Skip to main content

London Wrap-up

By
Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth these last few weeks. Class has started for both of us and it's hard to find time. Excuses Excuses. This may be a bit dry.

I won't be able to put a picture up of every Olympian for the Dutch, but here is a summary of their Olympics. I'll rehash some wins I've already talked about and try to focus on the new ones.

The Netherlands finished the Olympics in 13th place overall with 20 medals total. 6 Gold, 6 Silver, and 8 Bronze. A higher count than Beijing but one less Gold. Still, a good haul for the Dutch, finishing ahead of larger countries like Spain and Brazil.

Medals
Women's Cycling BMX - Bronze; Laura Smulders
Women's Road Race - Gold; Marianne Vos
Men's Cycling Track Keirin - Bronze; Teun Mulder
               Keirin is a form of sprint cycling where the start is speed controlled. Read this. 
Equestrian; 
     Women's Individual Dressage - Silver; Adelinde Cornelissen
      Men's Individual Jumping - Silver; Gerco Schroder
     Team Dressage - Bronze;
     Team Jumping - Silver;
Gymnastics Men's Horizontal Bar - Gold; Epke Zonderland
Field Hockey;
     Men's - Silver;
     Women's - Gold (AGAIN!); (everyones favorite team...)
Judo;
     Women's 70kg - Bronze; Edith Bosch
     Men's 100kg - Henk Grol
Rowing Women's 8 - Bronze
Sailing;
     Men's RS-X - Gold; Dorian van Rijsselberge (Picture Below, I had no idea this was an olympic sport!)
    Women's 470 - Bronze (more what we'd call sailing, 2 people in a boat)
    Women's Laser Radial - Silver; Marit Bouwmeester (look of concentration below)
Swimming;
   Women's 50m Freestyle Gold/Bronze; Ranomi Kromowidjojo/Marleen Veldhuis
   Women's 100m Freestyle Gold; Ranomi Kromowidjojo
   Women's 4x100 Relay Freestyle - Silver

20 Medals. Maybe only 7 won by men. The Netherlands is the home of tough kick your butt women. Sheesh. Now the Olympics are over (a week ago), I'll go back to posting interesting (for you non sports fans) Dutch things. We're still trying to find some Drop so we can try it for ourselves. 



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

de Vries, Hans de Vries. Almost.

By
In 1967 THE James Bond (Sean Connery) decided to step away from the world of James Bond films. EOS studios thus had to find a replacement. It came down to 5 men. 2 Brits, an American, a Australian, and a Dutchman. John Richardson, Anthony Rogers, Robert Campbell, George Lazenby, and Hans de Vries. None of those names ring a bell? George Lazenby won the part for the 6th Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. A movie that has been lauded both as the worst and one of the best Bond films in the franchise. If you haven't seen it, you should. It was the Bond film that 'Breaks the Fourth Wall', Bond gets married, wears a kilt, and goes skiing. But the reason for this post is instead of this; (Yes, THAT is James Bond) We could of had this. Improvement? Probably not. He looks a wee bit angry. Plus, no one watches OHMSS anyway. So, did de Vries have a movie career after Bond? Ha, no. The only notable movie rolls I can find for him were pre bond. And that was ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Waffle, Wafel, Walfre, or Wafla?

By
A post! Due to a dearth of ideas (see what I did there? Wordsmart word) by me or the other author (cough cough); I was hoping a great story would be found using Google. Sadly, no. But I did finish a good book recently (Janson Directive by Robert Ludlum) that included a solid bit set in Amsterdam. The Amsterdam bit had me focused on Houseboats, which is a much bigger thing than I thought, and English Words with Dutch origins again. One I hadn't really thought of in a while that Ludlum referenced. Behold the Mighty Waffle Here in America. When we think Waffle our first thoughts are probably Belgium Waffles or Eggo (the surprising good readymade toaster variety). But did you know that Waffles are very old? The Dutch word Wafel (mid 13th century) and the Frankish word Walfre (1185) both come from the root word walfa which means honeycomb or cake (how about both!). Wikipedia goes into great detail about the origins of the Waffle and Waffle through the years. Fascinating bit compari...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ray - Forest Boy

By
Remember around a month ago when the news story hit about Ray the Forest Boy who randomly showed up one day in Berlin, Germany? Well I forgot to post this but it has been found out who Ray the 'Forest Boy' actually is. 20 yr old Robin van Helsum of Hengelo Netherlands (100 miles east of Amsterdam). What allowed the police to finally determine who 'Ray' was? His stepmother. She recognized his picture on the news. He went missing 9 months ago. Now that he has been exposed as a hoax and not the Forest Boy who had been living in the woods for 5 years; Robin may face stiff fines and penalties for the extra police time and work put into his case which could cost as much as $40,000. 'Ray' originally walked into Berlin claiming he had been walking for 5 days after spending 5 years living out of a tent in the 'wild' where he had buried his father. One Berlin police officer said that there were things right from the start that did not match to his story. Lik...
2 comments
Read more