Amsterdam and Ice Skating
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Amsterdam and Ice Skating Amsterdam Centuries in Motion Amsterdam and Ice Skating Centuries in Motion 170769_122017 Amsterdam and Ice Skating Centuries in motion Centuries in motion 1 Contents Introduction Older than the Elfstedentocht The Amsterdam The oldest photographs of skating Ice Skating Club on the ice 4 6 8 12 The fi rst offi cial World Allround The Twenty Towns Tour Sonja Henie in Gonne Donker Speed Skating Championships Amsterdam 14 16 18 22 Skating soldiers The Eleven Cities story of Anne Frank Snow on the Amsterdam’s Willem Augustin on ice track Viking skates 24 26 28 32 34 The Jaap Eden Baan Sjoukje Dijkstra Carry Geijssen Shorttrack The clap skate 36 38 42 44 46 Skating at the Olympic Stadium Skating History in the Streets Amsterdam’s Credits of Amsterdam living heritage 48 52 54 56 2 Amsterdam and Ice skating Centuries in motion 3 Introduction he oldest skates ever found in the Jaap Eden did achieve this feat, becom- TNetherlands date from as far back ing the first Dutchman to win the world as around AD 700. They were bones of title. He repeated his success in 1895 cattle or horses that were fastened under and 1896. The ice rink that opened the feet using sinews or eelskin. Skaters in Amsterdam in 1961 was therefore used sticks to propel themselves over fittingly named the Jaap Eden Baan. It is the ice. However, we can assume that the oldest ice rink with artificial ice in the this activity was not seen as a sport. The world that is still in use, and it attracts precise point at which skating started about half a million visitors every year. being enjoyed as a sport is hard to identify. We do know, however, the dates Nowadays it is sometimes also possible on which the first skating clubs to hold to skate at the Olympic Stadium in competitive races were established. Amsterdam. In 2014, during the Sochi Winter Olympics, a temporary One of the oldest of these clubs in the ice rink was created for the first time at Netherlands is the Amsterdam Skating the Olympic Stadium for the national Club, founded at the end of December speed skating championships. This will 1864. At 8 pm on Wednesday, 21 Decem- be repeated during the 2018 Winter ber 1864, the club’s articles of association Olympics in PyeongChang, this time were adopted at a meeting at the build- also to host the World Allround Speed ing known as Diligentia on Kalverstraat. Skating Championships. This means that The first race was planned for 5 January the world championships are returning 1865, but this event unfortunately had to Amsterdam exactly 125 years after to be cancelled since a thaw had set in. Jaap Eden won the title at Museumplein. Eventually the race took place on the lat- The ‘Coolest ice rink in the Netherlands’ er date of 16 February. The register list- will be open to all skating lovers from ing the names of the club’s first officials, 18 January onwards. as well as information about the races and financial statements, belongs to the This booklet illuminates the history of archives of the Skating Club, which are skating in Amsterdam. You can read preserved in Amsterdam City Archives. all about the races that were held at Museumplein and Olympiaplein in The first World Allround Speed Skating Amsterdam; about the ‘Twelve Towns Championships were held in 1889, at Tour’ and the ‘Twenty Towns Tour’, both the Museumplein in Amsterdam. The of which included Amsterdam on their championship ended indecisively, since routes. And also about the country’s A man putting on his skates at the clubhouse of the Amsterdam Ice Skating Club. no one succeeded in winning three out great skaters, the men and women who Photo Vereenigde Fotobureaux NV, c. 1930, Amsterdam City Archives of the four distances. However, in 1893 celebrated their triumphs here. 4 Amsterdam and Ice Skating Centuries in motion 5 1676 Older than the Elfstedentocht The earliest reference to the Elfstedentocht – the ‘Eleven Cities Tour’ – dates from 1749, in a passage about a man referred to simply as Pier, who ‘skated through the eleven cities of Friesland in a single day’. Fourteen years later, in the book Historische Beschryvinge van Friesland, we read: ‘It has happened on more than one occasion that good skaters have ridden through, and seen, all eleven towns of Friesland.’ The Twelve Cities Tour class in the Zaandam region. In his notes Almost a hundred years before these he gave a brief unadorned account of references, there was a different tour, his Twelve Town Tour, recording only which included Amsterdam – the Twelve the order of the cities on the route and Cities Tour. This was a monstrously long noting that after they had left Alkmaar course of almost 300 kilometres around it had started to snow. the province of North Holland: through Haarlem, Amsterdam, Weesp, Naarden, These personal notes are the only record Muiden, Monnikendam, Edam, Purmer- we have of the Twelve Cities Tour, since end, Hoorn, Enkhuizen, Medemblik, and it attracted virtually no public interest. Alkmaar. On 19 December 1676, four While the Eleven Cities Tour in Friesland Fun on the Ice in 1619 in the vicinity of Alkmaar, one of the twelve cities. inhabitants of Koog aan de Zaan – Claes became a recurrent phenomenon for Simon Fokke after Hendrick Averkamp, 1722-1784, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Ariszoon Caeskoper, Maijndert Arent, hardy individuals from the eighteenth Jakop Blau, and Jakop Buur – set off at century onwards, and from 1909 an event 4 a.m. By 8.30 p.m. they had all arrived with a formal organisation, nothing of the home again. kind happened in North Holland. In fact force as the day wore on. It was a full up on to revive the 12-cities tour in this this event was repeated only once after 24 hours before they arrived home again, period of frost?’ ‘Where are the heirs to that 1676, by the brothers Klaas and Willem prompting even the national newspaper Zaanland heritage?’ Oostindie, who, like their predecessors, De Nederlandsche Staatscourant to The local daily De Zaanlander echoed the came from Koog aan de Zaan. report on their feat. The skaters them- proposal, demanding to know: ‘Where The men were obliged to ride by selves wrote about it in the cultural are the heirs to that Zaanland heritage?’ moonlight – fortunately a full moon – Klunen and Storm periodical Algemeene Kunst- en on 29 December 1938. ‘Why not set up since it was two days before the shortest On 29 December 1822 the Oostindië Letter-Bode in 1828. a meeting tomorrow evening, examine day of the year. On 19 December 1676 brothers also skated through the twelve the twelve-cities course the next day, the sun rose after 8 a.m. and by 4.15 p.m. cities of North Holland, but in the Two centuries later, with no third attempt publish the organisational details on it had already set again. More than half opposite direction. Since the Zuyder Zee to skate around the cities of North Thursday, and that same evening make of the sixteen-odd skating hours elapsed was not yet frozen over, they had to Holland having taken place, an editorial an announcement on the radio that the in the dark or half-light. cover thirty kilometres more than their in the daily newspaper De Telegraaf on Twelve Cities Tour is to be held on predecessors in 1676, much of it walking 25 December 1938 encouraged a repeat New Year’s Day?’ The pace-setter was Claes Caeskoper, on their skates over land (known as effort: ‘Does not one of the skating clubs who came from the well-to-do burgher klunen). The wind increased to gale in the west of the country feel called It never happened. 6 Amsterdam and Ice Skating Centuries in motion 7 1864 The Amsterdam Ice Skating Club Along the Olympic Stadium runs the IJsbaanpad (“Ice Rink Path”) a name that refl ects its past. It was here that the Amsterdam Ice Skating Club (AIJC), established in 1864, was based from 1937 to 1989. The AIJC has exerted considerable infl uence A busy day at the on skating in Amsterdam for 150 years – and continues to do so. popular ice rink on the grounds of the Ice Skating Club, The event was a great success, as was which is now known a second speed skating race held one as Museumplein. week later. The result was a charter Unknown photograp- adopted on 21 December 1864 that her, c. 1910, Amster- started with the words: ‘A Club shall dam City Archives be established, to be known as the Amsterdam Ice Skating Club’. The eight founding members worked in the the previous year! The biggest growth and offi ces on Van Baerlestraat. The shipping trade and almost all of them took place in the winter of 1886–1887, opening words were spoken by the came from Friesland, wrote the AIJC in with the move to the grounds behind architect Henri Berlage – twenty years a special 50th anniversary book in 1914, the Rijksmuseum: from 1,447 to 2,398 after Berlage and Theodorus Sanders had ‘who were naturally drawn to ice skating members. Here the club would remain built stands for trotting races in the same because of the nature of their work on or until 1937, until it eventually moved to square. In the course of the 1930s it had near the water’. IJsbaanpad. become essential to move the ice rink, since Museumplein was being used more Speed Skating Race in fancy dress organised In the early years, the club had approxi- Henri Berlage and more for other activities.