Arno Hoogveld, on the path of success
Date: Saturday, January 21 @ 06:09:52 PST :: Topic: Coach
Active since 1983, Arno hoogveld now has a full-time position at the Calgary Olympic Oval. The first 4 years he worked with the junior program. In 2003, he has been lucky enough to join a successful senior group that Xiuli Wang was already coaching. Together they coach a group of 12 skaters at the Calgary Olympic Oval and out of this group 5 skaters are Torino bound, 4 of them Canadian, 1 American. The Canadian skaters are Arne Dankers, Kristina Groves, Clara Hughes and Kerry Simpson, while Catherine Raney is from the USA.
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
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