Irene Schouten knows exactly which records she can break. Whenever one is within reach, she gets a text from her cousin, who keeps track of everything carefully. If she can become the first skater in Heerenveen on a Saturday in November to win ten marathon competitions in Thialf, and thereby skate Atje Keulen-Deelstra out of the books, then she knows that. And she also knows that she still needs a tenth of a second off her personal best in the 500 meters on a lowland track to be first in the Eagle’s Calendar – the all-time all-round classification – for lowland courses.
She talks about it in a relaxed manner at the dining table in a terraced house in Hoogkarspel in North Holland, where she has been living with her fiancé Dirkjan since 2018. Before that she always lived with her parents, and her family is still close by; a little further is Wervershoof, the village where Schouten was born and where the family’s tulip nursery is still run by father Klaas and brothers Simon and Klaas Jr. You can hear her West Frisian origin when she conjugates a verb – then she speaks the ‘t’ does not matter.
It’s November, and later that evening she’s running her last marathon race of the season – which she will also win. As she talks, she uses a screwdriver to mount her marathon irons under her custom skate boots. They are irons that can take a beating, riders sometimes touch each other when they are in the pack. Schouten does not want to take that risk with her long track irons.
Schouten knows that she can shine during the Winter Games in Beijing, but she was not so sure of herself for a long time. Four years ago, the Olympic qualifying tournament (OKT) went wrong and she failed to qualify for the Games in Pyeongchang by any distance – only at the mass start she was awarded an Olympic ticket and later took bronze.
Everything seems to be right for 29-year-old Schouten this year: she has not yet won a race over the three and five kilometers. She is the reigning world champion in the 5,000 meters and the team pursuit. At the Games, she drives the mass start, the team pursuit, the five kilometers and the three kilometers, with which the Olympic skating tournament kicks off on Saturday. For each of these parts, she is the favorite for gold.
You have been participating in the Dutch skating top since you were seventeen, but you have only become a top favorite in the last two years. Are you a late bloomer?
“I think that’s a difficult one, because I think I’ve shown something over the years. I have won a lot, even at a young age. At the marathon and later the mass start I always showed it
“But partly I am, long track skating is really something else. And there I have had peaks and valleys. I was always right or wrong. I always achieved a high level in the training sessions, but I showed it too little in the games. It was a matter of finding the button for myself. Then I found it and in 2014, when I was 21, I was allowed to ride the World Allround Championships. Or then I finished third in the five kilometers at the World Championship distances in 2016. But too often it didn’t work out.”
Have you ever doubted it would ever come out?
“After the OCT of 2017, I did think about it. I didn’t feel like going through three more years like this and always getting it or just failing.
“When I did not qualify for the World Cups at any individual distance in the second season of the current Olympic cycle, I did wonder: how long can I continue with this? A month later I found the button again and I came second twice in the qualifying tournament for the World Championship distances. Since then it has gotten better and better.”
Why did the OKT of four years ago go wrong?
“That was a drama. I skated well that season, but it didn’t work out in the OKT. I completely blocked on the first distance I drove, the three kilometers. I knew I had a chance to qualify, and my legs were so tense that I didn’t know what to do. I just couldn’t skate well. When I had not placed myself, I thought: ‘I have nothing to do in the five kilometers if I drive like this’. And that’s how I started that distance, so that didn’t work out either.”
Your sister Catherine said you called her after that crying because you felt you had disappointed others.
Schouten is silent for a moment. “I rode really hard in training that week before the OKT, very well. And I knew that Jillert [Anema, haar coach] thought: ‘This girl can do it, let’s go for it’. And then I didn’t. It wasn’t because of his program, I completely screwed it up myself. But he is also charged for it.
“In the end you do it for yourself, that’s how I am. But there are people who do a lot for you. Then you want to give something back. My father, my sister and my brothers, they all said: ‘We’ll take care of your mother, you go train for the Olympics’. I was allowed to let go of all that worry, put it on other people’s shoulders. If you don’t achieve the big goal, then it feels bad.”
The Schouten family was hit by a major accident five years ago: mother Jolanda, the pivot in both the family and the family business, suffered a severe brain haemorrhage. Since then, she has lived in a nursing home five days a week.
