Ice fever melts into tears upon the announcement that the Eleven Cities Tour skating marathon isn’t happening. “We are not nature’s boss,” says a Frisian tour supervisor as the Netherlands grieves for ‘the tour of all tours’ that nearly happened. The Dutch morning papers pour out that grief for pages on end.

Life goes on after no Eleven Cities Tour: The Freedom Party opens up a hotline for complaints against Poles who are ‘stealing Dutch jobs’, government plans bottom-line benefits-style medical care which will allow hospitals to pay out dividends and Princess Máxima gets award for excelling in communication skills.

Nearly never won the race
“No Tour!” screams De Telegraaf in Frisian in a front-page splash. “It’s not good news.”That’s how tour association chairman Wiebe Wieling announced to the nation that all this week’s frenzy and fever was for nothing. “So near, so damn near. So frustrating!” Wieling said in a “husky voice”.
 
“In the weekend we’re expecting a thaw. After ten days of freezing temperatures, we’re near the finishing line. We’ve inspected the ice metre by metre…but safety is always where we draw the line.” And with those words, writes AD, came an end to the euphoria in the Netherlands. 
 
“But seasoned optimists are not relenting. They’re clutching to three glorious years of the tour when grief turned into bliss and merriment on the ice. In 1940, 1947 and 1985 a sudden thaw originally signalled the end to a round of euphoria during preparations for the Eleven Cities Tour. But weeks later, the flag was flown for a new edition.” 
 
Nrc.next is the only morning daily not to give front-page coverage to a subject unrelated to ice-skating, carnage in Syria. The other papers run a range of tour photographs - a disappointed close-up of Wieling, analysis of the ice thickness complete with maps, the army clearing an alternative route of snow and disheartened faces in a Frisian café after the announcement.
 
Cold comfort for skating marathon fans
Take heart, there is solace. An ice-cold beer. AD runs a photo of café tables set outdoors in the middle of a frozen canal in the centre of the city of Leiden. Or a walk on the Wadden Sea. Trouw shows a picture  of backpackers trekking across the wintry horizon across the salty ice. “A frozen Wadden Sea is rare,” it explains. “Salt water only freezes at a temperature of minus four.”
 
And ‘ice master’ Jan Oostenbrug  - the man who has the last word on the safety of the ice for the tour – gives a piece of advice in AD. “Just go out and enjoy the marvellous ice. There are plenty of routes to skate.”
 
De Telegraaf reports on three men who did just that and went on their own Eleven Cities Tour, without all the stamping posts, medal and cheering crowds. “ A spontaneous and improvised plan with little preparation. The Eleven Cities Tour shouldn’t depend on the decisions of the regional supervisors.”
 
And the newspaper is even organising its own alternative: “the legendary Keizer race” on the Keizersgracht ring canal in Amsterdam. The event has the added thrill of being held by dark: “The starting shot will be fired at six o’clock in the evening, with girls aged 14 and under first, followed by the boys.” 
 
Freedom Party opens hotline for polluting Poles
Nrc.next writes about a hotline opened by Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party (PVV). “In front of a cut flowers cultivator, there’s a row of cars. White registration plates, black letters. Poles are working here. Workers who, say the PVV, have taken the jobs from the Dutch.”
 
Concerned citizens can complain about the “harassment and pollution of the job market by Central and Eastern European nationals.” The Polish ambassador is indignant. “The initiative is insulting and discriminatory.”
 
One Polish man who drives a forklift truck feels his countrymen are now in the firing line after Muslims. “That Wilders also hates Turks and Moroccans. Now it’s clearly our turn.” And this bad image of Poles diminishes his chances with the Dutch girls to boot. “If I say I’m from England, I’m okay. But I tell them my true nationality, it’s ‘Oh, you’re Polish. Bye, bye.'”
 
The owner of the flower growing company, who has 150 Poles and 25 Dutch people working for him, guffaws in response. “I’d love to be able to add more Dutch workers to my pool, but they don’t want to. Dutch people aren’t motivated enough to stick on labels all day for a minimum wage.”
 
“And we do it willingly,” says one of the Polish workers ‘polluting’ the market. “Look, of course we’re taking advantage of the higher salaries here. But you do that in Poland, too. The Dutch build houses there because land is so cheap. Who’s profiting from whom?”
 
New market for investors: hospitals
If you get sick and need to be hospitalised, let’s hope your ailment is one with a good return on investment: this is the message from de Volkskrant and NRC Handelsblad in a report on the government’s plan to allow hospitals to pay out dividends from their profits.
 
“The cabinet is opening the doors of hospitals for private investment. Pension funds, private investors or foreign health care companies can gain from the capital they invest in Dutch hospitals or clinics,” writes de Volkskrant. Health Minister Edith Schippers is proposing a change in legislation at today’s parliamentary session. 
 
“Hospitals have been finding more and more ways to generate finance since 2006, as they’re being less supported by public funding. So it’s only reasonable to allow them to choose their own financers,” says the minister in NRC. 
 
“The danger with paying out dividends in health care is that hospitals will end up doing the more lucrative operations to maximise turnover,” warns a corporate finance lecturer in Groningen University. “The ordinary man in the street ends up paying more.”
 
Máxima princess of communication
“Reform and modernisation of the monarchy are prerequisites for its continuation,” says Princess Máxima, who is married to Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, in de Volkskrant. The Argentinian princess won the Machiavelli Prize, awarded to people who excel in public communication, for her role in the modernisation process.
 
“My husband and I are only able to do our work thanks to the authority of my mother-in-law [Queen Beatrix] which she has built up in 32 years.” The royal team of three “functions well together”.
 
Máxima said she hesitated about accepting the honour. In 2007, one of her speeches stirred up a huge commotion when she claimed that Dutch culture boiled down to “serving just one biscuit with your tea.” She referred back to her gaffe in her speech yesterday: “Sometimes a biscuit with the tea leaves a heavy feeling in your stomach.” 
 
Her audience chuckled. More comfort for Eleven Cities Tour grief.