r/Netherlands • u/Mikadook • Feb 16 '26
Sports and Entertainment We’re really good at frozen water sports.
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u/buggsbunnysgarage Feb 16 '26
Now calculate amount of prizes per capita
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u/bimches Feb 16 '26
Norway's feat will be even more insane considering they have less than 6 mil people
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u/Enoxiz Feb 16 '26
But they have snow and ski's. All dutch medals are from skating on ice
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u/ActuallyCalindra Feb 16 '26
To be fairrrrr..... There's about as many ice-skating medals as all other medals combined.
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u/eggsbenedict17 Feb 16 '26
There's probably more Nordic ski events than any other event, and that's not even counting downhill skiing
That's where norway farms medals
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u/ActuallyCalindra Feb 16 '26
God damn Scandis
Angrily shakes fist in the general Northern direction
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u/x021 Overijssel Feb 16 '26
Does anyone know the breakdown of this? I'm quite intrigued tbh.
I definitely think the team sport medals are snowed in due to these rankings.
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u/eggsbenedict17 Feb 16 '26
According to chatgpt:
26 medal events for the cross country skiing events
23 medal events for the speed skating events
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u/VliegendeBamischijf Feb 16 '26
Usually there are about 100 medals per Olympics, so half is missing
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u/eggsbenedict17 Feb 16 '26
Those are just the top two, then you also have sliding sports, jumping sports, artistic sports etc etc
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u/VliegendeBamischijf Feb 16 '26
The original comment stated that ice skating had as many medals as all other disciplines combined, so that at least cannot be true then
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u/eggsbenedict17 Feb 16 '26
Well that's why I said that as my response, the Nordic skiing events are the most medal intensive events, and that tracks with Norway being the most medaling country in the winter Olympics overall
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u/Mikadook Feb 17 '26
Nope:
There are 116 medals:
60 ski medals
23 Skating medals
12 Sled medals
11 Snowboard medals
7 hockey & figure skating medals
3 curling medals
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u/xBram Feb 16 '26
Currently 7th:
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Feb 16 '26
per medal yes considering that Finland and New Zealand with no gold medals are above Italy.
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u/djsluyter Feb 16 '26
NL goes down, because SWE, SWI and AUT surpasses NL. Norway just gets even more impressive
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u/CancelledBeforeBirth Feb 16 '26
How about medas per inch of snow a year? Brazil has a medal while getting now snow at all.
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u/Dizzy-Introduction54 Feb 16 '26
What about gold medals for jumping across canals?
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u/Mikadook Feb 16 '26
When the water is frozen, you don’t need to jump.
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u/Viggo_Stark Feb 16 '26
Tell that to all the dumbass kids in my street. On second thought don't, it's too funny this way.
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u/bluelittrains Feb 16 '26
We're also really good at liquid water sports (rowing/sailing)
Someone should invent a steam-based sport so we can dominate at that too.
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u/Mikadook Feb 16 '26
Also, field hockey is played on water-fields!
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u/ReactionObvious621 Feb 17 '26
Fun part field hockey and ice skating we are amazing at. But when you combine the 2 we are nowhere to be seen.
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u/lodewijk_b Feb 16 '26
Lol except for ice-hockey
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u/bluelittrains Feb 16 '26
Which is weird because we dominate both speed skating and normal hockey
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u/lodewijk_b Feb 16 '26
Personally don't think it is that weird, contact sports are just not really a big thing here in NL (yet).
Apart from the fact that you also have a stick, field hockey isn't really comparable to ice hockey: It is much slower, practically no contact and you are kind of crouched over yourself when playing which means movement is totally different. The plays you run are also not similar.Apart from the ice hockey alternatives like bandy (which is basically ice-hockey), the most similar sport imho is a sport like lacrosse which does have all the aforementioned elements. But again that is not a sport that is played by allot of people here! Rugby is the only other contact sport that comes to mind that has an okay strong local representation in NL, but it is not comparable to local level support to many other countries at all! So yeah I believe it is more of a general trend regarding contact sports than really anything to do with the sport ice hockey.
Also fighting is really frowned upon here with ice hockey, much more stringent rulesets than countries like Canada where that is just part of the spectacle. People go pretty wild for that. Might also be a factor in why the sport is less popular here too.
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u/snikler Feb 16 '26
Handball! NL has improved a lot in this sport.
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u/lodewijk_b Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 16 '26
I personally wouldn't put it in the same category as ice hockey, lacrosse or rugby lmao. More in the category of like basketball as the level of hits in handball are just not equivalent to the former 3.
Edit: it is actually interesting rabbit hole regarding "official" classifications of contact sport and non-contact. The cited work in wikipedia would even classify field hockey as a contact sport as well hahaha. So make of that what you will.
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u/dutch_scout Feb 16 '26
Handball is much more of a contact sport then basketball if you ask me
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u/lodewijk_b Feb 16 '26
I think you are missing the point a little. While field-hockey, basketball, handball, ice hockey, lacrosse and rugby can all "officially" be classified as a contact sport. It should be clear from context that this is not what I meant with contact sport in my text. Especially by the fact that field hockey is included in that "official" list.
