Piet Kleine - Short Biography

Short Biography

At the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Piet Kleine became Olympic Champion on the 10,000 m, beating world record holder Sten Stensen – who won silver – in a close race. This was a reversal of the roles in the Olympic 5,000 m (which had been held three days earlier), in which Stensen had won gold and Kleine silver. In both the 5,000 m and the 10,000 m, Dutch – later French – speed skater Hans van Helden (then world record holder on the 5,000 m) won bronze. Later that same year (1976), Kleine broke 4 worlds records (including Van Helden's 5,000 m world record) and also became World Allround Champion.

Kleine participated again in the Winter Olympics of Lake Placid (1980), winning Olympic silver on the 10,000 m behind Eric Heiden. He ended his career as a speed skater in 1981 and started a successful career in amateur bicycle racing. In 1985, as a member of the Dutch national team, he finished 5th at the World Championships on the 100 km team time trial.

In 1986, Kleine became a marathon skater. This led to some controversy in 1997 when he finished 5th in the Elfstedentocht, but was subsequently removed from the final list of results because of a missing stamp on his stamp card. The controversy lay in the fact that, afterwards, it became clear that in the past several winners of the Elfstedentocht had missed stamps too, but were still declared the winners.

Kleine ended his skating career in 2001 and continued his profession as a postman, a profession he had always kept alongside his sports careers. In his free time, Kleine is the leader of a team of marathon skaters.

He later coached Dan Jansen.