March 15, 2012!

I want to thank everyone who has enjoyed my blog over het last few months. I had a great time running the blog and updating stories for anyone who was interested to read about the London summer Olympics. January 19th was my first blog post and today, March 15th is NOT my last... The London Olympics will start on July 27th, 2012 and until that time I will keep posting on my blog! 

For more information about the London Olympics: http://www.london2012.com/ or Twitter:  https://twitter.com/#!/London2012  (everyday updates and highlights).

Keep following my blog!

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

Olympic qualification for fencer Bas Verwijlen!

Bas Verwijlen is very happy to tell everyone that he qualified for his second Olympics. Due to his silver medal at the European Championships and his silver medal at the World championships. He was pretty sure of competing in the 2012 London Olympics for the worldwide governing organization for Olympic fencing, but not for the Dutch committee.

For the Dutch Olympic Committee he had achieve a top-8 result in 2011 and one top-16 in 2012 all at a pre-selected competition. In 2011 he had a top-8 result at the Tallinn worldcup (3th place) and in 2012 he finished 3th in the Qatar Grand Prix. 

After returning home some people told him that he could be the new #1 on the world ranking list. He waited until monday and saw the updated ranking……it was true! He is very proud to be the first Dutch fencer ever to be ranked #1 on the world ranking list for some weeks.

Unfortunately it was just for a few weeks.
The Italian Worldchampion Paolo Pizzo catched up on him because of his good result at the 2012 Tallinn worldcup. Next weekend is the worldcup in Paris. This will be the last olympic qualification moment and will be very exited and stressful for some fencers.

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic) 

Australia´s Twitter warning to athletes!

Australian athletes have been warned against using Twitter during competition after officials found competitiors tweeting during last week´s Olympic diving test event in London (England).

Mike Tancred, the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) director of media and communications, fears athletes tweeting during competition. Coaches and team managers needed to implement rules to eliminate the risk of social media undermining performances at this year's London 
Games. 

The problem was highlighted at the diving test event in London where athletes were tweeting during the competition. Tancred said: "Last week diving officials stopped the use of social media during the competition, which was also a World Cup event, once they recognized it was happening".

The International Olympic Committee will allow athletes to use social media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter during the Olympics because it is keen to encourage more youth interest in the Olympics.

The official Olympics and Paralympics Twitter account has 389,103 followers and Tweets every day about sport, culture, behind the scenes information and opinion on the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics!

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

Fifth Olympics for Dutch rower Diederik Simon!

Yesterday, March 9th, 2012: Dutch rower Diederik Simon (41) qualified for the London Olympics. He qualified for the 'Holland eight' with Olivier Siegelaar, Jozef Klaassen, Sjoerd Hamburger, Matthijs Vellenga, Rogier Blink, Mitchel Steenman, Roel Braas and Peter Wiersum.

Diederik Simon is a big name with a successful Olympic history. He won three Olympic medals in total. Gold at the Olympics in Atlanta (1996) in the Holland Eight (8 +), silver in the 2000 Sydney olympics and in 2004 Athens he won again silver. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing the team took a fourth place. The London Olympics will be his fifth Olympics in a row.  

More Dutch or Belgium Olympic news........

Elco van der Geest qualified this week on behalf of Belgium for the Olympics in Judo. Elco van der Geest was born in Haarlem, the Netherlands. Van der Geest, which compete in the category up to 100 kilograms, changed his citizenship to Belgium because he lost the competition in the Netherlands with Henk Grol. Every country may select only one judoka in every weight class.  

LUKX.nl sponsors Elco van der Geest on his road to the Olympics in London 2012! They created a nice promotion movie about him.

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

Extra financial support for 8 Dutch Olympic Medal contenders!
Eight Dutch Olympic athletes signed a sponsorship contract for the next four years! Energy supplier Nuon is the new sponsor of a team of eight athletes.  All athletes are successful, talented, dedicated, ambitious and passioned, but none can reach the top without the support of friends, family, trainers and coaches. This financial support helps them to reach their major goal: Olympic gold! 

