December 13, 2012

Epke Zonderland working on fourth aerial element

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 12:00 pm

At the London Summer Olympics on 7 August 2012, horizontal bar gymnast Epke Zonderland won gold with a breathtaking routine featuring three aerial elements, the now world famous ‘Cassina-Kovacs-Kolman’ combo.

He’s back in training and — you guessed it — he’s added a fourth element, the Gaylord II, to his super combo. Zonderland talked about it on television very modestly as he has a long way to go to get it down pat. From what the news reports, it’s the Cassina and the Kolman that are the most difficult.

Zonderland does Cassina-Kovacs-Kolman-Gaylord II. Kicks in at about 0:55.

(Links: nos.nl, www.sportnext.nl, Photo by McSmit, some rights reserved)

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August 10, 2012

Dutch gymnast Zonderland cranks the bar up even higher

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:31 am

On 7 August Dutch horizontal bar gymnast Epke Zonderland from Heerenveen, Friesland won gold at the London Olympics for his highly difficult routine with a unique 7.9 start value. Basically, by nailing this stunning routine down, he knew he could take home the gold. Instead of doing something very good and hoping to be the best, he obsessively practiced something never seen before and took the risk of either wowing the crowd or messing it up. He’s the first Dutch male gymnast to win a medal at the Olympics as well as the first Dutch gymnast (male or female) to win an individual Olympic medal, according to Wikipedia.

This is one of the last times he performed his famous high flying routine before London. On Dutch television, his coach mentioned several times that Zonderland mucked up this routine quite often, but really wanted to perform it in London regardless. Here’s him nailing his routine down, with the now famous ‘Cassina-Kovacs-Kolman’ elements before the Olympics. The announcer says that the week before Zonderland was not able to do it, while at the end he says, “He’s ready for London”.

Watch the actual Olympic performance here and listen to the crowd go wild.

And here’s the Lego recreation of his accomplishment that has gone viral.

And here’s artsy pictures of Epke Zonderland naked.

(Link: www.huffingtonpost.com)

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February 17, 2009

‘Hooligan’ banned for a year from long track speed skating

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:20 am

The ever so sedate world of long track speed skating was rudely torn from its mid-winter slumber last weekend when a man walked onto the ice during the world cup races in Heerenveen, Friesland.

And no, that’s not some kind of strange and poetic metaphor. According to Algemeen Dagblad (Dutch), a man in a bear suit walked onto the 400 metre track where at other times athletes quietly and with purpose skate countless 30 second laps. The man was promptly banned from visiting the Thialf stadium for a year.

3FM DJs Coen and Sander managed to get the fiend on their show. The man called Oscar stated that he wouldn’t want to visit Thialf ever again anyway. Sander Lantinga then gave him some tips on how to disturb future sports events–after all, the DJ himself has been banned for life from attending the ‘Wimbledon’ tennis tournament after streaking (NSFW) the Maria Sjarapova vs. Jelena Dementjeva match in 2006.

(more…)

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