Sjinkie Knegt would have loved to take action on the highest podium again, with his teammates in the relay, at the Winter Games in Milan-Cortina. He saw opportunities for a medal, preferably a gold one, the only prize still missing from his list of honors. To end his long short track career.
It won’t happen. On Sunday, Knegt announced that he will not make it to the Winter Games due to a persistent buttock injury. The 36-year-old short tracker announced in passing that he would quit top sport completely after this season. “I am still not fit and I have to be realistic,” he said in a press release distributed to the media.
It is a farewell to one of “the greatest in Dutch top sport”, according to technical director Remy de Wit of the KNSB skating association. Even without an Olympic gold medal, the role of Sjinkie Knegt – nickname: the bolt from Bantega – has undeniably been important in the development of short track speed skating in the Netherlands.
When he made his debut at the European Short Track Championships in 2009, the sport was in the shadow of long track speed skating: there was hardly any money or facilities, the national selection consisted of a handful of enthusiasts led by then national coach Jeroen Otter, and Olympic starting tickets were a rarity.
And now look at the National Short Track Training Selection (NTS): a full-fledged top sports program with sixteen skaters, an extensive support staff and the current national coach, Niels Kerstholt, who has stated that he wants to win at least four medals on behalf of the Netherlands at the Olympic Games in February.
Asphalt road
“A top player like Sjinkie has turned a mud path into an asphalt road on which today’s youth are racing,” Otter said in 2022. NRCreferring to the opportunities that the new generations of short track skaters had, partly thanks to Knegt’s performance.
Knegt, born in the Frisian village of Bantega, was a natural talent at skating and saw short track speed “as a game,” Otter now says about his former pupil. Knegt found long track skating boring, overtaking in the small, sharp bends of the 111 meter long short track track was much more fun. “Sjinkie was surprising and creative, and although he did not always win, people came to the stadium for that,” says Otter.
Sjinkie Knegt with the silver Olympic medal he won in the 1,500 meters in Pyeongchang.
Photo Koen van Weel/ANP
Under Otter, Knegt learned to win and became the best short tracker in the world. He became world champion in the general classification in 2015, a category that no longer exists, won gold in the 500 meters at the World Short Track Championships in 2017 and was the world’s best three times with the men’s relay team (in 2014, 2017 and 2021). At the 2014 Sochi Games he won bronze in the 1,000 meters, the first Olympic short track medal in Dutch sports history. Four years later it was silver in the 1,500 meters in Pyeongchang.
His good performances brought more (commercial) attention to the sport and money from NOS-NSF. In 2015, Knegt was the first Dutch short tracker with a personal sponsor on his suit, now commonplace. The facilities, equipment and guidance team of the NTS are now world-class.
Raised middle fingers
But it was not only his achievements that made Knegt the poster child for short track sport in the Netherlands. It was also his special name, which he received after his Chinese great-grandfather, and his equally special personality and characteristic dark, full beard that made him a famous Dutchman.
“With his antics on and off the ice, he brought short track speed skating to the television in the living rooms,” says Otter. Interviews with Knegt were the way he skated: inimitable, never boring, there were always stimulating (and sometimes downright critical) statements because the stubborn, down-to-earth Frisian simply said what he thought. For Knegt, that was a way not to have to reveal the back of his tongue.
Sometimes he couldn’t control himself on the ice rink: it was out of frustration raised middle fingers his winning competitor Victor Ahn from Russia at the European Championships in 2014 were sent all over the world.
At the same time, Knegt had “a form of sports Alzheimer’s,” according to Otter, when it came to disappointments. Short track is a sport of surprises, in a positive and negative sense, and Knegt could deal with that like no other. By daring to successfully compete with the dominant South Koreans and other top players in short track speed skating, Knegt injected the Dutch short track speed skaters with the belief that they too could become the best in the world.
Wood stove
His poster hung above the bed of Suzanne Schulting, the woman who would become a figurehead next to him (and Jorien ter Mors) when she became the first Dutch Olympic champion in short track speed skating in 2018. Schulting called Knegt the “big brother” she never had. The fact that they could not win Olympic gold together in the mixed relay in Beijing in 2022, after Schulting fell in the semi-finals, was a big disappointment for Knegt.
In recent years, Knegt has played a supporting role in terms of results. At the end of 2018, he seriously injured himself in an accident with a forklift at his home. While still recovering, Knegt had another accident when lighting a wood stove, which burned 30 percent of his skin. Knegt managed to return to the ice a year later, but never reached his old level.
The highlight was the world title in the men’s relay in front of the home crowd in Dordrecht in 2021, although Knegt was no longer the team’s finisher there. But Knegt then realized that his greatest opportunities to achieve success lay in the team component. And now that he cannot be on the ice in the coming Games, Knegt said on Sunday, “I will discuss with the national coach how I can contribute to winning a relay medal in Milan in a different way.”
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