The wait lasts a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour on Sunday. The men’s 5,000 meters starts and is almost over, and there is still no sign in Femke Kok’s press zone. She is cycling out, it sounds. Then there is silence for a long time and after an hour and a half there is a conclusion via an app: Kok is no longer coming. It is significant that Kok sends her coach Michel Mulder to the press after she failed to qualify for the Olympic 1,000 meters in Beijing. Things are not going the way the Team Reggeborgh sprinter wants this season yet.
She is only 21 years old, but already sixth place in an Olympic qualifying tournament (OKT) feels like a big disappointment for Kok. “She is very upset about it,” Mulder gives as the reason for her absence. “We’re protecting her a little bit.” In addition, Kok wants rest, in the run-up to the 500 meters that is scheduled for Tuesday in Thialf.
Kok wants to burn there, she may have to burn herself. She is vice world champion in the shortest skating distance, after the great last season, in which she broke through the skating bubble in Heerenveen. At that time Kok was almost unbeatable in the 500 meters, she won four World Cup races in a row plus the final classification. Only at the World Championship distances she was defeated by the Russian Angelina Golikova.
Frisian runners
Kok has risen in an apparently straight line to the world top. Her father René, who competed in the marathon circuit until his thirtieth birthday, put her on Frisian runners as a two-year-old, somewhere near the parental home in the Frisian village of Nij Beets.
When she is seven, she gets her first skating lessons in Thialf. She picks up on the clues she gets faster than others. „When Femke first Norwegians [schaatsen] she could immediately step into the bend”, says René Kok. “She must have been about nine years old when I thought: this could be something.”
Kok soon joins the Frisian selection, where she is also one of the best. She goes through all youth selections, and becomes world champion all-round twice in the juniors. At the end of 2019, she surprised at the NK distances by finishing third in a personal best as a nineteen-year-old. She earns a ticket for the World Championship distances in Salt Lake City. The plaque as a memento of the world record for juniors that she skates there – 37.45 – is in her parents’ kitchen.
The following year she receives offers from all commercial skating teams. She decides to make the switch to Team Reggeborgh from coach Gerard van Velde. In her first season as a professional, she dominates the 500 meters.
Relationship over
This year her development seems to falter. At the World Cup competitions in Poland and Norway, she disappoints with a ninth, twelfth, eleventh and eighth place. She blames a groin injury and food poisoning. But other things play in the background; her relationship broke down this summer. As a result, Kok misses someone she can turn to with her problems and worries. And she has a lot of that especially this season. She has to get used to the expectations that come with her new status and the media attention. She feels watched by her competitors, who now know who she is and are watching her on the ice rink. Her head is so full that it gives her sleepless nights.
With every bad result, she starts to doubt herself more. Only when she returns from Norway and can tell her story crying to her parents, does the turnaround follow. She resolves to focus on the positives again, to have fun skating. She flies business class to Salt Lake City for the next World Cup race. When she gets there, despite jet lag, she sleeps well for the first time in weeks. A few days later, she skates a new Dutch record on the fast American ice, becoming the first Dutch woman to dive under 37 seconds in the 500 meters.
The leak appears to be above. In the run-up to the OKT there is a training camp in Collalbo, Italy. On Instagram, she shares photos of the sun shining on white-snowy mountains. Just to be sure, she takes her own pillow with her to the hotel where she is staying during the OKT. And yet Sunday ends in deception. Kok tells the NOS, which she is the only one to speak to, that she was troubled by the tension. “She cramped in the last round,” adds her coach Mulder. He’s not worried yet. “The first part of these 1,000 meters was hard enough to drive a very good 500 meters.”
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