Reinier Paping is given his own stamp
2 January 2013 at 13:30 CET - The Hague/Zwolle – Today, Reinier Paping was given his own stamp by Ard Korporaal from PostNL. On 18 January it will be exactly 50 years ago that Reinier Paping won the 1963 edition of the famous eleven-city skating marathon. PostNL honours the skater with his own stamp sheet to commemorate his legendary win.
Designer Ingmar Birza. “I made a choice from different photo archives. This photo by Henk Blansjaar eventually came out as the best, a nice picture of Reinier Paping skating underneath a bridge in Witmarsum.
The eleven-city skating marathon
In over one hundred years the Eleven Cities Tour took place fifteen times. The most heroic of all tours was the 18 January 1963 edition, which was won by Reinier Paping. Due to the harsh weather conditions, only 69 of the more than 9,000 participants in the leisure skating tour received the prestigious token (a little cross, extended to those who reach the finish in time). Among the participants in the speed skating match the majority was forced to retire – only 10 per cent made it to the finish line. Reinier Paping, born in Dedemsvaart in 1931, was the fastest of them. It had taken the gym teacher 10 hours and 59 minutes to complete the tour, 22 minutes ahead of the runner-up. In the year 2000 viewers of the Dutch TV sports programme Studio Sport voted Reinier Paping the individual sports person who had put up the most impressive sports performance of the twentieth century.
The Eleven Cities Tour is a 200-kilometre skating tour along eleven cities in the province of Friesland, which has been organised by the Royal Association of the Eleven Frisian Cities.
Availability
The stamps are available at Bruna shops, at Collect Club in Groningen and online via www.postnl.nl/collectclub. The stamps have an indefinite term of validity. The designation on these stamps is Nederland 1, which means that they are for items of mail weighing up to 20 grams destined for addresses in the Netherlands.
About PostNL
PostNL is the inventive partner in the world of sending and receiving. We have been so for 200 years already. We are primarily active in the fields of mail, parcels and e-commerce, but we also offer services in the areas of data and document management, direct marketing and fulfilment. Outside the Netherlands, we are active in Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium and Luxemburg. PostNL employs a total of approximately 66,000 people. In 2012 our revenues reached almost € 4.3 billion.
We like to stay ahead of things. We are the most modern postal company in the world. We are proud of that. We are an example to the rest of the world in the automatic sorting of mail, we are the first listed postal company and we are the international champion in corporate responsibility, as leader in our sector in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index 2011.