As big favorites, they traveled to the Winter Olympics in Grenoble in early February 1968: Stien Kaiser, Ans Schut and Carry Geijssen. In this order, the Dutch skaters finished first, second and third at the World All-round Championships in Helsinki at the end of January. Well tanned, they pose at the Olympic Park Paul Mistral next to Audrey Hepburn, an American film star with Dutch roots.
Ans Broekema-Schut, who died on Friday November 7, together with her teammates Kaiser and Geijssen, ensured the breakthrough of women’s skating in the Netherlands in the mid-1960s. Like Ard Schenk and Kees Verkerk among the men, the three and Atje Keulen-Deelstra, who broke through a little later, were at the basis of many international successes. ‘The golden skating girls‘, the episode is called Other Times Sportsin which they were portrayed in 2022.
Schut, born on November 26, 1944 in Apeldoorn, learned to skate on the pond of Paleis Het Loo. From 1963 she can go to the new artificial ice rink in Deventer, where her boyfriend lives. “We were on the ice all weekend to see each other a lot,” she said in 2010 The World Keeps Turning. “Others went to the disco, but we were really on the track in the morning, afternoon and evening.”
Fascinatingly wrong
Schut seems to be in top form for the 1968 Winter Games. Yet things go terribly wrong at the 1,500 meters. She is the last of the favorites to start, under excellent conditions. It couldn’t be better. But then her race. There is no less than a six-second delay between the first and last lap. Twelfth, six seconds behind the Finnish winner Kaija Mustonen. No chance.
“My parents and my fiancée arrived in Grenoble before the race,” she tells Dutch journalists after her race. “And suddenly I lost touch with skating. After the 1,500 meters I was not tired enough. I am not tense enough.”
Her fiancé has already gone home when Schut starts the three kilometer race two days after the failure. Carry Geijssen has now won the first Dutch gold medal ever at the Winter Games in the 1,000 meters. The pressure is off a bit in the star team. In the final distance, the Finnish Kaija Keskivitikka is at the top for a long time, with an Olympic record of 5.03.9. Second is the Dutch Wil Burgmeyer with 5.05.1. And Schut?
Perfect race
On the Olympic ice of Parc Paul Mistral, the born stayer slides to a perfect race on Monday 12 February 1968. “I was so concentrated then,” she reflected in the newspaper in 2010 The Stentor. “It went great. I was really in shape, I felt like I could take on the whole world.” What a time: 4.56.2. By far the fastest of them all. After her, the Finnish Mustonen (5.01.0) and Kaiser, who achieved bronze in 5.01.3 under more difficult weather conditions, do not come close.
The Apeldoornse Courant devotes the entire front page to a color photo of the Olympic champion from her own city. ‘Portrait of Willpower’, the caption reads. Schut is a star upon return to the Netherlands, just like Geijssen and Kaiser. They are honored in Amsterdam (Geijssen’s hometown) and in Delft (Kaiser). And of course in Apeldoorn. After the Olympic gold, world records followed at 1,500 meters and three kilometers, and in 1969 she briefly topped the world rankings.
Schut retired in 1972 but continued to follow skating closely. In March this year she was still in the stands in Thialf for her grandchildren Jack and Charley, who participated in the Viking race. In Deventer, the ice rink where it once started has long been replaced by housing. But between the houses lies the Ans Schutpad forever.
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