Irene Schouten

Multi-gold-medal-winning Irene Scouten is a Dutch speed skater who currently holds the Olympic record for both the 3000m and 5000m races, having won both races as part of her triumphant 2022 Winter Olympics performance in Beijing. She also won the mass start race and helped the Dutch team to win bronze in the team pursuit. She also won three gold medals at the 2022 European Championships in Heerenveen and can add those to her previous European gold and her four World Championship gold medals. In 2021, she and her family were the subjects of a Dutch TV documentary called Life is Not Always About Tulips.

Schouten was born in the Dutch village of Zwaagdijk-Oost in June 1992. She took up skating aged eight, and trained in inline skating and figure skating before finding her niche as a marathon speed skater. She first came to the world’s attention when she won gold at the 2014/15 World Single Distances Championship and won several World Cup events. She has been a strong presence at the World Cup ever since, and had her most successful season yet in 2021/22, winning eight out of nine races and finishing as the overall leader of the Long Distances category.

Schouten won bronze at her first Winter Olympics in 2018, but her performance in Beijing in 2022 was incendiary: she finished as the most successful Dutch athlete of the entire tournament thanks to her three gold medals and two new Olympic records. Coming just a month after her dominating performance at the 2022 European Championships, this sealed her reputation as one of the finest speed skaters in the world today.