Silver Skates

Like the little Dutch boy in Mary Mapes Dodge's children's classic, Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, Henk van der Grift grew up in Holland dreaming of whizzing his way to glory on the ice. But because the canals around his home town of Breukelen (which gave its name to Brooklyn) seldom froze over, Henk had to do much of his training by taking to the woods and pushing one foot after the other along the ground as though he were skating. Recalls his mother flatly: "He was declared crazy any number of times."

Gradually, Henk's solitary practice began to take effect. By last February, at the age of 19, Henk had become good enough to finish tenth in the 500-meter sprint at the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley. The taste of success made him train all the harder. With his own special diet (no onions or fats), he built himself into a wiry 150 lbs. He often got a free hour from his job as an auto mechanic to do some road work, but he needed to practice on ice. Last year Henk took his fiancee and headed for the cold climes of Norway, where he got a job in a garage, was happily out on the ice long before Holland began to freeze over. To the astonishment of everyone--including himself;--he improved so fast that he finished second in the European championships early in February.

Even so, when Henk entered the world championships in Goeteborg, Sweden, last week, some 100 pessimistic Dutchmen flew over to watch him lose gracefully. Henk started fast by winning second place in the 500 meters, first in the 1,500 meters --the two short races on the program. But he finished twelfth in the unfamiliar 5,000 meters. To win the overall title from Russia's great Viktor Kosichkin, Henk knew he had to come within 20 sec. of his rival's time in the exhausting 10,000 meters.

He was 20 sec. behind with three laps still to go. Suddenly the years of conditioning paid off. Zooming into the turns like a sprinter, Henk picked up a second on the next to last lap, shaved off another 1.3 sec. on the final lap. With one final burst, he shot across the finish line 17.7 sec. behind Kosichkin's time to become Holland's first world champion in skating since 1905. All Holland prepared to celebrate the victory of Henk van der Grift and his silver skates.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.