Atje Keulen-Deelstra

Atje Keulen-Deelstra

Personal information
Born	(1938-12-31)31 December 1938 Grou, Netherlands
Died	22 February 2013(2013-02-22) (aged 74) Leeuwarden, Netherlands
Height	1.68 m (5 ft 6 in)
Weight	60 kg (130 lb)
Sport
Country	Netherlands
Sport	Speed skating
Medal record Women's speed skating Representing  Netherlands Olympic Games 1972 Sapporo 1,000 m 1972 Sapporo 1,500 m 1972 Sapporo 3,000 m World Allround Championships 1970 West-Allis Allround 1972 Heerenveen Allround 1973 Strömsund Allround 1974 Heerenveen Allround World Sprint Championships 1970 West-Allis Sprint 1973 Oslo Sprint 1974 Innsbruck Sprint European Championships 1972 Inzell Allround 1973 Brandbu Allround 1974 Alma-Ata Allround Dutch Allround championships 1970 Allround 1972 Allround 1973 Allround 1974 Allround 1971 Allround Dutch Marathon Championships 1975 Artificial Ice 1976 Artificial Ice 1977 Artificial Ice 1978 Artificial Ice 1980 Artificial Ice

Atje Keulen-Deelstra (31 December 1938 – 22 February 2013) was a Dutch speed skater, who was a four-time World Allround Champion between the age of 32 and 36.

Atje Deelstra was born as the eldest of four siblings in a farmers family. As a teenager she did gymnastics, athletics and basketball, but finally chose speed skating. At the age of 16, she already won a junior title of Friesland and several cash prizes in the Netherlands. In 1962, she married Jelle Keulen (23 November 1931 – 28 July 2011), a farmer with whom she had three children born between 1963 and 1966.

When the Thialf arena opened in 1967 in Heerenveen, Keulen-Deelstra went there to work on a comeback. She quickly made much progress, but she was told over and over again that she was too old. Not a member of the Dutch speed skating team, she won the Dutch Allround Championships in 1970 at the age of 32, beating Dutch skating team members such as Ans Schut and multiple world champion Stien Kaiser. That same year, she became World Allround Champion. More successes soon followed when in 1972, she became Dutch, European, and World Allround Champion, a feat she then repeated the following two years (1973 and 1974). In addition, at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, she won one silver and two bronze medals.

In 1975, Keulen-Deelstra switched to marathon skating and she became Dutch Champion in that discipline five times. She won her last Dutch Marathon Championships title in 1980 when she was 42 years old. In 1997, just a few weeks after having been injured in a traffic accident, Keulen-Deelstra participated in the . She died of a cerebral infarction in 2013.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, her daughter Boukje Keulen (born 2 December 1963) also was a successful skater. Like her mother, Boukje went from short track through long track ("regular") to marathon speed skating.

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