Joan Haanappel

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Joan Haanappel (born November 13, 1940) is a former Dutch figure skater, competitive in the 1950s and 60s, and currently works for television as a sports reporter and skating television analyst.

She started her sports career in Den Haag (The Hague), and from the mid-1950s she and Sjoukje Dijkstra were successful in a sport which had hardly been known in The Netherlands at all until then. Initially, Haanappel was the most successful, and won the first of four Dutch championships in 1955. Though Dijkstra was the physically more powerful skater, Haanappel was more elegant and had style and limberness. Unfortunately she lost confidence in herself, which could not be solved easily in the absence of sports psychologists, and Dijkstra became the most successful of the two skaters. This did not lead to great rivalry though, as they practically grew up together and have always been friends.

Haanappel thrice won the bronze medal at the European Championships, in 1958, 1959 and 1960. She also took part in two Olympic Games; as a fifteen-year-old she came 13th in 1956 (one place behind Dijkstra), and in 1960 she came 5th. After the EC of the same year she ended her competitive career, and started skating professionally, a.o. for Holiday on Ice.[1]

Since 1975 Haanappel has been working as a television commentator, first for Studio Sport on a Dutch national channel and currently for Eurosport. She is also a member of the section board for figure skating of the KNSB, and lives in Belgium.