NOS Sport•
Geert Schipper has already won Paralympic silver and bronze as a triathlete, but hopes to add even more Paralympic honors. Not at the Summer Games, but at the Winter Games. He has embraced a new sport: cross-country skiing.
The idea of going cross-country skiing had been going through 48-year-old Schipper’s head for about eight years. But all this time there was a lack of money and materials. Until last year. Sports association NOC*NSF started a project to expand the Paralympic winter team and Schipper eagerly took advantage of it.
When NOC*NSF started the project a year ago, several athletes attended. Paracyclists Tristan Bangma and Chantal Haenen, among others, wanted to discover whether they could also practice top sport in the snow.
Ultimately, from the group of potential Paralympic winter sports athletes, only Schipper remained. “Some just find it scary to take a new step,” says the brand new cross-country skier. “But I said yes, and if this boy says yes, then it shouldn’t be a half-measure. I don’t just want to see how far I can get, I also want to compete for the marbles.”
On winter sports every year
Schipper’s love for winter sports was instilled from an early age. As a teenager he became so addicted to skiing that, at the age of sixteen, he booked a bus trip to the snow with his brother who was two years younger. Since then he has gone on winter sports every year.
Schipper suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury at the age of 26 in a hang-glider accident, but he did not want to give up winter sports and tried the sit ski. “But to become very good at this you actually have to be an athlete without legs. I am 1.93 meters, my legs stick out a lot. I need a lot of strength to get those legs around the bend. If you have no legs, you only have to throw your upper body around the corner and the ski will follow.”
But cross-country skiing, where you sit on your knees in a sled, is a different story, according to Schipper. “You do everything with your arms and I am used to that as a wheelchair triathlete. With swimming, cycling and running I also get all the strength from my shoulders, so they are already very strong for me.”
Yet it was not very easy to master cross-country skiing, says Schipper. “It is very technical. When there are bends, or when the tracks in the snow have some height difference, you have to anticipate very quickly from your hip or back. The sled you are in then tilts a little bit, so you have to try to move your weight to the left or right, otherwise you will fall.”
This requires a lot of training hours, says Schipper, who only trained as a cross-country skier in the snow in Germany last September. “The more experience you have, the stronger those muscles become and the better you can anticipate those small irregularities. A cross-country ski course is never really flat, it is very difficult.”
First matches
Schipper is currently at a training camp in Königsleiten, Austria and will participate in an official tournament for the first time this weekend. Will it be enough for a Paralympic starting permit? “A very difficult question,” says Schipper. “I’m guessing that I should finish in the top eight, but I don’t know the list of participants yet. So it’s difficult to estimate how strong the competition is.”
The requirement of the international ski association is a maximum points total of 240. The better the result at a tournament, the lower the points. And if Schipper has met that requirement, the national requirements will still be exceeded. “They are always a bit stricter,” says Schipper. “They see if I’m good enough to come close to the medals.”
Whether he makes it or not, Schipper has already decided that this will be his only attempt to get to the Winter Games. Life as a top athlete is slowly taking its toll. “I’m starting to get tired of the sacrifices,” he admits. “The outside world does not always see what you have to do for it. It is not all roses and moonshine.” Schipper is referring, among other things, to long plane trips and periods away from home. “My most beautiful journey is always the journey home.”
