Success is actually a bit exaggerated. But the fact that Edwin van Calker with Sybren Jansma in the two-man bobsleigh and with his brother Arnold and Arno Klaassen onboard in the four-man “cigar” following the first World Cup competition were last week directly nominated for the Olympic Games in Vancouver (2010) was in any case received with jubilation within the Bobsleigh and the Sleigh Association (BSBN). Certainly when it appeared that the team had also missed their place on the podium by seven hundredths of a second. And so Wim Norman can also congratulate himself as the Managing Director of Eurotech of Blerick. He started the company seventeen years ago.

 

It now employs about 400 people in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The business, a system supplier for the metal-processing industry and machine and equipment construction is not unknown in the sports world. It has for a few years been a sponsor, for example, of the handball club Bevo, mountain biker Bart Brentjens and disabled sports in Venlo. But (inter)nationally, Eurotech mainly made its sporting name in racing. It built the Marcos LM600 and the Mantis among others. Jeroen Bleekemolen and the Belgian talent Marc Goossens and others drove for the team. With Wim Noorman as the manager.

 

The 48-year old Horst man incidentally also has the necessary racing experience himself and was to take part in the Dakar Rally as a co-driver in January 2008 but which was cancelled one day before the start because the safety of the participants and support staff could not be guaranteed, particularly in Mauritania. The dynamic Managing Director of Eurotech does not find it at all strange that his company is involved in bobsleighing. He carries on as though it is the most normal thing in the world that somewhere in North Limburg bobsleighs are knocked up and used to gain Olympic fame for the Netherlands within one-and-a-half years. “I ended up at Bevo because eight of the lads from the club worked for us. But mechanical sport, that’s our department. We can create added value here.” The reason being that this is important for the man who was introduced to cycling at an early stage through his marriage to one of the sisters of ex cyclist Gert-Jan Theunisse and so also went on to sponsor his brother-in-law Bart Brentjens. “And Bart was still by no means fast and famous,” says Noorman. “I supported him as early as 1993 and he became an Olympic champion a year later.

 

Look at it, that’s actually also the time that support takes at a top sporting level for that last push for the top. Once they are there, the train will more or less run by itself.” Wim Noorman is also not an old school sponsor. “It was not a question of product familiarity for me as in these seventeen years that Eurotech has existed, this is more or less the first time that anyone had noticed our work in the sport. Transferring money and putting a sticker on something or putting up an advertising board is not for me. I don’t have anything to do with this. I’m not going to spend my money on that. I want to help as much as possible with as little as money possible using our company’s know-how, delivering this added value. This is how I also see my role with the bobsleighers. They were somewhat in a small circle of motivated sportsmen and club coaches, poor material, little money and therefore also no success. I saw possibilities here and so I jumped in. Eurotech is now a kind of driving wheel, which got the ball rolling here.”

 

The four-man bobsleigh of German origin was still of reasonable quality. Here, Eurotech has used its knowledge from the racing sport to take care of the minor details. Small adjustments were made to increase the speed under the management of the race engineers Hans Fortuin and Marc van de Berg. The two men travel the entire winter with the bobsleighers throughout the World Cup circuit. The material follows them everywhere in one of the Limburg company’s trucks. It also gives the athletes a professional feeling.

 

After presenting the teams a few weeks ago, Esme Kamphuis and Tine Veenstra (Nederland 1 in the women’s two-seaters) said how proud they were of their new competition outfits but also that they were the “lucky bastards” who chose to pursue precisely the same sport as Eurotech. Noorman saw to it that that bobsleighers entered a top sporting atmosphere in which they can concentrate on what they are facing: performing. “I paved the way for Rintje Ritsma to join us as the team manager. He made sure via one of his acquaintances that the athletes started to train differently in the summer.

 

Last year, the lads were both athletes and mechanics who had to align, repair and maintain their own sledges. They have been relieved of this work. Actual selection competitions have been held for the bob Nederland 1 team. Twenty lads took part. We searched for sponsors to take the financial burden off these lads as you really have to set everything aside to get to the top and you also have to live a bit. Fortunately, they will also be getting support from NOC*NSF as potential Olympic candidates.”

 

Source: Limburger