Team Nuon: 
Judoka: Henk Grol
Track Cyclist: Teun Mulder,
Beachvolleybal: Marleen van Iersel and Sanne Keijzer
Track & Field athlete: Dafne Schippers
Fencer: Bass Verwijlen
Snowboarder: Dimi de jong
Ice skater: Kjeld Nuis

There is a strong link between the ambitions of Nuon and the ambition. Both Nuon and the athletes are constantly working to get energy as efficiently and effectively as possible to develop their skills and techniques.

This new sponsorship contract runs to 2016. It will cover three Olympics: London 2012, Sochi 2014 and Rio de Janeiro 2016!

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

Blog update: Dutch Road to London 2012

Last week many Dutch athletes qualified for the Olympics in London. This is good news and in today's video a short update about two sports:Track and Field and Swimming!

Enjoy!

                                     

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

Hilda Kibet qualifies for the Olympic marathon!

Hilda Kibet has qualified for the marathon for this summer's London Olympics. She ran the RAK Half Marathon in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates. Her time 1.11.07 was much faster than the required 1.13. She finished fifth in a top field of athletes.

Hilda Kibet is the first Dutch Track & Field athlete who qualifies for the Olympics in London. The other athletes who were nominated in 2011 for London in 2012 should prove shape retention by achieving the IAAF B limit. The Dutch nominated Track & Field athletes:

·  Churandy Martina 100 and 200 meter: 10.24/20.65 sec.
·  Lornah Kiplagat marathon: half marathon 1.13.00
·  Gregory Sedoc 110 meter hurdles: 13.60 sec.
·  Rutger Smith discus: 63,00 meter
·  Erik Cadée discus: 63,00 meter
·  Monique Jansen discus: 59,50 meter
·  Eelco Sintnicolaas decathlon: 7950 points
·  Dafne Schippers 200 meter and Heptathlon: 23.30 sec. / 5950 points
·  4x100 meter relay women  

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

Athlete Podcast Discussion – Dutch road to London 2012

Wednesday, February 14th, I had the opportunity to have an online podcast discussion with  two exchange students: Shaun D’Souza and Rich Freeling regarding hot topics related to the upcoming Olympics in London. They are both highly involved in sports. 

The podcast topics include:

• Guest introduction
• London 2012
• Sydney 2000
• Expectation Dutch athletes and teams

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

Dutch Top 10 Olympic focus list!

Recently the Dutch National Olympic Committee presented  a focus list of 10 sports that could help the Netherlands in realizing its ambition to structurally end in the top 10 of the Olympics medal table. This is one of the requirements for hosting the Olympic. My analysis shows  the 10 sports which will make the focus list and which hence may receive extra funding are likely to be the following ones: skating, aquatics, athletics, rowing, judo, field hockey, cycling, sailing, equestrian and gymnastics.

The Netherlands has only once been in the Olympics medal top 10 table. Let’s first briefly examine how The Netherlands has performed during  the Olympics in the last 7 editions and simultaneously how many gold medals were required to end up in the medal top 10. 

Olympics        Dutch gold medals       Medal Ranking      Medals required to be in top 10

2008                7                                             12                                           7
2004                9                                             17                                           9

2000                11                                           8                                            11

1996                7                                             15                                           7

1992                7                                             20                                           7

1988                6                                             22                                           6

1984                6                                             13                                           6

From this table the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. The Netherlands has only once been able to end in the top 10; this was during the tremendously successful  Sydney 2000 Games.

2. The Netherlands usually is ending in the top 20 in the Olympics medal table

3. In order to realize a top 10 position around 7 gold medals are required. Only during the 2000 and 2004 editions this number was exceeded

4. In order to structurally end up in the medals top 10 The Netherlands needs more gold medals.

Choices have to be made. Not surprisingly more money is required to stand a chance to realize this ambition. Besides a better sports infrastructure, better facilitation and better support of top athletes, it is clear that choices have to be made as far as sports are concerned. One would invest in those sports where chances of gold medals are the best.  The 80/20 rule also applies to sports and it is no different from your average company, where just a few clients (20%) make up 80% of the turnover. As we will see, it ain’t that different in sports; a few sports are accounting for the vast majority of medals. It doesn’t require rocket science to determine which sports these are. I have used 3 criteria to pinpoint where The Netherlands would have a decent chance to gain gold medals.

