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From the Olympics web site during the wintergames in Salt Lake City 2002:
 Salt Lake update
Jan Bos (pronounced YAHN BOSS) continued the Dutch speed skating dominance at the Games, finishing behind teammate and gold medalist Gerard van Velde. The silver was Bos' second Olympic medal.
Nagano silver
Bos was a rising star before the 1998 Nagano Games and came home with a silver medal and a fourth-place finish. Despite the impressive showing, he says his biggest surprise was not winning gold in the 1000 meters because he had placed in the top three at five of the six World Cup races prior to the Games. In Nagano, he finished .07 seconds behind teammate Ids Postma, who took gold as the Dutch team went 1-2-4. In another near-sweep, Bos placed fourth in the 1500 - a race he wasn't even supposed to skate. But when teammate Erben Wennemars fell in the second race of the 500 and injured his shoulder, Bos was called in as a replacement. His 1500 time in Nagano was more than a second off the bronze medal pace of teammate Rintje Ristma and 1.88 seconds behind Norway's Aadne Sondraal, who set a world record to win and leave Holland stacked at 2-3-4-6.
Records past
Bos and Japan's Manabu Horii were the first to break the world record for the 1000 in clap skates, finishing with identical times (1:10.63) in Calgary, Canada, on November 22, 1997, and lowering Horii's old mark by 1:04. The record was broken one day later. Then, on February 21, 1999, Bos again skated the fastest 1000 in the world in Calgary - a year after winning the Olympic silver medal in Nagano. This time, his 1:08.55 stood for 325 days until Canada's Jeremy Wotherspoon skimmed .06 seconds from it.
Original all-arounder
When he made the transition from the junior to senior team, Bos was transformed into a sprinter. He says he wasn't happy because he had been the 1994 junior all-around world champion and wanted his future to be more versatile. He says, "When they told me, 'You have the potential to be a great sprinter,' I said, 'No way, man.'" But he made the best of it. In his sophomore season (1996-1997), he earned his first top-three finish. Later that year, at the World Single Distance Championships in Warsaw, Poland, he placed second in the 1000, .41 seconds behind Aadne Sondraal. After the Olympic Winter Games, success continued. He twice placed second behind Wotherspoon in the World Cup 1000 standings and won the 1999 World Single Distance title in the same event. Now he competes for DSB, a team formed in 2000-2001 that includes Ids Postma and Marianne Timmer. Bos was the only sprinter on the team and essentially trained alone. The solitude took its toll. At the 2001 World Single Distance Championships in Salt Lake City, he said, "I'm tired. 2000-2001 has been really bad because it's been just me, so I'll be hungry next year."
This page in Dutch.
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