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Dutch cyclists set to take the high road as plans for man-made mountain are revealed

Journalist's idea to plonk 2,000-metre high mountain in middle of the Low Countries gains support...

It’s an unfortunate fact of geography that for a nation whose cycling fans love the mountains – witness the party atmosphere at ‘Dutch Corner’ on the Alpe d’Huez – the Netherlands itself, apart from the Ardennes foothills, is pretty much flat as the proverbial Dutch pancake. Now, however, a former racing cyclist is leading a campaign for the country to build its very own mountain, at a cost estimated at up to €300 million.

The idea of bringing the mountain to the Netherlands was floated, apparently as a joke, by cyclist-turned-journalist Thijs Zonneveld in his column in the newspaper De Pers last month, but it immediately struck a chord both with the public and sports organisations.

Named Die Berg Komt Er, which in English means The Mountain Comes Here, the project is said to have the support of the Dutch Climbing & Mountaineering Association, the Royal Dutch Cycling Union (KNWU) and the Dutch Ski Association, all of which, for obvious reasons, would clearly welcome the prospect of a bloody great big mountain being plonked in the middle of the country.

In a joint statement published on the KNWU website, Thorwald Veneberg, the federation’s technical director, pointed out that the project, which is envisaged to include a road with hairpin bends for road cyclists looking to tackle climbs and descents, and trails for mountain bikers, would mean Dutch cyclists would no longer have to go abroad to train for those disciplines.

He added that while there were hills in the Limburg province, the altitude and length of those could not be compared to climbs in the Alps and Pyrenees and for that reason the KNWU was happy to support the project.

Vonneveld, quoted on AP, said: "The idea is not new but it's the first time that it is taken seriously by so many people."

He added that professionals such as engineers were already looking at the feasibility of the project, which might include ski slopes, bobsleigh runs and trails for hikers, as well as facilities for cyclists.

"It seems like that my plea - a joke at first - has clicked," he added, saying that in the current climate, "people want to get excited about a big project and say: yes we can do that. Companies see a chance to create innovation platforms.

The project had its genesis in a column Zonneveld penned last month in which he said: “Flat is ideal for growing beetroot, raising cows or building straight roads, but it's a catastrophe from a sports point-of-view. I want a mountain, a real one. In the Netherlands."

According to Zonneveld, the perfect place for his mountain, would be the province of Flevoland. “There's room and land is not expensive," he claimed.

"I'm living a dream right now,” he added.” It would be marvelous if the mountain became reality by 2018," he concluded, although you might imagine that environmentalists and locals could have something to say about a geographical feature springing up on their doorstep overnight that would ordinarily take a few million years to appear.

There’s even a mock-up of what the mountain might look like, shown in the picture that accompanies this article, and apparently drawn up by a firm of architects called Hoffers Kruger.

The illustration appears on the firm’s website. Indeed, a link to email the firm apart, it’s the only thing that appears on the firm’s website, which has got the needles on the dials of road.cc’s patent bullshit detector nudging up towards 11.

The press around the world has adopted a similarly sceptical tone, with the project's own webpage on the De Pers website quoting an unnamed French newspaper that had perhaps unkindly proclaimed, "Here's the proof - cannabis kills brain cells."

If the project’s legit, though, and it goes ahead, the Eneco Tour could be interesting in a decade or so’s time, assuming the UCI doesn’t introduce a ‘no artificial mountain’ rule.
 

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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20 comments

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Pjrob | 12 years ago
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Where are they going to get the dirt? It will be too heavy anyway and cause the low lying Netherlands, called that because they are low lying, to go even lower. It needs to be constructed over a framework, essentialy a building, and the space within could be used for other things.

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Rvizzle | 12 years ago
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Like the fact the section in the video with the Ski Lift is clearly a re-rendered image of the 2012 Olympic Aquatics centre.

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Gromski | 12 years ago
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The hofferskruger.com domain was only registered on 16 August this year which smells very fishy to me.

Shame as it's a brilliantly bonkers idea.

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Paul J | 12 years ago
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The sense of the translation is close enough, though still ever so slightly off - the word "here" isn't in the original at all. Either of the translations given here would be better (one translation is more literal; the other translation captures more of the connotations of the phrase, in the context of this story).

For whatever it's worth  3

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whizzkid | 12 years ago
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I would like to suggest a similar project in this country. I would like to flatten the mendips..

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Gkam84 | 12 years ago
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I for one am not going to attempt to cycle up it if it looks like that mock up, slightly like a vert skate ramp thats going to spit you back off at the top

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Simon_MacMichael | 12 years ago
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By the way, every time I look at that picture of the mountain, all I can hear is a voice saying: "Hmmmm... Slytherin... no, Gryffindor..."

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Simon_MacMichael | 12 years ago
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I think I picked up on someone else's mistranslation and perpetuated it  9 - thanks for correction  1

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Paul J | 12 years ago
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The translation should be "That mountain is coming".

(Did you get an Afrikaans speaking person to translate? I have a vague idea the dutch for here - "hier" - became corrupted to "er" in Afrikaans).

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Iwein Dekoninck | 12 years ago
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"Die berg komt er" is more accurately translated as "This mountain will be made"

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Matt_S | 12 years ago
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Wow. Those Hoffers Kruger chaps really nailed that mock-up.  22  39

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a.jumper | 12 years ago
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the french newspaper is probably the silly liberation or one of the xenophobic tabloids

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TLP GIMP RIDER | 12 years ago
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Qatar will do it first!!

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John G | 12 years ago
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Don't tell me ... to make a mountain that big, they'll have to quarry-away a natural mountain elsewhere.

I know what - scrap the artificial mountain idea, leave the natural mountain where it is and the Dutch can go there on holiday.

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Chuffy | 12 years ago
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They'll need a 5 trillion tonne sandcastle bucket and a flag the size of a football pitch.

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fluffchucker | 12 years ago
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If they do build it, will the bricky who tops it off get in the Guiness Book of Records as the first to get to the summit?  36

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fluffchucker | 12 years ago
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Making a molehill out of a mountain?  19

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rbx replied to fluffchucker | 12 years ago
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fluffchucker wrote:

Making a molehill out of a mountain?  19

I'd say the plan is to make a mountain out of a molehill  1

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Simon_MacMichael | 12 years ago
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Apparently not. Though I imagine it's got a snowball in hell's chance of being built.

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SimpleSimon | 12 years ago
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Is it 1st April today?

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