1. How many gold medals per sports discipline are at stake during the Olympics? Clearly this makes a difference; are we going to invest in athletics, where 47 medals are to be gained or say in triathlon with only 2 gold medals to be divided.

2. Do we have sufficient talent available in those sports to support our ambitions? In order to measure this, we have looked at the size (in terms of members)  of each sports federation that could be active on the games

3. In which sports do we have a historic tradition as far as medals are concerned? In several Olympic sports, we have barely won any medals  at all. For example The Netherlands does not have a tradition in wrestling, where it has never gained any medals (also reflected in the number of members at the wrestling union). It should therefore be questionable whether such tradition can be reversed quickly, particularly given the available resources of such sports.

	Sports	Gold medals	Sports	Members	Sports	Medals NL
1.	Athletics	47	Football	1152674	Aquatics	55
2.	Aquatics	46	Tennis	693024	Cycling	40
3.	Cycling	18	Gymnastics	273811	Rowing	26
4.	Gymnastics	18	Field hockey	210498	Equestrian	22
5.	Wrestling	18	Equestrian	203007	Judo	20
6.	Canoeing	16	Aquatics	144259	Sailing	18
7.	Shooting	15	Athletics	127639	Athletics	15
8.	Weightlifting	15	Volleyball	127047	Field Hockey	14
9.	Judo	14	Sailing	101040	Canoeing	8
10.	Rowing	14	Badminton	61321	Boxing	6
11.	Boxing	13	Judo	57686	Fencing	5
12.	Fencing	10	Handball	57192	Weightlifting	3
13.	Sailing	10	Basketball	42134	Football	3
14.	Taekwondo	8	Shooting	41882	Shooting	2
15.	Equestrian	6	Table tennis	34288	Tennis	2
16.	Badminton	5	Cycling	28456	Volleyball	2
17.	Tennis	5	Rowing	28092	Archery	2
18.	Volleyball	4	Triathlon	14019	Gymnastics	1
19.	Archery	4	Archery	10071	Badminton	1
20.	Table Tennis	4	Taekwondo	8574	Wrestling	0

5 out of 26 different sports account for 50% of the medals.

There are 302 gold medals to be handed out at the next Olympics in London split over 26 different sports and even more disciplines. Important to realize is that 5 of these sports account for approximately 50% of all the medals, coincidentally wrestling being one of these sports. The 10 sports with the least gold medals to be gained account for only 10% of all the medals. Hence, this explains why focusing is important. Looking at the total members per union, it is clear where the Netherlands has the biggest resources as far as talent, trainers and tradition is concerned and not surprisingly this is also reflected in the column detailing the total number of medals that historically have been gained in a certain sport.

The top 10 focus list. 

Taking these criteria as a yardstick it is not difficult to arrive at a focus list (or a study top 10 as NOC NSF is defining it). Apart from skating (I have not analyzed the Winter Olympics for obvious reasons –  the vast majority of Dutch gold medals are gained in skating -), we would arrive at the following sports: athletics, aquatics, cycling, judo, rowing, sailing, equestrian and field hockey.  It means there is one sports left. As football and tennis are played on a full-time professional level and not primarily dependent on NOC NSF, we would not expect these sports to be on the list. Given both the number of medals at stake and the number of people participating in the sports, I believe gymnastics would be a prime candidate to end the list.

Tot ziens, A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)

183 days until……..

183 days until the XXX Olympiad, 183 days until millions of people will visit the city London, 183 days until subways will be packed with loads of people, 183 days until the openings ceremony in the Olympic stadium, 183 days until many broken records in different sport categories and 183 days until the most beautiful sports event in the world: THE OLYMPIC GAMES 2012!!

My second post gives interesting facts and figures about the London Olympics 2012. I was also curious about the history of the Dutch athletes at previous Olympic Games. Enjoy reading!

