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Holland good fun Dutch have a great time while winning
SYDNEY, Australia -- One of these days Holland will make history. A 24-hour period of the Sydney Olympics will pass without the Dutch winning anything. So far, the Netherlands has pocketed at least one medal every day in which a Dutch athlete has been entered in a discipline in which medals were awarded. The hosts won six golds during the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, and another six eight years later in Berlin. Thanks to sprint legend Fanny Blankers-Koen, who accounted for four all by herself, the lowlanders won five in London in 1948. But never before have the Dutch won eight golds, which was their total as of Thursday afternoon. If the Dutch win 10, their chef de mission has promised, he'll submit his happy scalp to the country's athletes for a thorough shaving. You know the most prominent Dutch gold medalists: swimmers Pieter van den Hoogenband (a.k.a. Hugh Grant with shoulders) and Inge de Bruijn (the amphibious pterodactyl). You may even have heard of Leontien Zijlaard van Moorsel, who has already won cycling golds in the individual pursuit and the road race, and could add a third on Saturday in the time trial. But Holland has also medaled in archery, equestrian, judo, rowing and tennis. And though the baseball team didn't take a medal, its upset of Cuba in pool play remains one of the top first-week stories in Sydney.
The Dutch delegation commissioned an Aboriginal artist to make boomerangs for these Games, and after each medal won someone paints a boomerang the appropriate color and hangs it on the wall of the Dutch National Olympic Committee's official headquarters. "We've run out of gold paint," says Jacob Bergsma, an attaché with the delegation. Holland's unofficial headquarters is no less colorful than that boomerang-festooned secretariat in the Olympic Village. That would be Heineken Holland House in Sydney's boisterous Darling Harbor. Each night it's mobbed with fans like the guy who tried last February to book a flight from Amsterdam to Sydney, found everything booked, and so flew to Cairns, where he rented a camper and drove. Some 3,000 like-minded orangeheads convene each night to fete that day's medal winners, quaff Heinekens 'til the wee hours and otherwise prove the accuracy of one of their favorite sayings (always delivered in English): "If it ain't Dutch, it ain't much." Van den Hoogenband and de Bruijn showed up last week to be passed like surfboards over the crowd. And again and again the sound system plays the team's anthem, Yes, We're on Fire, composed especially for these Olympics by the Dutch band Golden Earring. (Yes, that's the same Golden Earring that did Radar Love.) The HHH has such a reputation for good times that bouncers now insist that all visitors show a passport to vouch for their Dutchness. On Wednesday night the eventual silver-medal-winning women's doubles tennis team of Kristie Boogert and Mirjam Oremans came by to drink in the crowd's love. Unable to get inside, I asked Mart Smeets, a broadcast personality with the national television network NOS, if he could pass along a little color from the inner sanctum. The deadpan never left his face. "Orange," he said. Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is in Sydney covering the Games for the magazine and CNNSI.com. Check back daily to read Wolff's behind-the-scenes reports from Down Under.
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