Former skeleton player Lars Arts from Cuijk might also have been able to participate in the Winter Olympics, if he had not stopped in 2013. He is therefore looking forward to Saturday with skeleton star Kimberley Bos, who has a chance to win a medal. “By following her, I feel like I’m there anyway.”
Lars follows the games closely. After all, he could have just stood there himself. “That’s right, it is an Olympic dream that unfortunately did not come true,” he says in the Brabant Today program of Omroep Brabant.
Eleven years ago he started with skeleton, as a joke. “I responded to a call from the Bobsleigh Association. They were looking for people who would dare to take on the Olympic adventure. ‘I dare’, I thought. From that moment on I became addicted to the speed and adrenaline of the sport,” says Lars.
However, he retired in 2013. “At a certain point you have to make choices in life. I was pioneering for three years and really made strides. At a certain point NOC*NSF turned off the money tap. Then you start all over as an athlete, so that’s the moment on which I made the choice to stop, while Kimberley Bos continued. And yes, look where she is now. That is super cool.”
Lars is not jealous, he especially enjoys watching her success. “I think it’s fantastic to see her so busy at the Winter Olympics and that she is putting the Netherlands on the map within this fantastic sport.”
Whether he thinks Kimberley will win a medal tomorrow? “Looking at last season and the World Cup she won…I just hope for her she gets that medal.”
This is how fast Lars Arts went in his younger years: