Reporter | Wang Ling
A country's dominance in a sport tends to fade over time – for example, Romania's performance in Olympic gymnastics or the U.S. men's tennis Grand Slam. But the Netherlands have maintained their dominant position in speed skating. The Netherlands has been known as the "kingdom of speed skating" for the past century, and now that advantage has spread to the Beijing Winter Olympics – as of February 12, the Netherlands has won four gold medals in speed skating.
Speed skating, referred to as "speed skating", is one of the oldest and most widely developed sports in ice and snow sports. Men's speed skating was listed as a winter Olympic event in 1924 and has not been absent from the Winter Olympics since then; women's speed skating was listed as a winter Olympic event in 1960. Speed skating has produced the largest number of medals of any Winter Olympic event – before the Winter Olympics, speed skating had produced 569 Olympic medals.
The Netherlands is the country that has won the most Olympic medals in speed skating. By the time of the Winter Olympics, the Netherlands had won 121 medals in speed skating, including 42 gold medals. The ultimate proof of a country's ability to compete in Olympic events is to sweep all three medals – in the history of speed skating at the Winter Olympics, there have been 11 feats of single-race top three finishing, with the Netherlands five. Four of them appeared at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where they finished in the top three in the men's 500m, women's 1500m, men's 5000m and men's 10000m.
The most successful skater in Olympic history also comes from the Netherlands — Ireen Wüst, 35, who has won the most Olympic medals in speed skating.
The most successful skater in Olympic history, Iren Worcester. Source: Visual China
As of press time, she has won 6 gold, 5 silver and 1 bronze for a total of 12 medals. Her legend is also reflected in her extremely long sports career. In 2006, at the age of 19, she won the gold medal in the 3000m speed skating in Turin, becoming the youngest gold medalist in the sport. At the Winter Olympics, she won a gold medal in speed skating in the 1500 meters, which made her the oldest speed skater to win an Olympic gold medal. Another history Worcester has created is that she is also the only winter athlete to have won gold medals in individual events at five different Olympic Games, a feat currently achieved by only six summer athletes.
Why is the Dutch speed skating team so successful? The Quadrennial Winter Olympics spark a series of discussions trying to explain the Dutch dominance in speed skating.
Sometimes some weird explanations come up. A well-known example is that at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Katie Couric, a well-known American journalist, said in a live television broadcast on NBC that the Dutch have been able to dominate speed skating for a long time because "in a city like Amsterdam, which is located below sea level, the canals freeze in winter, so skating is an important way to commute."
This claim has been met with ridicule from both sides of the Atlantic: anyone who has had a little life experience in the Netherlands can recognize that it is a rumor, or an ignorant American imagination of life across the ocean, because the residents of Amsterdam do not see skating as a mode of transportation. Not to mention that the last time Amsterdam's canals were frozen due to a warming climate, it was a decade ago.
However, it is an indisputable fact that skating is a very popular sport in the Netherlands. The long tradition of skating, the perfect talent training mechanism, the strategic investment in speed skating facilities, and the selection of winter Olympics under the guidance of big data have jointly built the status of the Netherlands as the "speed skating kingdom".
A long tradition of skating
Although the Netherlands is a country with almost no mountains, it has a long history of skating.
As early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there were early documents in the Netherlands and some countries in Scandinavia about animal bones tied to their feet and moving quickly on the ice, which was an early prototype of skating. From the 1840s onwards, speed skating was rapidly introduced from England and the Netherlands to other countries, and skating clubs were established. In 1892, the International Skating Union was founded in the Netherlands, the most advanced organization for speed skating.
In 1893, under the authority's leadership, the first World Men's Speed Skating Championships were held in Amsterdam, with only two non-Dutch participants in the competition. The tournament's first all-around winner was Jaap Eden, who became one of the most famous sporting icons in the Netherlands and one of Europe's first sports superstars. He won the World Cycling Championships the following year and set many world records. Named after him, the Jaap Eden Ice Rink in Amsterdam, the first artificial 400-meter ice rink in the Netherlands and one of the most famous in the world.
The famous "Elfstedentocht" competition is also a reflection of Dutch skating culture. It refers to a 200-kilometer long-distance skating tour that takes place around the northern Dutch province of Friesland, passing through all 11 historic cities in the province. It was first held in 1909 and the current king of the Netherlands, who loves sports, used a pseudonym to compete in the competition in 1986. However, it is held in a very dependent manner on natural conditions, and the Tour is only held when the natural ice layers along the road are at least 15 cm thick. The frequency of its holding depends on the condition of the ice; sometimes several consecutive years, sometimes more than 20 years apart, and has been held 15 times so far, most recently in January 1997. Due to global warming, there has been no ice that can meet the conditions of the competition since then.
In the Netherlands, skating is a nationally obsessed sport that is second only to football in popularity. Many children start practicing skating and watching skating competitions from an early age. Skating is also an important part of Dutch family culture.
Anderson, a 70-year-old skater and Dutch resident, recalled Interface News her experiences as skaters she grew up skating and the different types of skates she owned.
"When I was a kid, there was ice every winter. Initially my father bought me wooden skates (schaatse) that needed to be tied under the boots with colorful ropes. I had to tie them up outside in the cold, and my fingers were often frozen. When I got older, I got a pair of figure skates (kunstschaats). I often go to the ice rink with friends after school. When I got to 25, I wanted to skate faster, so I bought a pair of noren skates with extra long iron bars. At first I also adapted a bit because they were relatively low. But it did make me skate faster. ”
Dutch Canal Ice Rink in the 1990s. Image courtesy of respondents
"Learning to skate as a child is more advantageous because you will always fall, which is nothing for children, but the consequences for middle-aged and elderly people will be more serious." Anderson said.
