Athletics association SAV and former trainer Olofsen proud of ‘golden’ Lieke Klaver: “Unique achievement”

Together with Cathelijn Peeters, Eveline Saalberg and Femke Bol, Klaver ran in the last race of the World Athletics Championships. What followed was an exciting race, in which the Dutch ladies took first place with a time of 3:20.72. With this they provide a first, because the Netherlands has never won gold in the relay race at a world championship before. This is also the very first World Cup gold for 25-year-old Lieke Klaver.

Chairman SAV happy with unique performance of ‘their’ Lieke

With family on the couch, chairman Ruud Wierenga of SAV watched the race of Lieke and her teammates in Budapest. Lieke started her career at the athletics club from Grootebroek, and is still a member.

“It is unique what they have achieved at the World Cup,” says the chairman of SAV. “During the race I expected that it would not happen again, but you still hope for it. And then the title has also come into their hands. That is just great.”

Wierenga says that he is not only happy for Klaver himself, but also for the entire athletics in the Netherlands. “This had never been done before by a Dutch team. And Lieke is now also world champion in addition to national and European champion. We didn’t have that within our association yet,” he says with a smile.

The chairman of SAV has not yet sent Lieke a message to congratulate her. “After a race like that, she gets so many messages from all kinds of people that everything kind of falls away in the big picture. But I think I’ll definitely send her a message at a later time.”

Former trainer Paul Olofsen was proudly watching

Paul Olofsen jumped up with a tear in his eye with pride when the Dutch ladies crossed the finish line and took first place. Olofsen was a trainer of Lieke Klaver for many years, after she first completed the pupil phase of SAV in Grootebroek.

“You could tell from a very young age that she had something unique in her hands,” he says a day after the world championship. “Lieke is very driven and has a real passion for athletics. At a young age she was almost a head taller and stronger than the rest. You could immediately see that she could become a very great athlete.”

The former trainer of SAV has now been away from the association from Grootebroek for almost five years, and Klaver has also been training at the Papendal sports center in Arnhem for a few years now. Olofsen calls it the biggest surprise that Klaver has chosen to run the 400 meters. “She never wanted to do that under my guidance, because she felt she wanted to run real sprint distances of 100 and 200 meters,” explains Olofsen.

Like Wierenga, Olofsen looks at a later moment to congratulate his former pupil. “It’s impossible to do that now,” he says. “Lieke already has more than 700,000 followers on Instagram. If you want to read through all the comments and answer them, it will take you almost a month, I think. I run into her now and then, and then we have a conversation with each other. Now I am mainly a spectator, instead of a trainer, but I have been proud to watch her performance.”