Frans Otten Stadion
At the start of the event the top of the TODAY page said "Daily
reports from Frans Otten", which elicited a couple of "who is Frans
Otten" queries ...
No, this particular Fran Otten isn't a person but a stadium, named
after one of Holland's great athletes. It's five years old and has
already been the scene of many great squash championships, including
the Women's World Teams, the European Team Championships, the Dutch
Junior Open, and now of course the Forexx Dutch Open.
The owner, Ger Koopman used to have a squash club on the other side
of the 1928 Olympic stadium, a few hundred metres away, but that was
sold off and demolished and this new facility built to replace it.
It's run by Ger and his two sons Patrick and Martijn ("they do all
the work, of course", says Ger), who actually live on the premises,
in penthouses on the fifth level.
It's a huge place - 21 squash courts, 8 indoor and 14 outdoor tennis
courts, fitness suites, dance studios, bars and restaurants, and who
knows what else - I haven't explored it all yet!
Because of the price of land in Amsterdam the whole place is raised
a few metres above ground level, which forms the car park.
For a very basic description, level one has the tennis courts and
the main squash court, on level two we have ten squash courts, level
three has the viewing galleries above those courts, and level four
has another set of ten courts directly above them.
Anyway, it's a tremendous place and it's going to get really busy
over the next three days, but for now we'll just let the pictures do
the talking ...
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