Continuous talent development
The love and participation of the whole people has created a natural and continuous supply of talent for the Dutch skating team. On this basis, the Dutch government has strengthened the construction of the speed skating talent system, including a complete youth growth plan and a sound infrastructure.
A report in the Guardian
Until the mid-1990s, the Netherlands had long implemented a centralized skating program called "Kernploeg", which allowed six skaters to train full-time. Later, two of the star athletes broke away from the plan and formed their own commercial skating team. The Netherlands now has eight professional skating clubs that self-fund, nurture talent and support around 80 full-time athletes.
These young talents have had access to some of the best facilities in the world from an early age. The Netherlands has twenty standard-size long-track ice rinks for Olympic competitions, while the entire United States has only six long-track ice rinks.
The Dutch team's skating facilities are globally leading. For the 2014 Olympics, officials in the host city of Sochi traveled to the Netherlands to learn how to build a top-of-the-line playing field. Before they set off for the competition, the Dutch athletes were already familiar with the venues and knew how to reach the peak of their status in time during the competition.
Due to the large number of talents, people jokingly said that the most difficult thing is to enter the Dutch Winter Olympic team. To create fairer chances, the International Skating Organization implemented new rules in 2014 that limit the number of participants in each country, which is considered a rule specifically set to limit the Dutch team, but it has not stopped the Netherlands from continuing to maintain its supremacy in speed skating.
Concentrate on advantageous projects
An analytical article in the Wall Street Journal
It was noted that the Netherlands was a small country and had therefore chosen a project that it was sure to concentrate on. Only about five countries are currently competitive in speed skating, including the United States. The dutch supremacy comes from its careful calculations.
The National Federation of the Netherlands has 7,000 junior members. That's not very much. Unlike other countries, however, the Netherlands chose to send all 7,000 people to speed skating, while talent from other countries was divided between short track, ice hockey and figure skating.
Why did the Dutch initially choose to focus their love of skating exclusively on speed skating?
First of all, long-legged people have an advantage in speed skating. The Dutch are one of the highest peoples on earth, which allows them to glide hard and precisely.
The second is the factor already mentioned above: at the Winter Olympics, there are more medals in the speed skating event than in any other event. Dutch success comes from identifying advantages, consolidating them, and ultimately monopolizing them. Behind this is inseparable from the strategic choice and resource investment of the country.
Again is the exemplary role of star athletes. Quoted by the International Business Times as saying that the Dutch love of speed skating may date back to the 1968 Winter Olympics, when two charismatic Dutch speed skaters Ard Schenk and Kees Verkerk won medals and presented an exceptionally wonderful performance to the Dutch audience through television broadcasting, which greatly inspired the people of the whole country, and this passion continued for more than half a century.
An example of the influence of speed skating in the Netherlands is that during the non-Olympic years, American speed skater Shani Davis is almost unknown on the streets of his hometown of Chicago, but he is regarded as a hero every time he visits the Netherlands.
Winter Olympics athletes under the guidance of big data
"If you ask the best Winter Olympic players in the Netherlands, what is the most nervous? The answer is likely not the Olympics themselves, but the pre-Olympic qualifications. Dutch speed skater Douwe de Vries told The New York Times.
The Winter Olympic Trials in the Netherlands are held every four years in the week between Christmas and New Year's, and are probably the most important speed skating competition in the Netherlands. The five-day brutal competition was often crowded. The Netherlands is not the only country with too many talents in a sport to make the competition for team selection too fierce. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Dutch speed skating team is comparable to the American track and field team, and there are elite players to choose from in each event. But because of The Netherlands' dominance in speed skating, coupled with the sport's limited number of Olympic tickets, it leads to one result: when it comes to picking a team, math may be more important than skating.
At last winter's World Cup, speed skaters used their performances to compete for places in Olympic competitions for their respective countries. The Dutch won the most places – 32 – 16 for each of men and 16. But because the Olympics limit the number of people that can be sent by each country on speed skating, the Netherlands can only choose 9 men and 9 women – meaning most skaters in the country will have to compete in multiple events.
So the question becomes, how do you allocate 16 events out of 9 athletes? Should athletes who are strong in short track events but have no advantage in long distance events be selected? Should the team choose an athlete who is likely to be competitive overall in multiple disciplines? In the 1000m speed skating event, the world's top four athletes are all from the Netherlands, but only one person will win the gold medal in the end, is it necessary to balance?
In an attempt to solve these thorny problems, the Dutch Skating Federation turned to mathematicians at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands a decade ago to help them design a selection process to produce the most competitive team.
Mathematicians have designed a matrix based on each athlete's past performance, entering the results of recent years into a formula, and the most recent achievement has the largest weight to calculate the combination with the highest probability of winning a medal. Calculations are also calibrated based on location, as ice conditions and altitude may also affect speed skating time. It is worth noting that the calculation is not based on which individual skater is most likely to win, but on which competitions the Dutch team as a whole have the greatest chance of winning a medal.
The performance of the Dutch team proves the effectiveness of this matrix. The matrix was first applied to the 2014 Olympic Games, and the Dutch team won 23 of the 36 possible medals in Sochi, creating a historic glory.