Roelof Klein

Roelof Klein
Roelof Klein (right) and François Brandt together with the French boy after their Olympic victory (1900)
nation	Netherlands
birthday	June 7, 1877
place of birth	Lemmer ,  Netherlands
date of death	February 12, 1960
Place of death	Montclair , New Jersey ,  United States
job	engineer
Career
discipline	rowing
society	Laga (Delft students Roeivereeniging), Minerva Amsterdam
Trainer	Dr. Meurer
Medal table
Olympic medals 1 × 0 × 1 ×
Olympic games gold 1900 Paris Two with a helmsman bronze 1900 Paris Eighth

Roelof Klein (born June 7, 1877 in Lemmer , † February 12, 1960 in Montclair , New Jersey , United States ) was a Dutch rower . Together with François Brandt , he won the two-man competition at the 1900 Summer Olympics , which made them the first Olympic champions to come from the Netherlands. The helmsman was an unknown French boy who is also considered the youngest Olympic champion of all time.

Life

Training and first successes in rowing

The son of a district judge from the Frisian town of Sneek studied mechanical engineering at the Technical University in Delft . During his studies, Roelof Klein excelled as a rower for the local student rowing association Laga , with which he won several competitions. The Minerva Amsterdam rowing club was later founded specifically for rowers from the Laga , Njord and Nereus clubs . This actually had no members. Minerva Amsterdam was created specifically to take part in international competitions.

In 1900, after 1896, the II Summer Olympic Games were held in Paris . The sports competitions took place as part of the world exhibition there over a period of more than five months. Due to this fact, as well as a lack of organization and information, the event received little public attention. The Netherlands sent 27 athletes to the competitions. In addition to marksmen (seven athletes), swimmers (four) and sailors (three), the largest contingent with 13 athletes were the rowers. Among them was the 23-year-old student Roelof Klein. Together with his Laga club colleague François Antoine Brandt , who was almost two and a half years his senior and also an engineering student from Delft, he was to compete in the two-man competition. The rowing coach from the Amsterdam club Nereus , a doctor named Meurer, had given both chances of success in the magazine Nederlandsche Sport . Among other things, Meurer attested that Klein had very good footwork. While Klein and Brandt, the belt should operate, as was helmsman of the 29-year-old doctor Hermanus ( "Herman") Brockmann of Nereus provided. All Dutch boats started in Paris under the club name Minerva Amsterdam .

Participation in the Olympic Games

The Olympic rowing competitions , for the first time in the program, took place at the end of August on the Seine between Courbevoie and Asnières (according to other information in a basin on the Marne ). The organization was confusing - a total of nine races were announced, with no clear distinction being made between seniors, juniors and debutants (the IOC today officially assigns five rowing competitions to the games in Paris). In the run-up to the two-man competition, Brandt, Brockmann and Klein with their boat AP Petrie were, to their own surprise, defeated by several boat lengths by the team of the French club Société Nautique de la Marne . The boat of the French rowers Lucien Martinet and René Waleff had taken advantage of the lax regulations on the participation of helmsmen. They occupied the position, which was regarded as minor at the time, with boys or children who weighed no more than 25 kg and whose identity was not recorded. On the other hand, on the Dutch side, Hermanus Brockmann weighed 35 kg more.

When Brandt and Klein discovered the secret of their competitors' success, they decided, encouraged by their coach Meurer, to make personnel changes for the final run, which they had achieved as the fastest loser. They changed their helmsman, for whom a participation in the competition in the eighth was planned anyway, and instead chose an unknown French boy on the quay. According to a report by Brandt in a commemorative publication from his rowing club Laga from the 1920s, the boy had been used several times as a helmsman for the Société de la Basse-Seine club . When he put on weight, his services were no longer needed. According to Brandt, the boy weighed 33 kg in the final. Due to the lower weight of the helmsman, the center of gravity of the AP Petrie shifted and the fin of the boat began to protrude above the surface of the water. Brandt and Klein made do with five kilograms of additional lead weights that they carried in the boat. By replacing Brockmann, they had saved a total of 22 kg in weight.

