“Dear everyone, with a lot of pain and sadness I had to say goodbye to my dear mother Sjoukje Kossmayer Dijkstra. My mother and I were beautiful together until the end,” her daughter wrote on Facebook.
Not long track skating, but figure skating was once the winter sport in which the Netherlands was leading. Sjoukje Dijkstra broke through a golden barrier in Innsbruck in 1964 by winning the first Olympic title in history for the Netherlands during the Winter Games. Dijkstra was a world star in her sport and will always be seen as an icon. Last February she was inconsolable when her best friend Joan Haanappel (83) died, and Dijkstra herself died on May 2.
Also read: When ‘our’ long track skaters were not yet that good, a figure skater was the best. On this day in 1964, Sjoukje Dijkstra won the first winter gold
Haanappel was the stylist of the two, but Dijkstra was the one who wholesaled the top prizes. She also won silver at the 1960 Games. She was only 18 years old at the time, having made her Olympic debut in 1956 as a 14-year-old girl (twelfth). Dijkstra became European champion five times and won the world title three times. “I think that if Sjoukje and I had not started skating at the same time, we would never have gotten this far,” Haanappel said before her death.
The figure skaters Sjoukje Dijkstra (l) and Joan Haanappel in 1969, when both skated at Holiday on Ice.© ANP/HH
Since their youth, Haanappel and Dijkstra were almost inseparable. As young teenagers, they moved to England together to work in East Twickenham under Swiss top coach Arnold Gerschwiler. They ended up in a boarding house, where homesickness gnawed at them.
Dijkstra, daughter of an Olympic skater and Amstelveen general practitioner Lou Dijkstra, appeared to have an iron will to succeed at all costs. Her jumping power turned out to be of exceptional class, which would eventually make her one of the best figure skaters of all time.
The charming duo made figure skating extremely popular in the Netherlands during the 1950s and 1960s and became the most important winter sport in our country. After Dijkstra and Haanappel, it took until 1976 before the Netherlands had a figure skater at the Games again. Dianne de Leeuw then took silver.
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Both continued to devote themselves to their sport with heart and soul. They made an attempt to take their discipline to a higher level within the KNSB. Dijkstra quickly dropped out as an advisor, because, just like Haanappel a few years later, she felt misunderstood because their sport was treated as a disadvantaged child within the skating association. Yet they saw their dream come true with Lindsay van Zundert, who – after 46 years – represented the Netherlands again in 2022 at the Beijing Winter Games.
In 2005, the six-time sportswoman of the year from NOC*NSF received the Fanny Blankers-Koen Career Award and in 2013 she received a place in the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame. Awards that only further indicate what phenomenon Dijkstra was in figure skating. Yet she would have loved to achieve one more goal, although that fell apart when her best friend died in February. Dijkstra then said: “We wanted to go to the Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo in 2026. We made our Olympic debut together there in 1956 and then the circle was complete.”
After her competitive sports period, Sjoukje entered showbiz and made herself very popular in the circus world. Sjoukje was 26 when she went skating at Holiday on Ice and met the 53-year-old German Karl Kossmayer there. They had two daughters.
‘Slept peacefully’
Dijkstra died after a long illness on Thursday afternoon at half past three in her hometown of Someren. “She passed away peacefully,” said her daughter Katja Kossmayer: “Unfortunately, she had been ill for some time. In 2022, a tumor of 20 centimeters was found on the kidneys. So she had kidney cancer. But she also had heart failure.”
Dijkstra had lived in Hilversum since the 1970s and later moved to her daughter in Someren, North Brabant. “Ever since my father passed away in 2000, she has always been with me,” says her daughter. “We moved together in Someren and had a very good time there. I am grateful that I was able to take care of her.”
Even though Sjoukje was not doing well physically in recent years, her head worked fine. She really enjoyed the circus in which her daughter also worked for a long time. Katja: “She was still mentally healthy until this morning. But the heart wanted no more. It was becoming increasingly difficult for her to breathe. What I especially want to say now is that the Máxima Hospital has provided her with fantastic support over the last two years. We are very grateful for that.”
