Grass track races in Hilversum

Just like other years we again made a motorcycle stamp to sell as a souvenir at the Filateliebeurs, which has been held in Hilversum for several years now. After the choice in the past years always fell on a fumbled image of a motorcyclist, the choice had now fallen on an image of an old poster, printed in 1943 for a motorcycle grass track race on the trotting track in Hilversum.

In the years just before the Second World War there was a shortage of places where motorcylce races could be kept on the road. For this reason the races where often moved to places where could be raced on closed tracks. Often this were trotting centers, which at that time still consisted of grass tracks. In the region of Het Gooi races were held on tracks like Valkeveen (Naarden), Cruysbergen (Bussum), Birkhoven (Amersfoort) and the Sportpark in Hilversum, which was designed by architect Dudok in 1919.
The Sportpark consisted of an athletic field with a 400 meters track, a tennis park and a horse track of 950 meters with a jumping field. In 1928 the horse activities of the Olympic games were held here.

The trotting track with on the background the
atlethics field and tennis courts

In the war years motorcycle races were forbidden, but in 1943 Hilversum was the first place where again a race was held. In 1944 the races were again forbidden.
Of the races of 43 a poster has survived. Because the place where the Filateliebeurs is held now, the Dudok Arena, is on the place of the old trotting center, the idea came up to use this poster for the MFN stamp.

Also this year PostNL used a special postmark on the fair, therefore the MFN had provided a postcard to make a maximum card with the personalized stamp.
On the card in the lower left corner the present Dudok town hall of Hilversum, in the middle the old town hall and on the right the Dudok Arena, that is also found in the PostNL postmark. Further images from all stamps that we had made in the past for the Filateliebeurs.

Hans de Kloet

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