Sports action live

We Dutch love our ice skating. The best part is when it freezes outside and we get what is called 'natural ice' (as opposed to artificial ice in the skating halls) and everyone drops whatever they're doing and goes ice skating. The absolute high point of the mania is when there might be an Elfstedentocht, which is a 200 km long track touring the 11 (historic) cities of Friesland.
But even without outdoor ice, things can get pretty exciting on indoor ice skating. There are two kinds: long track and short track, and the former is by far the more popular (although short track is catching on quickly). Apart from soccer, speed skating is probably the most popular sport in the Netherlands (which could be exemplified by the fact that Jeremy Wotherspoon didn't qualify for the 500m in Sochi was the second item on the news yesterday). It's one of the few sports we're actually pretty good at on the Olympics, apart from that other thing to do with water - swimming (and dressage, but somehow horse-related things never really catch on here).

Anyway, for the past 5 days, the qualification tournament for Sochi has been taking place, and it's been a fierce battle. The problem, if you can call it that, is that we have too many good skaters. We can only send 3 or 4 people for most distances, and we have about 8 good ones you want to send (some distances are better represented than others, but still most are pretty well covered). The qualifications are taking place in Thialf, which is the Dutch Valhalla of ice skating. And last Friday, I was there to watch the action.
This is probably the time to mention that I am not really a sports fan in the true sense of the word. To stick to skating: I cannot tell you what would be a good or bad time for any given distance. I cannot tell you the name of all the skaters. And when given a name, I could not tell you which team they're skating for, or who their coach (all old skating pros) is.
But I do like to watch. So far, I'd only watched the skating on TV, but now I was going in for the live thing. I'd never seen a real sporting competition up close and in person, and to tell you the truth, I've never really understood why people would go sit/stand in a cold windy stadium where they can only see a very small part of the action (or only very small players) while they could watch the same thing at home from different camera angles with meaningful commentary. Now I know: it's the atmosphere.
The distances we watched were the 500m for the men and the 3000m for the women. The 500m always has to be done twice, so that adds a lot of extra tension: a person having a good first go may falter on the second go around and still not qualify. Also, the skating was very, very good. Michel Mulder rode a track record on the 500m, and several other skaters were very very fast too. And most importantly, the whole stadium becomes one giant, living, breathing organism that can almost literally push a skater that little bit further by their shouting, cheering, clapping, and hammering on the wooden panelling. This sense of togetherness, of seeing a few individuals push themselves to the limit, carried by our cheers and well-wishes, and seeing them perform the things that we could never do, creates such a great atmosphere of beloging and togetherness and possibility, it's impossible not to join in the shouting and jumping and other crazy things. To me, at least.

So now I do understand why people go to sporting matches, even when it can be cold and uncomfortable and crowded and you can't see half the things you could if you were snugly at home. The thing that you don't get at home, the sense of belonging, makes up for all of that. So would I go there again? Definitely, but not too often. There are people who come to Thialf every day, who write down the times and know everybody's personal record by heart: that's not me. To me it is more of a special outing, and special things should be taken sparingly to keep them special. But it has given me new insights, and a great experience I will remember for a while to come.