sniper said:
the germans invested 5.7 million euro's in three years (2011-2013) in speedskating preparation for the olympics.
results: zero medals.
would be interesting to see how much the dutch invested in that same period.
I don't know the figures and I can't find them, but considering there are multiple professional teams (8 this year) as well as national support in the Netherlands, I would not be surprised if that figure would be much, much higher than 5.7 million.
That said, I'm not as naive or blissfully ignorant as most of my compatriots. While the figures have been questioned, mostly by Dutch critics, according to Gundersen, former member of the medical committee of the ISU, about 10-15% of the blood samples of Olympic medal winners in speedskating between 1998-2006 could be labeled as "suspicious". To give this number some context, the number of suspicious blood samples in cycling during that same period, according to an expert of the Belgium doping lab, was about 16%.
Nowadays, we all know what level of prevalence of doping in cycling that 16% represents. That the percentage is somewhat lower in speedskating is probably due to the fact that it is based on in-competition tests, during the Olympics, only. We all know that with a bit intelligence an athlete, or his doctor, plans to be as clean as possible during competition.
I would love to say things have changed, but there is little to no sign of improvement. The number of out-of-competition tests is low and was as low as zero only a couple of years ago. The Dutch doping authority claims they have "increased the number of ooc tests", but has failed to provide any evidence or actual numbers to back this up.
As doping is hardly an issue in Dutch media, let's not spoil the Dutch glory, most journalists that have some impact-factor fail to ask the right questions or do some investigative journalism. The Dutch commentators even sympathize with Claudia Pechstein for her 2-year absence due to a doping ban, during the live broadcasting of the Olympic speedskating events, almost suggesting her ban was wrong (without providing legitimate reasons why).
This saddens me as the same national broadcasting organisation, the NOS, discusses doping in cycling during almost every live broadcast. They discuss rumours, jump to conclusions, and rudely question about every cyclist they can find. About a year ago, they even spend their full season preview talking about doping, they never said a word about the upcoming season, at all. And of course, that preview was done by the same "presentor" (Dionne de Graaff) that smiles at speedskaters like they're gods, without ever even slightly touching the subject of doping in their presence. (Or at any other time, for that matter).
It wouldn't surprise me if the NOS has never even googled "schaatsen doping" (speedskating doping) to do some preliminary research.
However, discussing an issue like doping at this very moment would not be welcomed by the Dutch public as they're all still basking in reflective glory.