A fairytale revival for Dutch Olympic fortunes in Vancouver, the opposition savage the divided cabinet, the power struggles behind the cabinet crisis, ad campaigns make Dutch Railways blush and a carnival prank ends in a bloodbath.

Skating medals lift Netherlands’ Olympic spirits
The smiling faces of Dutch Olympic skaters Annette Gerritsen and Laurine van Riessen beam out at the readers of De Telegraaf and de Volkskrant today. The Dutch athletes delighted the skating-mad Netherlands by taking silver and bronze in the women’s 1000-metre speed-skating event last night. “Annette and Laurine sparkle in the 1000 m” crows De Telegraaf. De Volkskrant notes that these were “the second and third medals for the Netherlands after five days without success”.

The Dutch campaign in Vancouver had got off to a flying start with Sven Kramer’s resounding victory in the men’s 5000 metres speed-skating race, but the Dutch skaters had missed out on every medal chance since. Frustration reached a peak on Wednesday when three athletes finished just outside the top three in the men’s 1000 metres. The coach sums up their sentiments in AD: “I’m furious. Not at our lads but at the result. Fourth, fifth and sixth – it doesn’t get any worse than that. Life’s a bitch.”

Annette Gerritsen’s medal-winning performance – only two hundredths of a second removed from gold – is not only a turn around for the Dutch team’s fortunes but also a triumph over personal adversity. Only days early she was the tearful embodiment of sporting disaster, crashing out of the 500m sprint on the first bend after a blistering start that could have put her in medal contention.

As De Telegraaf says “The distance between joy and sorrow is never smaller than at the Olympic Games. And no one knows that better than Annette Gerritsen after a crazy week in Vancouver.” Never ones to hold back, the paper’s sports journalists describe her silver performance as “a fairytale resurrection” and pronounce “the sad little duckling transformed into a brilliant swan”.

Opposition pummels punch-drunk cabinet
The big story in all the papers continues to be the political crisis that is threatening to tear the Dutch government apart. “Cabinet headed for the abyss” is AD’s take on the situation, predicting that “the chance that the Netherlands will still have a government this evening seems minimal”. After a series of high profile spats and tortuous compromises on everything from pensions to Iraq, it now looks like the uneasy partnership between the Christian Democrats and Labour is teetering on the brink over whether to continue the Dutch mission in Afghanistan.

De Volkskrant talks of “an explosive emergency debate on Afghanistan” in which “the opposition drove a wedge between the members of the cabinet” and notes that “what initially seemed to be a short debate turned into a pitched battle that ran until midnight … The opposition smelled blood and the quarrelsome cabinet was barely able to maintain the pretence of speaking with one voice.”

D66 Democrat leader Alexander Pechtold dismissed the cabinet’s attempts to regroup as “playing a game of musical chairs around the truth” while Socialist leader Agnes Kant concluded that “the cabinet is clearly in the throes of a divorce”. De Telegraaf also focuses on the opposition offensive, as they accused the government of “a total lack of credibility”. It quotes the ominous words of Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders, who spoke of “a thick stench of decay hanging over the cabinet”.

A cabinet stalled by political wrangling
While the cabinet crisis is ostensibly about Afghanistan, there seems little doubt in the press that political manoeuvring ahead of the forthcoming local elections has everything to do with it. As De Telegraaf puts it, “few in The Hague now doubt that this cabinet is a lost cause … the most important question in the corridors of power last night was who will get the blame.” The paper talks to military spokesmen who “wipe the floor with Labour for abusing the Afghan mission for electoral gain”. Speculation is rife as to how the power play will pan out. NRC Handelsblad points out that the latest ultimatum issued by Labour leader Wouter Bos “is popular with the public” but according to De Telegraaf, the Christian Democrats think the whole affair has left Bos too damaged to force a break.

It’s not just about the tussle for votes between Labour and the Christian Democrats though. De Volkskrant focuses on the power struggle within the Christian Democrats and hints that while Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende stands to lose face if his cabinet crumbles, the party’s Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has everything to gain from all this commotion. Little wonder then that “while Mr Balkenende is trying to put out the fires, Mr Verhagen is stoking them”. The paper notes that “where the PM visibly and audibly suffered during yesterday’s cross-examination in parliament, Mr Verhagen came across as self-assured … and sometimes statesman-like”.

Ad campaigns leave Dutch Railways blushing
The folk at Dutch Railways have found themselves facing a couple of censorship issues this week. De Telegraaf reports that the company is irritated by 15,000 copies of a magazine that circulated in trains throughout the country yesterday, featuring 11 large colour photographs of anonymous women flashing their breasts. “It’s an adolescent joke,” admits a spokesman for the Rotterdam-based advertising agency behind the dubious publication. “We were having a few beers and came up with the idea of a magazine full of breasts.” So much for the creative process. Making their dream come true didn’t prove all that difficult or expensive: they dispatched two photographers to offer young women 50 euros to lift up their tops for an anonymous photo and … hey presto. “We were amazed that women were prepared to cooperate, even on a busy shopping street.”

Meanwhile, Dutch Railways has rankled the organisers of the exhibition Not Normal in Amsterdam by banning their promotional poster, which shows the image of a man with an amputated arm and leg. The exhibition joined forces with a disabled rights group to organise a protest, calling attention to the fact that the company has no scruples when it comes to hosting ad campaigns featuring bare bottoms and a close-up of rock star Anouk with a bloodied face. “These images are allowed in stations, but not our picture of a man with a disability. It beggars belief,” says disabled rights campaigner Gert Bakker. “As a disabled person you learn to be thick skinned about these things, but it still feels like a personal attack.”

Carnival prank ends in bloodbath
AD tells the sorry tale of a man who smuggled 50 finches into a pub during last weekend's Carnival celebrations as a joke. The paper reports: "What should have been a day of fun turned into mass slaughter" as the frantic birds, once released, smashed into the windows of the crowded pub, were trampled underfoot or died of fright. Only a handful survived the ordeal. They are now being looked after at the animal shelter in Breda. One of them – dubiously christened Stumpy – had to have its left foot amputated.

An animal care worker described the incident as one of the most bizarre cases he had ever encountered, but added ruefully that "people all too often play jokes involving animals". He gives the example of a piglet on the dance floor at a recent wedding and a student prank which involved releasing 50 white rabbits in the woods, only a few of which survived. "It's just crazy. These people really have no idea what kind of suffering they are inflicting on these animals,” he sighs.