January 16, 2019

Dutchman runs all European marathons, sets record

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 3:12 pm

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After next weekend, Jaap van den Berg, 60, (not shown here, see details below), from Soest, Utrecht will set quite an impressive personal record: he will be the first Dutchman to run all European marathons. After next weekend, as he needs to run a marathon in Vatican City. “The marathon in Vatican City will be my 55th country in Europe, and then I will have done all European countries and I’m really proud of that,” Van den Berg said.

He started running in 1983 in Amsterdam and after that, the rest was just more running. “The Netherlands is beautiful, but as a boy, I always wanted to see the world, so that’s why.” Van den Berg trains three to four times a week, with his wife, something they have in common.

After Vatican City, he’s off to Palestine, making it the 80th country in the world he’s visited. It’s not about winning marathons for him, it really is about the travel.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, photo by Branko Collin of Kenyans Lucas Rotich and John Mwangangi at the Amsterdam marathon of 2014)

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October 19, 2014

Amsterdam marathon 2014

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 11:21 pm

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I don’t really have much to say about the marathon of Amsterdam which took place today, except that I liked the photo of Kenyans Lucas Rotich and John Mwangangi that I took on Amstelveenseweg near the finish. The two athletes came in second and third after their countryman Bernard Kipyego who ran 42 kilometres and 195 metres in a personal best time of 2 hours, 6 minutes and 20 seconds, NRC reports.

The fastest woman was Betelhem Moges from Ethiopia in 2 hours, 28 minutes and 35 seconds, followed by Ogla Kimaiyo from Kenya and Diane Nukuri Johnson from Burundi.

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September 26, 2014

Shia LaBeouf runs around Stedelijk Museum

Filed under: Art,Sports by Orangemaster @ 10:03 am

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Nobody said you couldn’t run a marathon around a building. American actor Shia LaBeouf ran 144 times around Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum yesterday as part of an art performance called ‘Metamodernism’. Last night’s international metamodernism symposium at the Stedelijk also featured Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Icelandic politician and activist known for collaborating with Julian Assange on WikiLeaks. By the way, Jónsdóttir was played by Dutch actress Carice van Houten in the 2013 film The Fifth Estate about Assange.

A few weeks ago, LaBeouf began posting cryptic Nike Plus tweets in which his runs spelled out letters of a rapidly-forming word, which ended up being ‘metamarathon’, the name of the running art performance. LaBeouf is doing this in honour of the museum’s Metamodernism day, which its website defines as an “international symposium [that] seeks to draw a cognitive map of our present in order to grasp the changing contours of our everyday lives, towards a paradigmatic shift lived by a generation born in the 1980s and after.”

The video features people running along aside LaBeouf while holding a relay baton.

(Link: thedailyedge.thejournal.ie, Photo: designboom.com)

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April 14, 2011

Utrecht openly discriminates against non-Dutch in marathon

Filed under: Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:40 am


Utrecht marathon bans foreign runners door tvnportal

On Monday 25 April, the city of Utrecht will hold its annual marathon, and the organisers have decided that non-Dutch participants are less worthy of winning this race as they’re simply too good and win too much. Sounds like something an elementary school teacher would say to the smart children not to hurt the stupid kids’ feelings.

Organisers are trying to discourage Kenyans in particular from taking part, saying only invited runners can win ‘big money’ prizes. Only Dutch nationals have been invited to take part.

If this isn’t discrimination, I don’t know what is. No other Dutch marathon does this.

(Link dutchnews.nl, Tip: Stefan)

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