ANP
NOS Skating•
“You heard them fall, you heard them curse. Some of them couldn’t get up. They were hurt. It was a battlefield.”
Exactly sixty years ago, at 05:30 in the morning of January 18, 1963, the ignorant skaters participating in the twelfth Elfstedentocht ride into an icy hell. Sixteen degrees below zero, biting wind. Even before the sun rises, a large part of the trip stops. Bad ice, frozen limbs, broken skates.
That famous edition of the Elftstedentocht in 1963 is now seen as the toughest and most legendary ever. The unforgivable headwind from Stavoren is still in the memory. Just like the live television report that completely failed due to the harsh weather. And above all, the almost hundred kilometers long solo of the later winner: Reinier Paping, who died in 2021.
Review
Would you like to know more about the 1963 Elfstedentocht? Ten years ago, Other Times Sport made a reconstruction of the grueling journey in 1963, based on newly found archive material. With a retrospective of the full top three of that day: Paping, Jan Uitham and Jeen van den Berg.
Watch two episodes of Other Times Sport about the 1963 trip below.
