The news arrives from The Hague like a gale off the North Sea: Dutch royalty, waving madly from a balcony, celebrating a double World Cup triumph in hockey and speed skating. Meanwhile, in rainy old England, we sit brooding over our own sporting ambitions like a miser counting his pennies. A nation that once invented half the games on Earth now watches a country a third its size win two global titles in a single weekend. This is not merely a failure of funding or coaching. It is a cultural rot, a decadence that would make Gibbon weep.
Consider the Dutch. They are a small, pragmatic people who long ago understood that sport is not a distraction from national purpose but a distillation of it. Their victories come from a system that prizes grassroots organisation, technical precision, and a collective will that makes our own fragmented, celebrity-obsessed approach look like a village fete. The British government, in its infinite wisdom, talks of “sporting dominance” as if it were a policy paper to be drafted rather than a civilisation to be built.
We have lost the plot. Where once we exported games as a form of soft power, we now import Olympic cyclists and tennis stars from other nations, claiming them as our own. Our football teams are mercenary armies. Our rugby union is a private school hobby. The Dutch, by contrast, train their children in the wet cold of a polder, not in the dry warmth of an indoor academy. They do not confuse participation with excellence.
The monarchy’s presence at these wins is instructive. The Dutch royals are not merely figureheads; they are symbols of a nation that still believes in collective achievement. Our own royal family, through no fault of their own, presides over a kingdom where sport is increasingly a spectator vice, consumed through betting apps and social media highlights. We cheer the victory but forget the work.
If Britain truly wants sporting dominance, it must stop treating sport as a branch of the entertainment industry. It must revive the municipal swimming baths, the school playing fields sold off to developers, the local clubs that were the sinews of national pride. Until then, we will remain a nation of nostalgic armchair generals, while the Dutch, with their royals and their double victories, remind us what a real sporting culture looks like.