A Canadian view on Dutch speed skating fans

RAZER · Feb 17, 2010

On one of the Dutch news site covering the Olympics there was a link posted to a Canadian news site which did an article about the Dutch speed skating fans. The article pretty much sums up the Dutch sport fans in general.

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Dutch+speed+skating+fans+slightly/2570244/story.html

Going berserk in the House of Orange

Are Dutch speed-skating fans slightly mad? Oh yes, one of them says

On Monday afternoon, we were walking along the Richmond river dike to get to the Olympic oval when we were stopped by a pretty blond girl wearing a toque decorated in the national colours of the Netherlands. Her name was Emilyn Edwards. She was from Vancouver, of Dutch descent. As she did with every spectator on their way to the oval, she reached into a box beside her, brought out a pair of orange knit wool gloves as gaudy as a Cheesie and said to me:
"A pair of gloves to cheer for the Dutch team?"
"Why," I said, "would I want gloves to cheer for the Dutch team?" And Emilyn said: "Because you can never have enough orange!" Emilyn cheerfully offered the orange gloves to everybody, whether they were Canadians in "O Canada" hoodies or Japanese sporting kamikaze-like headbands or affluent-looking Americans in Ralph Lauren U.S.A. sweaters.
Some people took the gloves, and some people looked at Emilyn as if she was handing out Hare Krishna leaflets at an airport and some took the gloves, thought to themselves for a moment and then walked back and handed the gloves back to her. One man, a Canadian, took the gloves and said: "Why not? Increases my odds of backing a winner." When Emilyn said she was from Vancouver, she said that I should talk to the two women across from her; they had flown in from Holland to support the Dutch skaters, she said. The two women, who were also young and pretty, were handing out big orange foam mittens that had "WE WANT SIMON" written on both sides, and if I knew anything about speed skating, or cared, I would know who "Simon" was, though I guessed he was a Dutch guy who had 38-inch thighs and looked good in skin-tight Lycra. As it happens, my assignment editor, who is a woman, had written me a note about the avid nature of Dutch skating fans who treated skaters like rock stars to the point, she wrote, quoting a line she had heard at the Turin Games, that even Canadian skater Jeremy Wotherspoon, at any time he wanted, could, if he so wished, get ... and here she used a term to describe an extreme degree of friendliness. For a moment, and solely in the name of investigative journalism, I had considered wearing a name tag to the Oval that read: "Hi! I'm Jeremy Wotherspoon!" I didn't, but I did take a giant Simon-ized mitten from the two Dutch women.
Inside the Oval, it became apparent this was the House of Orange. The Dutch were everywhere, with weird headgear the favoured choice of expression. Pascal Baars, 29, wore a spiked jester-like cap that started at his forehead and fell all the way down his back to his bum. The spikes, each one topped with a small bell, stood out straight from his spine. It made him look like an iguana. He was there with his wife and his mother-in-law and father-in-law, and his mother-in-law, Chrysta Damer, had orange eyelashes that were disconcerting to look at and an orange boa around her neck. This was Pascal's first Olympics, Chrysta said, but she had travelled the world following the Dutch skaters to European and world championships, to as far afield as Japan and South Korea. Were the Dutch slightly mad, I asked her. Oh yes, Chrysta said.

I met two couples, Martin and Renee Burema and Thomas and Sylvia Finkensieper, and all four of them wore big orange wool caps that the wives had knitted. The caps looked a little like upside-down flower pots, kind of like the headgear Devo wears. Pinned to the front of each cap was a doll. The men had male dolls on their caps and the women had female dolls on theirs. The dolls were dressed in traditional garb, complete with wooden shoes, and one of the men said that the dolls had different costumes they could wear according to the situation, including, he said, "disco clothes," which were, he admitted, intended as ice-skating costumes, though the difference is, let's face it, negligible.
He also said that last year, when the weather was so cold the Dutch canals froze and the ice was good, some 2.5 million Dutchmen in a nation of 15 million took to their long skates (hockey skates there as rare as long skates are here) and did 30-and 40-kilometre trips on the ice. That was where the Dutch love of skating came from, he said, especially for the longer distances: Skating was how Dutchmen would get from town to town in the winter. Skating was their history, and they weren't fans so much as witnesses to their birthright.
Mirko Sangers and his father, Hanke, wore orange cowboy hats because, Mirko said, they thought it would be appropriate for Canada. Ferry Breugens wore an orange "bear hat," he called it, though it looked more like he had shot and skinned a Muppet. It was furry and floppy and wide-brimmed. "The more absurd," Ferry said, "the better."
"Which is what we will be singing when we win all the gold medals here."
Ilona Stoeten was wearing an orange jewelled tiara in her hair, orange hoop earrings and a blue, white, red and orange boa draped over neck.
She was a vision. She had long blond hair and was at least six feet tall. She was working as a bartender at Heineken House, she said, and had come from Holland because her agency was one of the Olympic sponsors. Asked if she had seen many crazy Dutch fans while bartending, she said: "No. Only Canadian ones." After a while, the races started, and there was more orange in the stands than red. While I was writing this column, I looked up and there, on the starting line, was a Dutch skater named Simon Kuipers. The Simon of the giant mitten. He was a good-looking guy and he raced by in his orange Lycra suit looking great, and when he streaked past, the Dutch fans went berserk with extreme friendliness.
Click to expand...

NotAdmin · Feb 18, 2010

Ahhh, the Dutch and their sports Inside every Dutch person, there's a little carnivalesque figure hiding that only dares to come out when there's a good chance of a victory by someone, anyone, with some form of relationship, no matter how obscure, to the home country.

Well, andthere's got to be a chance to drink a few pints...

Kemp · Feb 18, 2010

Sure looks like us yes

Green Rowan · Feb 18, 2010

Weird? what do you mean by "weird"? ... ... ... we dress like that every day.

hehehehe

Shinobi · Feb 19, 2010

You wanna know why we chant orange above? Our Queen's surname is ORANGE, Van Oranje. LOL even Northern Ireland went nuts on the collor, but differently. Stay tuned to the football in SA guys, think you gonna see a legion of orange clad lions in the podiums. Especially when the Dutch are on the field.

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A Canadian view on Dutch speed skating fans

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