National coach Jan Coopmans had a golden mission with the pursuit teams, but it didn’t work out at all in Beijing. The women had to make do with a bronze medal, for the men there was no more than a fourth place. “This is raw on my roof, I’m sick for a few days.”
According to Coopmans, some skaters were no longer as good as during the European Championship distances at the beginning of January, when the Netherlands took the title in both the men and the women. ,,What we showed four weeks ago, we couldn’t do now. That’s too bad. We didn’t reach our level and then it becomes difficult.”
The national coach points out that other countries approach the team pursuit differently than the Netherlands, which has medal candidates in many different numbers. “All other countries don’t have eight gold medal candidates. They have two and in many cases put everything on the team pursuit. Over the course of three seasons, they grow closer and closer to us and beat us when it matters most.”
For the men’s team, Sven Kramer and Marcel Bosker were appointed by the selection committee with a view to this team pursuit. Coopmans defended that choice. ,,It is certainly not the case that a medal chance at an individual distance has been lost because of points for the team pursuit,’ he said. Skaters Tijmen Snel and Dai Dai N’tab lost a ticket for the Games due to the pointing spots.
Coopmans wants to continue
The fact that the Dutch skaters are spread over different brand teams makes it difficult to consistently train together for the team pursuit. Although, according to Coopmans, it makes little sense to make it difficult. “That’s not going to change. And of course the landscape of the brand teams does not harm us either, because we individually win a lot of medals.”
,,But we have to consider the team parts. To what extent we attribute just as important a place to them as we do to individual distances.” Coopmans is not considering stepping aside himself. “I want to continue, provided there is a playing field in which we can all work well.”
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