What whether winter isn’t coming?WHAT Kenyans are to marathons,the Dutch are to long-track speed skating. As the Netherlands’ skaters arrived last week at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, their biggest alarm was of failing to accomplish better than in 2014, or when they won 23 of the 36 medals. This year they got off to another flying start,sweeping gold, silver and bronze in the women’s 3000 metres. The stars of the men’s and women’s teams, or Sven Kramer and Ireen Wüst,have each won gold.
But the mood at the national skating association is not entirely sparkling. The excellence of Dutch speed-skating stems from the sport’s special position in national culture. Each winter the country waits anxiously for a cold snap long enough to freeze the waterways that mark its low, flat landscape. Then millions of Dutch capture to the ice, and zipping from town to town along lakes and canals. Yet in recent years such cold spells have grown scarce.“In the old days,three- or...
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Source: economist.com