The Dutch are mad about sports. They like almost every type of sport. The most popular ones are soccer, ice skating, hockey, cycling, swimming, sailing and horseback riding.

Soccer

Soccer is very popular. If an important match is being shown on television, there’s hardly anybody on the street. When the Dutch national team goes abroad, thousands of fans travel along to watch them play. You can easily recognise them by their orange hats and clothes. You may have heard of a few Dutch soccer clubs, such as Ajax, Feijenoord or PSV, or of famous Dutch soccer players like Johan Cruijff, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Dennis Bergkamp, and Arjan Robben.  

Swimming

Dutch children learn to swim when they are still very young. This is pretty important in a country with so much water. But we don’t only learn to swim for our safety. After school, we sometimes go to the swimming pool with friends just for fun.

There are also famous Dutch swimmers. Inge de Bruijn and Pieter van den Hoogenband have both won important prizes, including a few Olympic medals.

Skating

If the canals freeze over during the winter, we sometimes get the day off school to go skating. When this happens, I go skating with my friends. Skating is one of the most popular sports in the Netherlands. Every winter we hope that it will be very cold. As soon as the canals and lakes are frozen over, lots of Dutch people take out their skates. Men and women, grandfathers, grandmothers and children all go out on the ice. On the bank, people sometimes set up stands where you can buy soup, coffee, hot chocolate and cakes.

The Dutch have always been good at skating. They also do well in international competitions. Skaters like Jochem Uytdehaage and Erben Wennemars are real world champions.

The Elfstedentocht skating marathon

When it has been really cold for a while and the ice is at least 15 centimetres thick, the Elfstedentocht (which means ‘eleven towns skating tour’) is held in Friesland, in the north of the Netherlands.

The Elfstedentocht is a very hard 200-kilometre skating marathon that passes through eleven Frisian towns. Because it isn’t often cold enough for the marathon, it is a very special event, almost like a national holiday. People come to Friesland from all over the Netherlands and beyond to cheer on the 2,000 skaters who take part. Every person who reaches the finishing line receives a hero’s welcome.