At the end of last summer, the Jumbo-Visma skating team was presented on a grand scale at Unilever’s headquarters in Rotterdam. Optimism sounded from almost all the team’s banners. Skaters with Olympic titles, world sprint and all-round champions, winners of global distance titles. Radiating with self-confidence, we look forward to the next skating winter and then in a straight line to Milan, where the next Games will be held. A sobering winter of skating later, the team started preparing for the new season this week in Twente.
Major absentee at the first meeting: Jutta Leerdam. The contract of the country’s biggest skating star expired on April 1. While Leerdam was on holiday at a tropical location, negotiations between the team and Leerdam continued as usual. Until last week it became clear that the different insights were too far apart, making an agreement far away. Jumbo then decided to end the talks, the team announced on Monday through commercial director Sven Kramer. The exit of a world-class player is a fact, yet another at Jumbo. Earlier, Antoinette Rijpma – de Jong (Reggeborgh), Thomas Krol (started pilot training), Jorrit Bergsma (Albert Heijn Zaanlander) and the wandering sprinters Kai Verbij and Dai Dai N’tab also left Jac Orie’s team.
“Of course I think it’s a shame,” Orie said on Tuesday about Leerdam’s departure. “She’s a great skater.” However, the words of the Hague teacher also indicate that equal cooperation between the team and Leerdam was no longer possible. “She is in a phase of her life, we are in a phase towards the Milan Olympic Games. Those lines must run parallel to each other. That includes choices. If that doesn’t go in the same direction anymore, then it doesn’t work. That is what it is and as a team we make hard choices, that has never been different.”
Orie and Leerdam during the team presentation in 2023. | Photo: Timsimaging
Leerdam was a loner within the team, regularly trained alone – also due to the lack of other female sprinters – and her way of life differs from what most other top athletes do. Her lifestyle caused a lot of speculation in the outside world about the 25-year-old South Holland’s ‘commitment’ to sports. In her own words, she gave everything for skating, a dormant ankle injury and concerns about her sick mother kept her from the greatest achievements she achieved in the years before. She was unable to prolong her world title in the 1000 meters. At the Sprint World Championships, Leerdam showed herself again, but that was not enough to dethrone Miho Takagi.
Kramer made it clear on Monday (“1 team, 1 task, no one is bigger than the team”) that Leerdam no longer fits the team’s picture. “We believe in one line,” Orie adds. “Maybe something else would suit her best. That’s neither good nor bad. That’s different for everyone. We live in a free country, everyone makes his or her own choices. But something like that works both ways, if that’s not right you shouldn’t do it. Athletes have a career with a certain duration, you have to be careful with that. If it turns out that we’re not going to get together, then you shouldn’t do it. That’s why we made that choice.”
Rumors about an impending collaboration with former confidant Kosta Poltavets or a move to Team IKO are among the possibilities for Leerdam. For the time being, she is spending her time on a sunny island, where it is a lot warmer than the location where the members of the Jumbo skating team complete their first training sessions. Because although the sun shines in Hengelo, a temperature in double figures is still a utopia. Fifteen skaters, five of whom are members of the training team. New and returning faces. Sanne in ‘t Hof is happy with her transfer to the team, Isabel Grevelt and Mathias Vosté are the other two additions to the yellow team.
There is laughter, the atmosphere is relaxed. Freek van der Ham has a lot of laughs on his hands, the youngster clearly has to get used to his new rollerblades. After a few Bambi rounds, he turns into the center area where he practices and tries with Dave Versteeg, the big addition to the Jumbo staff. Orie sees the first inline skating training as a baseline measurement that makes it clear what needs to be done in the coming weeks and months. “Some have trained more than others, now we have to restart everything and look for the ‘skating corners’. The basics need to be polished, especially on inline skates you can quickly see where the points of interest are.”
Orie can fully focus on improving his young team in the coming months. “Everyone is looking forward to it and is highly motivated,” says the Hague teacher, looking satisfied at his team.
The world keeps turning, that much is clear. With or without Jutta Leerdam.
