PIET AND Tineke Brolsma in Stiens are not just butchers, they are Hofleveranciers, royal suppliers. That’s when you may hang Holland’s coat of arms above your store entrance, and you don’t even need to have actually delivered meat to the king’s palace. The condition is that you have been around for a long time, that your record is above board, and the province’s governor must sign off on your application. Brolsma meets all criteria, especially in terms of age, because the Brolsma’s have been Friesland suppliers since as far back as 1620 – since the days when you raised cattle for meat and dairy on a brol, a piece of land at your farm.
Many Brolsma’s now live in the US, doctors, realtors, lawyers, all related to each other, as well as a stock car racer, but today’s notable duo, in the middle of summer, are Mike and Amy Brolsma in Wisconsin. They are skating coaches. Mike was a solid hockey player himself, Amy won medals in figure skating. She will lead summer camps on ice this summer in Appleton, Wisconsin. She will teach you the Ina Bauer.
The Ina what?
JAPANESE Shizuku Arakawa was the one who put it on the map during the 2006 Olympics. Both skates parallel, toes facing in opposite direction, forward leg bent, hind leg stretched, upper body fully folded backwards, 180 degrees, so that your belly button points to the roof, while you skate a circle and make it look easy. That’s an Ina Bauer. Shizuku followed it with a triple Salchow, plus a double axel and a double loop, all within ten seconds. Golden medal.
Arakawa had practiced it for 19 years, well over 10,000 hours. If Mrs Brolsma is your coach, she will tell you that you only have a chance of success if you practice endlessly. Practicing in figure skating means falling often. Arakawa fell on her butt more than 20,000 times. Every time she got up and tried again. If she didn’t fall after a jump, it meant that she landed the right way, on her skate.
LANDING correctly is a mixed blessing for figure skaters. Each beginner’s landing dumps three times your body weight on your ankle. As you get better, you jump higher, and your landing weight becomes five times your body weight. In the case of lean, feather-light Shizuku, that amounted to 600 lbs. Per jump. She fell 20,000 times, got up just as often and jumped again, 20,000 times. That alone is a total of 12 million lbs hammering one ankle.
So the question that Amy Brolsma often gets is, why are we doing this? What moves someone to endure all that, knowing that the medal almost certainly goes to someone else? Answer: passion. If you really want to do something, falling and getting up again is no sacrifice. Shizuku Arakawa, now retired, preferably did this to the music of Christina Aguilera, a granddaughter of the Dutch families Puffenberger and Van Holland.
