Valitut palat

From: Ron Broersma
To: skate@uni-koeln.de
Subject:Heerenveen Scandal
Date: 03 Feb 2000 

In today's national papers there is an article about a real scandal, that took place in Heerenveen.

Ice-Master Jan de Jong has now admitted to a journalist that he prepared the rink at least twice in a scandalous way.

First there was the World Ch. in 1980. Thanks to De Jong, Hilbert van der Duim won his surprising title there, by defeating 'Golden Boy' Eric Heiden, who seemed to be unbeatable after his 5 golden medals in Lake Placid at the Olympics, that same year. Quote from De Jong about this: ,,After I knew the pairing for the final 10K, I changed the ice preparation-schedule in Van der Duim's favour. I do had to talk with the referees about this, but that wasn't difficult because they always followed my advices''.

Later that day Van der Duim skated 15.27.94 on ice directly after a preparation. Heiden had bad ice, not directly after a preparation, and realized 15.24.65 wich was not enough to close the gap to Van der Duim. The Dutchman won the title with 171.747 points, Heiden had 171.880 points. (The article in the papers is wrong here, because they say that 'Heiden skated way slower due to the bad ice conditions then Van der Duim did'. Wrong, because Heiden was faster but just not fast enough).

Another scandal took place in '86, when the rink was covered. The Thialf-direction told, before the races started, that there would be 25.000 guilders paid for each new Worldrecord. Today's story: "With 6 new worldrecords at that first day, this thing went completely out of control. The Thialf-direction asked De Jong then to do something about it, so they didn't have to pay an enormous amount of money the second day. De Jong agreed, and prepared the ice in a way it became a little soft. That way there wouldn't be any new worldrecords.''

Personally I think this is really scandalous, and I hope the ISU will investigate these stories. In the article there is nothing mentioned about sanctions or investigations. If it turns out that these stories are true, it will be justice (IMO) when Heerenveen will be sanctioned.

The last thing will be not be said in this matter I suppose

From: Preben G. Petersen
To: skate@uni-koeln.de
Subject: Manipulations in Thialf
Date: 4 Feb 2000 

I don't have any video from this meeting, but I was there and I remember that every time Heiden skated, the conditions got worse. In the 10km Heiden was "en route" to skate the time necessary to beat van der Duim in the classification, when it started to hail. I don't believe this to be the responsability of the icemaster.

From: Ron Broersma
To: skate@uni-koeln.de
Subject: Manipulations in Thialf
Date: 04 Feb 2000 

A minor correction here: this is not 'his' book, and are therefore not words he has written down himself. The book is written by 4 or 5 journalists and contains all kinds of speedskating-stories, mostly from 'around the track'. It was published by Aegon, and the intention is for Aegon to use this book as a kind of pr-article, to be given away to other sponsors, bobo's and so on.

From: Marnix Koolhaas
To: skate@uni-koeln.de
Subject: Manipulations in Thialf
Date: 3 Feb 2000 

Today, the reminiscences of Thialf's retiring icemaster Jan de Jong were published. In his book 'Slagen op het ijs' (strokes on the ice) De Jong admits that he was twice involved in manipulations during competitions at Thialf. He says that in 1980 he manipulated the ice-cleaning-schedule during the WCh, with the intention to favour Hilbert van der Duim against Eric Heiden. He writes: 'When I saw the drawing for the 10 km., I changed the cleaning-schedule in favour of Hilbert. Of course I consulted the referee, but normally they took over my advice.'

De Jong doesn't give any details, but the drawing was following: 1st pair: Ehrig-Niittyla, 2nd pair: Oxholm-vdDuim, 3rd pair: Heiden-Kleine Final classification: 1 vdDuim (15.27,94-171.747) 2 Heiden (15.24,65-171.879)

Probably the cleaning was planned after the 2nd pair, and De Jong changed it until 3rd or 4th pair. Nevertheless I doubt whether vdDuim really took advantage. Heiden was a bit tired after his ultimate Olympic triumph, and acoording to the 10k-results, you can't see any disadvantage for Heiden. In fact it looks the other way around. At the 5k vdDuim beated Heiden (7.21,57-7.25,37), but at the 10k Heiden was 3 seconds faster! Acc. to the laptimes, some strange things must have happened to vdDuim in his 23rd lap: after 37 he skated a 39, finishing with two more 37-laps. Heiden finished with 36 and 35. This doesn't look like worse conditions. Circumstances obviously must have improved in the 6th pair, with 'Wooder' winning in 15.02 against Tveter 15.04. But I can't imagine an ice-cleaning after the 5th pair. Anyone with a video to reconstruct what really happened at this 10k???

A bit more reliable is De Jong's confession of deteriorating on purpose the ice-conditions during the Heerenveen-record-games in 1987, because of an 'over-flow' of World-records. The Thialf-staff put a bonus of 25.000 dutch guilders for any new world-record. But also in this case, De Jong's memory is not that good. He says it happened in 1986, and that 6 WR's were set on the first day. Because of a threatening bankruptcy, De Jong claims to be asked to deteriorate the ice-conditions the final day. This could be true, but the facts are different. The 1987-record-games were held during THREE days (19/20/21-3), and the first TWO days, SEVEN WR's were set. (Blair 39,43-1.20,19; Van Gennip 4.16,85-7.20,36; Thometz 36,56-1.13,53; Visser 3.59,27). It indeed was remarkable, that the last day NO world-records were set. I remember skaters complained about the ice-conditions. But De Jong's manipulations didn't help for long. A year later Heerenveen went banktrupt anyhow.