Olympic victory over France and later life

In the final, the tactics of Brandt and Klein worked, which were able to prevail against the agreements of the competing French teams. With the French boy as a so-called mixed team , they made a quick start to avoid falling behind the French who were also quick to start. The AP Petrie then took over the leadership together with the boat of the French rowing club Castillon . After a hundred meters, Brandt and Klein were three boat lengths ahead of their pursuers. Nevertheless, Lucien Martinet and René Waleff from the Société Nautique de la Marne managed to catch up with their young helmsman. At the finish, Brandt and Klein had a lead of 7: 34.2 minutes over Martinet and Waleff, just 0.2 seconds. This made them the first Dutch athletes to win the Olympic Games. However, Brandt and Klein were not aware of this fact due to the lack of information about the competitions. They had assumed that they had taken part in world championships, as Dutch biographical reference works recorded years later. The name of the French boy who acted as helmsman for Brandt and Klein has not been passed down to this day. Nobody made claims to his Olympic victory and no descendant was able to provide relevant information. There is only one picture of him together with the Dutch rowers. The contemporary press reports indicated the boy's age was between seven and ten years. In general, sports historians consider him the youngest ever Olympic champion.

After their victory in two with helmsman, Brandt and Klein belonged to the team of the Dutch figure eight, together with the replaced helmsman Hermanus Brockmann, who is also listed as an Olympic champion in this competition by the IOC due to his participation in the semi-finals. This finished third behind the boat of the US Vesper Boat Club Philadelphia and the second-placed Koninklijke Roeivereniging Club Gent from Belgium. The Nederlandsche Sport personally congratulated Brandt and Klein to their success, for they had, according to Brandt instead of receiving medals a heavy bronze bust in the form of a woman ( "zware bronze juffrouw").

After his success at the Olympic Games, Roelof Klein completed his engineering studies at the Technical University of Delft in 1901. In 1910 he emigrated to the United States, where he worked as an engineer for the oil and natural gas company Shell . Klein was the father of a daughter. There was also a married sister of his living in the USA. He died on February 12, 1960, aged 82, at his home in Montclair , New Jersey (other reported February 13 or 14). The historian Ton Bijkerk then announced the forgotten Olympic victory in the Netherlands in the 1960s, but estimated the boy's age to be twelve years. According to consistent Dutch reports, Brandt († 1949) and Klein should not have known until their death that they were Olympic champions.

literature

• Gedenkboek uitgegeven door het bestuur van de Delftsche Students Roeivereeniging "Laga" bij de herdenking van het 50-year bestaan ​​op 13 April 1926 . Delft: Waltman, 1926.

Web links

Commons : Roelof Klein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Roelof Klein in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Roelof Klein . In: The New York Times , February 14, 1960, p. 84.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Annema, Siebe: Roelof Klein onwetend van olympische zege . In: Leeuwarder Courant , January 16, 1999 (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
3. ↑ ^{a b} Klein (Roelof) . In: How is that? : biographical naamlijst . Amsterdam: Vivat, [1902] (accessed via LexisNexis Wirtschaft ).
4. ^ Kruse, Britta: The Chronicle 100 Years of the Olympic Games: 1896-1996 . Gütersloh; Munich: Chronik-Verl., 1995. - ISBN 3-577-14540-4 . P. 21.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h} Onwetende olympic championships . In: RC Handelsblad , July 12, 1996, p. 7.
6. ↑ Roelof Klein in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original ), accessed on August 9, 2012.
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Wanted: a seven year old . In: Kluge, Volker : 100 Olympic Highlights  : Snapshots  ; Athens 1896 – Atlanta 1996 . Berlin: Verlag Sport und Gesundheit, 1996. - ISBN 3-328-00678-8 , p. 20.
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Velthuis, Rob: Olympisch goud na de dood / Sporteeuw (1) - 1900 . In: Trouw , January 6, 1999, p. 10.
9. ↑ Gold medal entry on Hermanus Brockmann at olympic.org (accessed on August 9, 2012).
10. ↑ ^{a b} Roelof Klein in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original ), accessed on August 9, 2012.
11. ↑ Rowing: Race overview at sports-reference.com (English; accessed on August 10, 2012).