If you’ve never watched a Winter Olympics in the Netherlands before, it can feel like stepping into a two-dimensional parallel universe.

While the rest of the world is enthralled by athletes hurtling down mountainsides on skis, in bobsleighs and on the terrifying tea-trays of luge, the Dutch prefer to keep things on the level and indulge in their national obsession with speed skating.

For two and a half weeks, starting from the opening ceremony on February 6, names such as Femke Kok, Jenning de Boo, Kjeld Nuis and Jutta Leerdam will fuel conversations in households, on talk shows and around water coolers.

Beanie-hatted commentators will talk animatedly about crossovers, lane changes and whether the ice is faster after the dweil, when the rink is swept clear of debris halfway through the programme.

At some point someone will bring up the time four-time Olympic champion Sven Kramer missed out on a fifth gold when he was disqualified for skating in the wrong lane because of a mix-up by his coach.

Seven out of 10 people in the Netherlands tuned in to NOS’s coverage of the last Winter Games in Beijing, watching an average of nine hours each – despite a seven-hour time difference.

Schouten treble

The high point was Irene Schouten’s triumph in the women’s 3000m, the first of her three gold medals, when 1.7 million people cheered on the 29-year-old from their living-rooms and breakfast tables on a Saturday morning.

The Netherlands came away from Beijing with six gold medals on the ice, including three for Schouten, four silvers and two bronzes.

This year 18 of the 39 Dutch athletes in Milan will be speed skaters, with another nine hoping to win medals in the kamikaze condensed version known as short track. Suzanne Schulting, a triple Olympic champion on the short oval, will feature in both.

Die-hard skating fan Johan van Buren, who is heading to his sixth Olympics, said: “The atmosphere during a skating event is always fantastic. It’s all about performance and the fans cheer on every skater, not just those from their own country.”

Kok hot favourite

The Dutch squad for Milan is once again packed with gold medal contenders, but the strongest favourite is Femke Kok in the women’s sprints.

The 25-year-old from Opsterland set a new world record for 500m of 36.09 seconds in November, taking a quarter of a second off a mark that had stood for 12 years, and is unbeaten in her last 23 races at the shortest distance.

Kok is also going in the 1,000 and 1,500 metres, where she will face competition from her team-mates, Jutta Leerdam and Antoinette De Jong.

Leerdam is better known outside the Netherlands as the fiancé of YouTube personality turned boxer Jake Paul and boasts a 5 million-strong Instagram following, but her record on the ice is even more impressive.

She won a silver medal at 1,000m in Beijing and will be hoping to go one better as she tries to add an Olympic title to her collection of 13 world and European gold medals.

Takagi threat

Their biggest rival for gold is the Japanese defending champion Miho Takagi, who began her quest for a third Olympic gold with a six-week training camp on a holiday park in Noord-Holland.

De Jong took bronze over 3,000m in Pyeongchang eight years ago and 1,500 in Beijing. This year she is concentrating on the shorter distance, while world champion Joy Beune missed out on a place as she could only finish fourth at the Dutch national trials.

Beune, who has won four of the five world cup rounds over her favourite distance, will be looking to make amends at the 3,000m. Marijke Groenewoud is competing in both the longer distances, but her best chance of gold is in the mass start, where she is a double world champion.

Versatile Schulting

Suzanne Schulting will also contest the 1,000m as she tries to become the first man or woman to win Olympic titles on the big oval and at shorttrack.

She will not be going for a third shorttrack gold over 1,000 metres, however, after the selectors opted for the Velzenboer sisters, Xandra and Michelle, and Selma Poutsma. Schulting’s only individual outing at shorttrack will be over 1,500m, where she won bronze four years ago.

Xandra Velzenboer is a former world champion over 500m and 1,000m, while Michelle is reigning Dutch champion over all three individual disciplines.

Nuis controversy

In the men’s long track events, veteran Kjeld Nuis will be hoping to close out his illustrious career with a fourth Olympic title.

The selection of the 36-year-old for the 1,500m was shrouded in controversy after Tim Prins pipped him to third place at this year’s national championships, which act as the Olympic trials.

But the selectors picked Nuis, who won gold at the distance in Pyeongchang and Beijing and holds the world record from 2019, because Olympic rules only allow a maximum of nine men and nine women per country, and the Dutch wanted to include Marcel Bosker in the team pursuit trio.

Nuis has also qualified for the 1,000m, which he won in 2018, while Prins was left to console himself with a junk food blowout and a long ride on his mountain bike.

Joep Wennemars won the 1,500m at the trials and is also competing in the 500m and 1,000m, while Jenning de Boo will need to rediscover his early season form if he wants to get among the medals over the shorter distances.

But both will have to overcome the American favourite Jordan Stolz. The 21-year-old has been in imposing form this season, winning 15 out of 19 World Cup races across the three sprints, and could try for five gold medals in Milan.

Jorrit Bergsma will line up in the 10,000m and mass start a week after celebrating his 40^th birthday and three months after he became the oldest ever Dutch national champion over the distance. The champion from 2014 will have his work cut out to get among the medals this time.

Skeleton Bos

On the shorttrack arena, Jens van ’t Wout, who will carry the team’s flag at the opening ceremony, is among the favourites in all three individual events. He will be joined by his brother Melle, Teun Boer, Itzhak de Laat and Friso Emons.

Dutch hopes are not entirely confined to the skating events. Kimberley Bos, the other team flag carrier, made history in Beijing as the first Dutch medallist away from the ice rink when she won bronze in skeleton bob.

The 32-year-old from Ede will be hoping to be on the podium again in Milan, but her best World Cup result so far this year is a fourth place in Altenberg.

The Dutch are also sending a figure skating pair to the Olympics for the first time, in the shape of Michel Tsiba and Russian-born Daria Danilova, as well as two-man and four-man men’s bobsleigh teams.

Melissa Peperkamp is the Netherlands’ best hope for a medal in the snowboarding events, where she is joined by Romy van Vreden, Michelle Dekker and Glenn de Blois.

But hopes of an unlikely Dutch medal in downhill skiing were crushed when the former giant slalom champion Marcel Hirscher, who used to compete for Austria but switched allegiance to the Netherlands two years ago, was unable to recover from a series of injuries.