Remarks collected by Jean-Michel Lachance

Is it your grandfather Jacques Hoogveld who introduced you the sport of speed skating?

Unfortunately I never knew my grandfather, but I certainly knew about his career as an athlete and as a former president of the (currently professional) Dutch soccer club Vitesse. So the word 'speed', either in English or French, has definitely played a significant role in both our sporting lives. Attending the Olympics in Torino has extra meaning for me when it comes to ancestors, because a great-great-grandfather on the other side of the family came from an Italian village just north of Torino. Now that I think of it, even the word 'Roots' (our Team clothing sponsor) seems somehow very 'fitting'.

You stopped your athlete career because of medical reasons; can you explain us a little more?

My years as a competitive cyclist and speed skater I certainly enjoyed, but a chronic back-problem, combined with a (continuing) struggle with quality of sleep ended my days as an athlete, but now as a coach I get just as much (if not more) satisfaction from helping other athletes achieve their goals.

Speed skating has became a recognized sport in Canada, are you satisfied with the situation of speed skating?

No brand of sport is ever happy about the recognition they get in any country, I'm sure, but speed skating in Canada cannot complain. This sport has a rich history in the Winter Olympics, having had medalists in numerous Games in the past, all the way from Alex Hurd and Frank Stack in '32, Gordon Audley in '56, to Gaetan Boucher and Catriona Lemay Doan and has had great ambassadors for the sport in all the medal winners. I remember a newspaper article just before the 1988 Games in Calgary where an ice hockey journalist questioning the merits of spending millions of dollars on a covered speed skating oval, stating that it would be total waste. Knowing that the City of Calgary alone had 45 hockey rinks at that time, I reminded him that the last Olympic Gold medal in hockey was from 1952 and asked if adding more hockey rinks would change that (of course in hindsight we know that it took even 50 years to repeat that performance). Speed skating as a sport in Canada has proven itself very worthy of this Olympic facility since 1988, certainly in a lot shorter period than hockey with its thousands of rinks and millions of participants. The management and the direction of the programs in the Calgary Olympic Oval have been very successful and not just in the sport of speed skating either.

The results of the forementioned recent success in most Canadian winter sports already seem reflective of the funding that has become available in the past year, hopefully culminating in a best-ever performance at the Vancouver Games in 2010.

Find the continuation of the interview tomorrow

Photo: Arno Hoogveld
Credit: Speed Skating Canada