The Netherlands is waiting for a cold spell like this for 24 winters. Not too windy, not too snow, and the temperature drops like a bicycle in a canal. Those are exactly the conditions for the Dutch sporting event: a skating competition of 200 kilometers on frozen waterways through 11 Frisian cities.
It is known as the Elfstedentocht. And it is spoken … don’t worry about it.
Because it is so dependent on the climate, the race has only been run 15 times since 1909, most recently in 1997. Never has there been such a long drought. The Dutch feared that climate change would never again have a cold enough or long enough winter – until they stepped outside last weekend and found the weather starting to work with the temperatures in their teens.
There is now only one problem: the Elfstedentocht stars are aligned in the middle of a pandemic. Under the current Covid-19 restrictions in the Netherlands, the race would not go ahead, even though the ice is getting thick enough.
That didn’t stop Dutch skaters from looking at the weather and their government and praying for a way to make it happen. The most famous people in the country are meteorologists right now.