Sochi Olympics Day 11 - The Orange Wave

When we first attended speed skating in 1988, the stands in Calgary looked a lot like this:

We asked someone near us what was up with all of these orange-clad people. He said, "Oh, those are the Dutch fans" as if this explained why some of them looked like this:

 

  

Since then, we have fully enjoyed watching the Dutch fans. The closest analogy I have is that they are the Brazilians of the Winter Olympics - a walking party wherever they happen to be. But at the Winter Olympics, where they happen to be is always at Speed Skating. They even have their own band called Kleintje Pils (Little Beers):

The Kleintje Pils are so entertaining that they have been invited to attend Olympic Speed Skating at essentially no cost for at least the last five Olympics in exchange for providing entertainment during ice resurfacing breaks. I vividly remember the members of the band valiantly trying to teach the very stoic Japanese fans in Nagano how to do the Wave! 

While they fiercely cheer for their own athletes and really hate to lose, the Dutch are nevertheless very supportive of all of the athletes. We have often heard them burst into applause when some skater far back in the overall standings skates a personal best time. I have never heard them boo a rival to one of their own skaters.

So perhaps it is some sort of karmic reward for their good sportsmanship that the Dutch are absolutely destroying the competition at the Adler Speed Skating Arena. After 10 events, the Dutch have an astounding 21 medals out of a possible 30. This currently puts just their Speed Skating team ahead of all but two nations: the US and Russia. No other team in Olympic history has dominated their sport like the Dutch are doing this year. They have swept the podium in four of ten events and set three Olympic records. All of the prior Olympic Speed Skating records were set in the high altitude of Salt Lake City, so setting even one Olympic record at sea level is amazing. Setting three is, like my 15 year old son Sean would say, sick!

I read an interview with a Dutch journalist who traced the rise of Dutch Speed Skating to the 9 Olympic medals that Americans Chad Hedricks and Shani Davis picked up at the 2006 Torino and 2010 Vancouver games. This was a real smack in the face to a nation that, in a recent survey, had 12 million people who consider themselves recreational skaters. Note that the Netherlands has a total population of only about 16 million people so the only people who don't skate are the very old and the very young (and I'm not so sure about the very old). Any decent sized town in the Netherlands has more competitive Speed Skaters than there are in the entire US. How could the US get so much out of so little? This motivated an entire generation of Dutch skaters with the result that it is now much more difficult to make the Dutch Olympic Speed Skating team than it is to win an Olympic medal.

The rest of the world can only be thankful that the Dutch are not guaranteed to win all the remaining medals in the last two Speed Skating events. This is because both are Team Pursuit events with only one team per country! I have to be honest. After decades of enjoying the Dutch fans and their team, I'm rooting for them to smash another two Olympic records and maybe a World record or two.