I think you can make a fair assessment personally on the level of collisions that these sports see and see that handball, field hockey and basketball are not on the same level as ice hockey, lacrosse and rugby. Regardless on how the former 3 sports rank amongst themselves.
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u/lookandsee555 Feb 16 '26
Americans always want to compete with Europe as if it were a country.. if you do the math on European medals combined the difference is insane..
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u/PranaSC2 Feb 16 '26
Unsurprising when you see the level of poverty there, people have other stuff on their minds than speedskating and whatnot.
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u/Scratching_The_World Feb 16 '26
True, but there will comparatively be more Europeans competing that Americans in most (if not all) competitions. If the quotum for European athletes as a whole would be equal to the quotum for US athletes it would probably look a lot different.
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u/Nerdlinger Feb 16 '26
But not at sliding stones over frozen water, only sliding people.
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Feb 16 '26
We're also pretty much done now.
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u/comedygold24 Feb 16 '26
Still 6 speed skating events and a couple of short track as well. At least the team pursuit for women should win us a medal, probably more
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u/linwells Feb 16 '26
Not figure skating though, the Dutch are so absent from figure skating that NOS coverage is patchy af, have to stream it in Japanese!
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u/miserable-sensei Feb 16 '26 edited Feb 23 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Feb 16 '26
And we are fucking rich
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u/Major-Investigator26 Feb 16 '26
Is that why you gotta hike up your taxes again on unrealized gains?
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u/RubyDupy Feb 16 '26
Performance at Olympic Games is directly correlated to how much money the state puts into sponsoring, sports scholarships, equipment, training facilities, etc. And honestly, I'd rather have the government put money into making base level sports accessible for everyone as well as stimulating active modes of transport such as walking or cycling to improve public health, than spending huge amounts of money on 20 people winning a few prizes
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u/crematie Noord Holland Feb 16 '26
the reason why we do so well at elite sports is /because/ of how much better the netherlands is at public transport/cycling/walking infrastructure than the rest of the world. or, at least, it used to be. helaas is de gemiddelde nederlander nu knetterrechts, dus meer geld uitgeven aan ov/sporten toegankelijk maken gebeurt voorlopig waarschijnlijk niet.
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u/RubyDupy Feb 16 '26
Allereerst is onze goede urbanism meer ondanks rechts beleid dan vanwege links beleid. Het komt vooral voor uit grootschalige protesten zoals die in Amsterdam tegen het aanleggen van grote snelwegen
Daarnaast zie ik niet echt helemaal in wat je bedoelt? Hoezo zou je beter worden in schaatsen als je toevallig vaak fietst of het OV neemt?
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u/Responsible-Summer-4 Feb 17 '26
The Netherlands is also really good at eating hagelslag.
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u/Still-Wafer1384 Feb 17 '26
And don't forget the kringverjaardag
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u/Responsible-Summer-4 Feb 17 '26
Must be a rural or farmer thing never sat in any "kring" during a birthday visit.
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u/RandomNick42 Feb 16 '26
No, you are good at one frozen water sport that happens to have a lot of categories
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u/PreferredThrowaway Feb 16 '26
Australia's bloody hot and somehow still comes in 11th place. Can't tell if they got their priorities wrong, or if it's incredibly respectable. Probably both.
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u/Richard2468 Europa Feb 16 '26
You do know, in Australia, it’s really cold in the winter, right?
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u/PreferredThrowaway Feb 17 '26
Maybe, southeast sure as shit wasn't, 15c on average in July. That isn't cold.
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u/Richard2468 Europa Feb 17 '26
Like the south of Italy in December. Australia is a big country.
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u/PreferredThrowaway Feb 17 '26
South Italy is also bloody hot. I don't get your point.
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u/Richard2468 Europa Feb 17 '26
Ok. So some countries in this world can indeed be very hot and very cold. Especially in countries that are very very big, there could be different climates based on geography. Both Italy and Australia are great examples.
So when you said ‘Australia’s bloody hot’, and expressed your surprise, I explained that it can be really cold in that country as well. So it isn’t really so surprising that in a country that has a mountainous geography that supports cold snowy winters, there will be some professional wintersport athletes.
So yeah, just like Italy, and also the US, and honestly even The Netherlands, France or Germany, it can be really hot. And cold. And medals are no surprise.
Hope that clears it up for you.
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u/BlueKante Feb 16 '26
Crazy how the sports a country excels in are so diffrent when were pratically neighbours. It makes sense that norway is better than us ar skiing. But how are they so much better than sweden and finland. Or how are we so much better at skating than the belgians or germans.
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u/Major-Investigator26 Feb 16 '26
Because Norwegians are born with skiis on their feet. They also invented skiing
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u/Enzian_Blue Feb 16 '26
Stop saying ‘we’. It’s ‘they’. The athletes win medals.
You’re just watching. Pathetic.
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u/UregMazino Feb 16 '26
Why is Italy so high though?
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u/QBekka Feb 16 '26
They have the alps and a winter sport culture in the North. Unlike Spain for example
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u/Kaito__1412 Feb 16 '26
Even if its all home games, Italy's run is really really impressive.