)
Tags: Bernice Notenboom, records, skiing, South Pole
December 26, 2007
Foekje Dillema: Schrödinger’s gender cat in the polder
How do you know who is a man and who is a woman? Schrödinger would say: through observation. But what if that observation takes place in a black box and its results are never reported? One of the great secrets in Dutch track and field are the results of a “sex test” the somewhat manly looking Frisian short distance runner Foekje Dillema had to undergo. On July 13, 1950, the Dutch athletics union KNAU brought together a group of female athletes for a sex test. As a result Dillema was banned for life from competing in athletics, her times were stricken from the books, and she was condemned to a life of shame. But get this: the union never published the results of the test.
Now, a week after her death at age 81, KNAU has recalled the ban and restored her times, although the union did not want to “go as far as to” apologize for the controversial sex test.
That the union set Dillema up for a fall was clear from the onset. The other athletes tested were presumably only there to make up the numbers, so that it did not seem so obvious that the union was targetting Dillema. Some of the subjects were already mothers at the time of the test. For a year after the test, Dillema would not leave home during the day, and she spent the rest of her life in relative seclusion.
The K in KNAU stands for “koninklijke,” literally “royal,” a title an organization is only allowed to carry if it is of unblemished character. You have to wonder how the KNAU’s K is allowed to stand.
Tags: athletics, gender, KNAU, koninklijk, sex
December 23, 2007
Crossing the Pacific, home for Christmas
Ocean rower and adventurer Ralph Tuijn will be back in the Netherlands today just before Christmas after nine months of rowing on the ocean. He rowed 16,000 km and kept going even after a cyclone.
Tuijn left Peru, South America in March 2007 to head to Brisbane, Australia. Never before has an ocean rower crossed the Pacific without any assistance. Because of the wind Tuijn did not reach Brisbane and did not fully succeed his expedition. Instead, he landed on the island of Fiji.
On Fiji, Tuijn rested with his wife and daughter when cyclone Daman whipped by the island. Tuijn will arrive as expected this afternoon at Schiphol Airport.
(Link: De Pers)
Tags: Australia, cyclone, ocean rower, Pacific, Ralph Tuijn
December 21, 2007
Pedal exerciser from the 1990s revisited
Lifehacker’s Gift Guide 2007 for the suave and discerning geek of the noughties acknowledges that the best mods only go with the best bods, so it presents you with a pedaling device called the under-the-desk exerciser (sounds like a Christmas party to me!) to put under your desk or WoW station. But Booklog stands them up with its review of the 1990 summer edition of the Wehkamp mail order catalogue. The “teletrapper” exerciser was sold to an unsophisticated TV dinner crowd even back then, for an even hipper price (in guilders, with about 2 guilders to 1 US dollar).
As one person commented at Lifehacker notes, your desk needs to be higher than waist level, or else you will keep bumping your knees. Of course, if your desk is higher than waist level you’re just begging for RSI. One good solution for that is to get up every 40 minutes or so and take a five minute walk around the office. Once you’ve started doing that, you won’t really need a exercising device, though. Choices!
Tags: Christmas, exercising, life hacking, shopping
First “natural ice” speed skating race of the season in Nijelamer
Last Wednesday the Frisian village of Nijelamer was the first in the country to organise speed skating races on natural ice. On a 160-metre track, 38 pairs started, skating two races each: one away from the village and the second race towards it. The person losing both races was out of the competition. In the end, 21-year-old Ronald Mulder from Zwolle won. Two days earlier, skating icon Henk Angenent had expressed doubt on national TV as to whether natural ice races would be held this week. The farmer from Woubrugge had observed fresh mole hills and saw this as a sign that the frost would not stay. But it did, and the skating peloton was happy for it. (Via free daily De Pers, Dutch.)
Photo by StanTheCaddy, distributed under a Creative Commons BY-2.0 license: children skating at the back of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam in January 2007.
Tags: Friesland, natural ice, Rijksmuseum, skating, traits
November 20, 2007
Dutch company buys Eiffel tower staircase
Erik Kurvers, owner of consulting agency Eiffel in Den Bosch, Noord-Brabant, bought this original piece of the Eiffel tower stairs yesterday in Paris for EUR 180,000. Kurvers also happens to be the chairman of the Den Bosch basketball club, the EiffelTowers. The 4,5-meter-high staircase is to be seen as a symbol for the company and club to ‘climb higher’ (aim higher really, but not miss the hoop). This piece of staircase connected the second and third storey of the original tower of 1889.
(Link: omroepbrabant.nl, Photo: Frogsmoke)
Tags: Den Bosch, Eiffel tower, France
September 11, 2007
“Skiete” Willy, striker of untold legend
Literary football magazine Hard Gras has dedicated issue 55 (Dutch) to Willy van der Kuijlen, nicknamed Skiete (Shoot) Willy, the legendary PSV forward who only lacked ego. Part of the Cruijff generation that treated the world to its Total Football, Van der Kuijlen was little known across the border because he stayed at PSV for all of his career, and was never called up for the 1974 WC.
Author Rob van der Zanden publishes an excerpt (Dutch) of the issue in today’s Algemeen Dagblad. He discusses the innocent days when PSV hadn’t won any major trophies yet, and when the fans perhaps were unaware how good the unassuming Van der Kuijlen actually was. Van der Zanden recalls a notable moment in 1976, when Van der Kuijlen pannaed an Ajax player, turned around, and did it again.
Van der Kuijlen did not finish his career at PSV with a bang, but sort of petered out. Van der Zanden lays some of the blame of Van der Kuijlen’s anonymity at the player’s feet; being an all-rounder, Skiete Willy would frequently drop back to midfield to help control the game from there, and he never managed to join the Club of Thirty, the elite group of players that scored thirty goals or more in one season. And yet, with his total tally of 311 (20-23-21-21-11-26-14-6-13-27-28-27-24-13-14-12-8-3) Van der Kuijlen is still all-time top-scorer of the Eredivisie.
Even though as leader of the team he had to control the game from mid-field, he never denied himself the chance to steal a goal. Van der Zanden compares his peckishness to that of writer Simon Vinkenoog, who once said: “Even if they invent something that is better than sex, I will continue having it on the side.”
July 30, 2007
24 oranges at the Tour finish line!
While the doping scandals rage on, the show must go on – and it did. Just watching these guys whiz by is enough to make you forget everything and enjoy the colourful peloton being cheered on by all those people in downtown Paris.
It’s slightly OT, but our very own Orangemaster was at the finish line of the Tour de France on the Champs-Élysées in the pressbox taking pictures and filming! Here is a sample.
A huge thanks to Philippe and Jean Michel, two French radio announcers who made this possible and made me remember what the Tour is really about – cycling.
Oh, and for the Dutch fans, everybody thought it was great to see the rest of the Rabobank team race and not abandon the race for one “bad guy”. In my press guide of the Tour, former cyclist Bernard Hinault was quoted as saying, “every year, I say the same thing: they (Rabobank) have a solid, homogenous team that can score on the straights and in the mountains.”
Daniele Bennati crossing the finish line, winning the Champs-Élysées stage.
“La voix du Tour” (The voice of the Tour) since 1974, Daniel Mangeas, very friendly and took a few minutes to chat.
Britain’s David Millar, leader of the Saunier Duval-Prodir team giving an interview minutes after the race.
Tags: Champs-Élysées, doping, scandal, Tour de France