Arie van der Pluym

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A Husqvarna racing machine from 1935, similar to the one that van der Pluym drove, in the Neckarsulm two-wheeled museum .

Arie RK van der Pluym (born January 6, 1906 in Vlaardingen , † July 15, 1934 in Spa ) was a Dutch motorcycle racer .

It was also known as De Rotterdamse Meteoor ( The Rotterdam Meteor ).

Life

youth

Arie van der Pluym was born in Vlaardingen and grew up in what is now the Rotterdam district of Delfshaven , where his mother owned a café on Mathenesserdijk . In his early years he worked in a car repair shop , where he also began on the FN - Motorcycle tinkering of a colleague. At the age of 15 he bought a Harley-Davidson in parts to be rebuilt. Before he even had a driver's license , van der Pluym was supposed to pick up a malfunctioning Omega from a customer. His boss assumed he would do it on foot, but Arie van der Pluym got the machine working and fell down while chased by the police. Since he could repair the damage himself, his boss never found out about it. When he was old enough at 16 to get a driver's license, the Dutchman bought another Harley-Davidson. However, when the parking tickets got out of hand , his mother sold the motorcycle for 75 guilders .

Racing career

Arie van der Pluym contested his first race in 1927 in Haamstede , where he finished third with totally worn tires . He then bought a Norton , which he drove in both grass track and road races. He won around 50 prizes within three years. In 1929 van der Pluym took part in the Dutch TT in Assen for the first time, but flew off the track in the first corner. The following year he competed in the Dutch TT with a self-pimped up Sunbeam , but retired prematurely, this time with a technical defect. In 1932 he won the Dutch road championship in the 500 cc class with his Norton . As a result, he came into contact with Piet van Wijngaarden , who imported Swedish Husqvarna machines to the Netherlands , and who got him a factory machine, such as the Swedish stars Kalén and Sunnqvist drove . On Husqvarna, van der Pluym was Dutch road champion in both the 350 and 500 class in 1933.

On June 23, 1934, the titles in the 1934 European Motorcycle Championship were awarded at the X. Dutch TT on the 16.536 kilometer Circuit van Drenthe . In the half-liter race, Arie van der Pluym took third place and only had to admit defeat to the two Belgian FN works drivers Pol Demeuter and “Noir” .

Deadly accident

Only three weeks later, on July 15, 1934, Arie van der Pluym had a fatal accident at the age of 28. On the third lap of the 500 cc race for the Belgian Grand Prix , which took place in Spa-Francorchamps , he lost control of his machine in the fast Côte de Burnenville section , hit a tree and was dead on the spot. In Local driver Antoine Lambert was also involved in the accident, who fell and drove into the audience when he tried to avoid van der Pluym's machine. The Belgian and some spectators were injured but all survived. Just under a year later, Lambert himself had a fatal accident at the Grand Prix des Frontières on the Circuit de Chimay .

Van der Pluym posthumously won his fourth Dutch championship title in the 500cc class and was buried on July 19, 1934 in the cemetery in the Crooswijk district of Rotterdam . His success for Husqvarna earned him great recognition not only in the Netherlands, but also in Sweden. An Arie van der Pluym Cup was held there for 15 years .

Since, unlike Assen, the drivers in Belgium were not insured, his widow and son were left without support. The Royal Dutch Motorcyclists Association (KNMV) then founded the Arie van der Pluym Foundation , to which the TT organizers, daily newspapers, oil companies and Husqvarna belonged. In addition, the KNMV demanded from the international motorcycle sports association FICM that all riders must be insured in international competitions. Since Demeuter and “Noir” also had a fatal accident in 1934 , the FICM actually decided to increase the safety precautions. Starting in 1936, the race tracks had to be at least five meters wide along their entire length and excessive curves had to be provided with run -off zones .

statistics

title

References

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Vincent Glon: Les Champions Néerlandais. racingmemo.free.fr, accessed on May 11, 2015 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Pluym, Arie van der
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pluym, Arie RK van der (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch motorcycle racer
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Vlaardingen
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1934
Place of death spa