Mother Jolanda, the pivot in both the family and the family business, suffered a severe brain haemorrhage five years ago. Since then she lives in a nursing home five days a week
It is difficult for her that she cannot always be there for her mother because she has to train, says Schouten. Her mother always went to the games before she had a brain haemorrhage. “The division of roles was: my father went with my brother Simon to marathon skating, my mother went with me. She was also always very busy with it; she would write down all the competitors’ lap times on a piece of paper so that I could see in the car on the way back what the rest had done. She always found it much more exciting than I did. If I had skated for a weekend, she would be completely devastated by the tension.”
How did you deal with your mother having a brain haemorrhage?
“Well, I knew what a brain haemorrhage was. And that one looks very good there and the other like a greenhouse plant. Those first days she was in a coma and we didn’t know what her condition was. Then you can’t do anything, and the strange thing is: life goes on as usual. Training, competitions.”
Your brother Simon told me that in a few days you were back on your racing bike to train. A week later you won a marathon, you stood with tears in your eyes at the award ceremony.
“It was also a way for us to change our minds, to clear your head. My brother and I are the same in that respect: we can’t change it, so whether we stayed at home or started working out, my mother didn’t get any better.
„I skipped the first international competition at the time, but when the second World Cup was on the program, I did go. While I was there in Kazakhstan, I heard that the doctors said about my mother: this won’t work anymore, she has a head like a watermelon. Then I thought: ‘What am I doing here?’
“In retrospect, perhaps I should have taken more rest during that period, but I think you also have a certain responsibility towards yourself. If you have trained all summer and then do nothing for half a year, then that summer has also been for nothing. I’m sure my mom would have wished I’d continued skating too. She was always very positive, she had a lot of faith in me.”
The men are now also following me
Irene Schouten ice skater
Your mother was also the one who thought it was important that you build up a social life in addition to skating. You found that less interesting: your sister told about the time you locked yourself in the car when your mother wanted to take you to a birthday party. You’d rather go ice skating.
“Yes, skating has always been a priority for me since I was little. I couldn’t care less about the rest. If I did something I shouldn’t, my mother wouldn’t let me train. That was the biggest punishment you could give me.”
Why is skating so much more important to you than the rest?
“I think because of the feeling of winning. That you have worked very hard for something, done all your training well, and that you are better than others. That’s a feeling you can’t get any other way. I have also heard from former top skaters that it is difficult for them to regain that feeling of winning.
“I have been one of the best at the mass start for years, but I have only become world champion twice. That’s because all the other drivers often just keep an eye on me. So I’ve thought, ‘What if I pretend I’m really bad all season, like I’m not making progress? And then strike at the World Cup.” But I can’t. I just want to win. I’d rather be like Rintje Ritsma, who was the best for years, than a one-hit wonder who peaks at the right time.”
Also read: The complete program of the Winter Olympics
You still give skating priority; on caring for your mother, growing up your niece, building your new house.
“I find it very difficult that I can’t go to the fair with my friends until late, that I have little time for my fiancé Dirkjan, that I hardly see my niece growing up or that I can barely see my sister right after she gave birth. to help. She would be there for me. Yet I consciously choose it, because I know it is temporary. I can’t live like this for another ten years.
“My boyfriend and I have bought a piece of land on which we want to build a house ourselves, I was very busy over the summer. But now I don’t have time for that. After the skating season again.”
This Olympic season you are unbeatable on the long distances. Why does it come out now, after all these years?
“I’ve been stubborn for a long time. My trainers had been telling me for years that I had to improve my skating technically, but I always wanted to go hard, fast, I had to get tired of every training session. While sometimes it’s much better to concentrate on sliding, on the technique, than always pounding hard. We were at training camp at the beginning of this season when Jillert [Anema] said, ‘Irene, this is the first time in seven years I’ve seen you take the time for a workout, feel yourself on your skates.’ And I notice it myself: I really touch them, as you say in skating terms.
“I’ve also become more of a bitch. I was always quite sweet, for example during training sessions when I rode with the men. I would have them join me in a train for me, because I had the feeling that they didn’t want to skate behind a woman. But because of that I couldn’t perform my training as well, because it wasn’t fast enough for me. I said something about that last year. At first the men didn’t like that, until they noticed in the training sessions that I was right. They have been following me ever since.”