Why the Dutch Dominate the Olympics in Sochi

Even The Wall Street Journal opens their home page with "In Sochi, the Dutch are Dominating". It is amazing, even for a Dutchman like me, to see the Netherlands leading the Olympic medal count today with only seven days to go:

1. Netherlands 17
2. Russia 16 and USA 16
3. Canada and Norway 14
4. Germany 12
5. Sweden 9

The Wall Street Journal stated that it is absurd that a country of about 15 million people leads the Olympic medal count. And they are right of course. It is absurd.

Skating belongs to the Dutch like tulips, dikes and windmills. As soon as it starts freezing a lot of Dutchmen get the 'skating-fever'. The peak of Dutch skating madness is the so-called Elfstedentocht (Eleven-Cities-Tour). It's a 200 kilometer ride on natural ice with a maximum of 16,000 skaters. The first Eleven Cities Tour was held in 1909. During the last 115 years only 15 tours could take place.

Now let's go back to the Sochi success of the Dutch. I guess there might be three good reasons why the Dutch dominate long-track speed skating.

1. Focus. All the medals, except one, the Dutch won in long-track speed skating. Our focus on long-track speed skating originates in a long tradition. Skating is in our DNA. When there's an important race I just have to watch it and sit in front of my TV for hours! We Dutch were just lucky – I guess that speed-skating is one of the few sports that a small country of the Netherlands' size can dominate. Only ten nations are even competitive in speed skating, among which the USA, Russia, Japan, China, Germany, Norway and South Korea.

2. Invest. Having natural ice to skate on is not very common. Only 20 out of 365 days we can skate on natural ice in the Netherlands. That's why we have a good infrastructure of skating tracks to facilitate it. In the Netherlands there are 20 skating tracks compared to 6 in the USA, with 20 times more people. The Netherlands also invests in skaters. Companies adopt teams of top ice skaters for commercial purposes. Dutch ice skaters are professionals like Canadian ice hockey players. All their attention and energy goes into their sport.

3. Innovate. In ice skating, as any other sport, a lot of innovation is going on. The Dutch lead in ice skate-innovation. A great example is the invention of the clap skate by the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, led by Gerrit Jan van Ingen Schenau. Unlike traditional skates where the blade is rigidly fixed to the boot, clap skates have the blade attached to the boot by a hinge at the front, thereby distributing the energy of the leg more effectively and efficiently.

Of course I understand if you are sick of watching the Dutch win speed skating medals. You don't have to worry though. The Netherlands won't win the medal race. Wishing your country lots of successes too these last seven days in Sochi.

To read more from Gijs on LinkedIn, please click the FOLLOW button above or below.

If you like this article; you will like:

How to structure the chaotic start of innovation?

Six simple insights to become a better innovator

How to convince you boss to innovate?

Gijs van Wulfen recently published : "The Innovation Expedition" You can order it at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Photo: Alexandr Osipov/Flickr creative commons.

Source: wikipedia.org