It was Friday, January 18, 1963. Friesland looked like Siberia, Siberia behind the dikes. The temperature dropped to eighteen degrees below zero, a harsh northeasterly wind swept across the snow-covered flat land. In the morning before dawn, in the still pitch dark Leeuwarden, 568 racers and almost ten thousand tour riders set out for the Frisian Elfstedentocht. It was the twelfth Tour of Tours, without a doubt the toughest and most heroic ever. The ice cream was strong, but unimaginably bad. The winner was named Reinier Paping, who was 31 years old at the time. This Monday it was announced that the skating hero has died at the age of ninety.
The first Elfstedentocht was held in 1909, the last in 1997. Henk Angenent won in 1997, Evert van Benthem was the strongest in the thirteenth and fourteenth edition (1985 and 1986). The Brussels sprout farmer Angenent and the cattle farmer Van Benthem became extremely popular, but Paping surpassed them: he provided a story of the gods. In the book Reinier Paping, Hero of the Eleven Cities Tour (2016), sports historian Marjet Derks says that the extreme weather and the large number of dropouts contributed to the creation of the myth surrounding Paping and the Elfstedentocht phenomenon.
According to Derks, the brief TV report of that trip (a live television report failed due to the harsh weather conditions) also contributed to this. “After 1963, milder winters meant that it was not possible to organize an Eleven Cities Tour, while many sports enthusiasts were eager for a new tour. In the image of the Eleven Cities Tour of 1963, that winter was presented as increasingly strict and the heroism of Paping’s victory increased further as the years passed.”
‘Giant from Ommen’
Although Paping was not tall, he was referred to in the newspapers as the ‘Giant from Ommen’ after his triumph. NRC wrote in 1998, after a reunion of the medalists in 1963, that Paping with his striking head, his yellow skin and his high cheekbones could still pass for a winter frost from Mongolia. At that meeting, Paping looked back on 1963: „You can build up condition, but form remains something mysterious. I rode on wings that day. Moreover, I had come up with a trick in those snow dunes: I went all the way down to absorb the shocks.”
Debutant Paping was an outsider in the twelfth Elfstedentocht who had never ridden a race longer than eighty kilometers. Between 1951 and 1962, he was present at several national all-round championships, with his best performance being fourth in 1955. The same year he finished thirtieth in the European title fight in Falun, Sweden. Before his winning Eleven Cities Tour, he looked up to favorite and experienced marathon rider Jeen van den Berg, the triumphator of the 1954 tour. Van den Berg, who was the strongest everywhere in the harsh winter of 1963, suffered from frostbite from Sneek and was depending on the riders in front of him. “My eyes got frozen,” Van den Berg told NRC in 1998. “(…) Otherwise I would have definitely won.”
In Reinier Paping, Hero of the Eleven Cities Tour states that Paping was born in Dedemsvaart, the seventh child of a family of nine whose parents were of Groningen descent. And that as a teenager he certainly didn’t excel at school. The sporty all-rounder would prefer to be outside all day. Father Hendrikus, a farmer and later a shopkeeper, put all the children on wooden skates on the ice of the Lange Dedemsvaart when they were about four years old. His brothers Bonne and Richard made it to the finish in the Eleven Cities Tours of 1941 and 1942. Bonne, Richard and brother Hans also participated in the 1963 tour of the spectacle.
Through the radio and the spectators they heard that Reinier Paping had started a solo of one hundred kilometers, and eventually triumphed over number two Jan Uitham with a lead of 22 minutes. NRC later wrote that his sunglasses were crushed in the chaos at the finish. “He received congratulations from Queen Juliana and Princess Beatrix who had traveled by helicopter to the arrival at the Great Wheels. When the ice seemed to collapse under the enormous crowds, the royal couple was rushed to civilization.”
Bars of chocolate and a metworst
Paping had prepared well for the trip, he said. As provisions he had with him bars of chocolate, a sausage and student oats, which were packed in a bag that his wife Joke had sewn on his suit. In an interview with BN/The Voice (2013) he said that it also contained sunglasses and shoes that you used to wear in your clog. “They will come in handy,” the paper wrote, “when Paping has to dredge through the snow where the ice is too bad to skate and where clums can’t do with decency.” Incidentally, Paping only ate the chocolate on the way.
Skating insiders still remember exactly where Paping made his decisive attack: at Bolsward. He drank a cup of coffee in Harlingen and – unforgettable – he borrowed a lead coat from a spectator from Franeker. He then lay down and shook the legs off his hypothermic body, then accelerated successfully to Dokkum in the drifting snow on what the riders called jellyfish ice.
In 1998, Paping looked back with fresh reluctance on the financial consequences of the heroic victory in NRC. “Afterwards I advertised for Brinta, which I had eaten in the morning before the start. I was promptly given a lighter from that company and my wife a hair dryer.” He hesitantly mentioned the remaining amount. “Then you are not talking about thousands but about hundreds of guilders.” But the newspaper also reported that Paping’s life took a major turn. „As the owner of a sporting goods store [waar de jonge Van Benthem later zijn schaatsen kocht] he benefited greatly from his reputation. The competing shops in the center of Zwolle were able to close their doors for good.”
#hero #Tour