Kees Pellenaars

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Kees Pellenaars as sporting director of the Televizier team (1965)
The 18-year-old Pellenaars is celebrated as road world champion in 1934.

Cornelius Petrus "Kees" Pellenaars (born May 10, 1913 in Terheijden , today to Drimmelen , † January 30, 1988 in Breda ) was a Dutch cyclist and sports director . In 1934 he became the first Dutchman to win the road world championship .

Athletic career

Kees Pellenaars came from a poor background and trained as a carpenter from the age of 13 . With his pocket money he saved himself a racing bike and successfully drove his first races in 1932. In 1934, at the age of 18, he surprisingly became the world champion of amateurs in road racing in Leipzig . He was the first Dutchman to win a world championship in cycling; for Pellenaars himself, the trip to Leipzig meant his first abroad and his first train ride. Two years later, “de Pel” became the Dutch street champion. Until the beginning of the Second World War and afterwards, he concentrated on six-day races and other track races , meanwhile having become a professional . He started at 31 Sixdays, of which he was able to win four, 1936 in Paris with Adolf Schön , 1937 in Copenhagen , 1938 in Ghent and 1939 in Brussels with Frans Slaats .

When he took part in the Tour of Germany in 1950, Pellenaars made headlines: He hit a semi-trailer truck at 80 km / h, injuring himself so badly that a Belgian newspaper published an obituary for him. However, he recovered from his injuries, but then ended his active racing career.

Sports director

From 1951 Kees Pellenaars acted as the sports director of the Dutch national road team in the Tour de France . On Pellenaars' debut, his strongest rider and wearer of the yellow jersey , Wim van Est , fell into a 70 meter deep ravine, from which the team leader had him recovered with the help of 40 bicycle tubes tied together. Then he took the entire team out of the race.

The success of Dutch drivers on the tour in the following years made Pellenaars very popular in the Netherlands, even though the passionate cigar smoker was controversial because of his rude nature and way of life. When he did not nominate the popular van Est for the tour in 1956 , he was attacked by angry fans who threatened him with a "lesson". Thereupon he had a sign put up on the gable of his house with the inscription: "Here is." (holl. = here it is). The following year he was dismissed as the sports director of the national team and worked for various professional teams in the following years; one of his most successful drivers was Henk Nijdam .

For Pellenaars' 100th birthday in May 2013, the Wielercomité Prinsenbeek organized a meeting of all drivers who had driven in the teams he had led, including Gerrit Voorting , Henk Faanhof , Jo de Roo and Gerben Karstens .

Role in National Socialism

On December 31, 1939, the German racing cyclist Albert Richter was arrested on a train heading for Switzerland at the border for foreign exchange smuggling; a few days later he was found dead in his cell in the prison in Loerrach . The official death reports ranged from a skiing accident to "shot while trying to escape". Kees Pellenaars and his Dutch racing driver colleague Cor Wals happened to be on the same train, witnessed the arrest and made it public in a Dutch newspaper. The Nazi sports leadership reacted to this with another version of a suicide in the prison cell. Without the testimony of the two Dutchmen, Richter's arrest might never have been made public.

This experience did not prevent the two Dutch drivers from later joining the Waffen SS . Pellenaars, to whom the Dutch resented his many starts in Germany during National Socialism after the war, was able to portray himself successfully as the “seduced” of Cor Wals in 1947. The two friends got into such an argument about this that they never spoke to each other until the end of their lives. Wals was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his active role in the use of Dutch forced laborers in Russia.

literature

  • Pierre Huyskens: Daar wasn't. A biography of Kees Pellenaars. Duwaer, Amsterdam 1973, ISBN 90-294-7022-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b L. Kooijmans: Pellenaars, Cornelis Petrus (1913–1988). In: Biographical Woordenboek van Nederland . Retrieved September 30, 2016 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ Pellenaars-reünie on radsportseiten.net
  3. ↑ Renate Franz : The forgotten world champion. The mysterious fate of the Cologne racing cyclist Albert Richter. Revised brochure edition. Covadonga, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-936973-34-1 , p. 133.
  4. ^ Vrij Nederland . 1979, p. 28 ff.
  5. ↑ The title refers to the sign that Pellenaars had put on his house in 1956: "Here it is" vs. "There it was". That's what Pellenaars had called his house.

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Pellenaars, Kees
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pellenaars, Cornelius Petrus (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Terheijden
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1988
Place of death Breda