                                           London will become the first city to officially host the modern Olympic
                                             Games three times, having previously done so in 1908 and in 1948

Some nice facts and figures about the London Olympics 2012:
- The Olympic Stadium will have a capacity of 80,000 during the Games
- The wave shaped roof on the Aquatics Centre measures 12,000 square meters which is one and a half times bigger than Wembley football pitch
- The Velodrome is one of the most sustainable venues in the Olympic Park
- The Velodrome ‘Cable – net’ roof is made from 17 km of steel cables. That’s over 10 miles of steel cable, twice the height of Mount Everest
- An estimated global audience of 4bn people are expected to watch the opening ceremony on July 27, 2012
- East London will see a massive upgrade in facilities. As many as 5,000 new homes could be available there after the Olympics
- Costs for the 80,000-seat Olympic stadium have been revised from £280m to £496
- This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Paralympics. The wheelchair games, involving injured World War II soldiers, were staged on the opening day of the London 1948 Olympics

London in fact and figures
Paralympics sports (disciplines)	20 (21)
Olympic sports (disciplines)	26 (39)
Omvang Olympisch park (in ha.)	246
Media	20.000
Athletes and team officials	23.900
Volunteers	70.000

The Netherlands at the Olympics:
The Netherlands first sent athletes to the Olympic Games in 1900, and has participated in almost all Games since then. The Netherlands hosted the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. The Netherlands has expressed interest in hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics in either Amsterdam or Rotterdam, as a centennial celebration of the 1928 Games. Dutch athletes have won 246 medals at the Summer Olympic Games, with swimming and cycling as the top medal-producing sports. The Chinese city of Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics where the Netherlands ranked 12th in the medal table, with seven gold medals and 16 medals overall.

The Sydney 2000 summer Olympic Games were the most successful Olympics for the Dutch athletes (Twelve gold and twenty-five overall medals). Inge de Bruijn also participated in Sydney and is the most successful Dutch female competitor (Swimming, 4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze). Charles Pahud de Mortanges is the most successful Dutch male competitor (Equestrian, 4 gold, 1 silver) and participated in three Olympics.

Right, enough for now.... next post more about Dutch medal contenders and many many many more! 

Tot ziens, A. (The Dutch Sportaholic) 

The 'DUTCH' Sportaholic

Before I start writing my blog I want to tell you something more about the writer of this blog. 'The writer' of this blog is Alle Koperdraad; tall, blond, Dutch and was born on January 17th 1991. This is exactly twenty-one years (plus 2 days), seven thousand six hundred and sixty seven days, one hundred eighty three thousand nine hundred and sixty hours and eleven million thirty seven thousand six hundred minutes ago. I was born in a small city Hilversum in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has approximately sixteen million residents. This is almost half of the population of Canada. However Canada is the second largest country in the world and manymanymany bigger than the Netherlands.

The Netherlands (Europe)

As a kid I started walking when I was one year old and today twenty-one years later I am a RUNNER. I'm Track & Field athlete on a high level and participated in many Dutch Championships in the last couple of years.

I like to watch all kind of sports. Unfortunately I have to wait 189 days for watching the London Olympic Games. This games will feature 26 sports, which break down intro 39 disciplines. I'm using this blog to inform every Sportaholic (definition sportaholic: someone who has an addiction to sports) about the road of the Dutch athletes to London Olympic Games 2012!

The following Dutch teams are qualified for the London Olympic Games 2012:

- Hockey: men's/female team
- Rowing: eight with coxsmain (8+) Men
- Rowing: eight with coxswain (8+) Women

There are many nominated athletes and teams. Track & Field athlete Eelco Sintnicolaas (Decathlon) is nominated and says this on his Twitter page:

On 30 august the Dutch National Olympic Committee (NOC NSF) will present its “study top 10”. This study should give insight in the present top sports climate in The Netherlands and its future ambitions. In order to fulfill its objective to host the Olympics in 2028, one of the ambitions of the NOC NSF is to structurally end in the medals top 10 of Olympic Games. The top 10 should be seen in this perspective; it consists of those sports that have a decent chance to realize this ambition. Clearly these sports should qualify for extra financial support.

 
Why should YOU follow my blog?
Holland (The Netherlands) is a small country with high sport ambition. A lot of things happen in the Dutch world of sport. I will provide you all the latest news and all the ins and outs about the Dutch Road to London 2012 on a creative and innovative way, which makes it more fun to read!

I hope you are enthusiastic about reading my first post and in Dutch we say: Tot Ziens! (Bye Bye)

A. (The Dutch Sportaholic)