It was blue from the smoke in Oirschot on Sunday. The best clay pipe smokers competed there for the Dutch Championship. The ‘age-old tradition’ still seems fervent. “This is heritage”, according to organizer Cor Crans.
For a while it was the mecca of pipe smokers: the tent at restaurant Hoeve 1827 in Oirschot. The mission seems simple: hold the pipe as long as possible with a predetermined amount of tobacco. The previous record stood at 1 hour, 57 minutes and 34 seconds and was held by a 78-year-old Rotterdammer.
However, pipe smoking is anything but simple. You have to constantly hold the pipe to the mouth for the smoke to circulate properly. Crans: “The enormous length of this pipe is a big handicap. You can hardly see what is happening. You have to keep an eye on it all the time.”
Not yet extinguished
Anyone who thinks it is slowly extinguishing the tradition is wrong, according to Crans. It was sold out with sixty participants from Germany, Belgium and even two from Italy. 21 young students from the Wageningen Dispuut also participate under the appropriate name the Toebacksuygers.
“All tricks are deployed.”
“This is really top sport”, says the 66-year-old Henk Hulsen from Son. “Focusing is the hardest. All tricks are used to distract you. For example, people offer you drinks to take you out of concentration.”
Others are there more for the social aspect. “You meet a lot of people from all kinds of different countries. You also see many other smoking cultures,” says 62-year-old Donald de Groot. “It’s an experience in itself, every time.”
Strict rules
Pipe smoking has been on the Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Netherlands since 2015. The championship is extremely serious and has strict but fair rules. For example, you can only participate with a Gouda standard pipe by Nico van Duyn van Velzen from the period 1918-1940. Re-lighting is out of the question: if your pipe is out, you have lost.
Whether the NK is not promoting a deadly habit unjustly? “All life is unhealthy”, Crans concludes the discussion. “You have to limit it,” he admits. “It’s culture and it’s an age-old tradition with beautiful old objects that we want to keep alive.”
Henk Hulsen from Son en Breugel eventually won the Dutch National Championships in Oirschot with a time of 56 minutes and 23 seconds. At the beginning of October, at least two hundred pipe smokers come to Istanbul to participate in the World Cup for teams. About twenty pipe smokers from the Netherlands will also be present.
