IMAGINE you are a sportsman who spends your entire life preparing for the most challenging. and gruelling race of your career, knowing that it may never come, but that if it does, you will get, at most, 48 hours' notice.

Such a race is the Elfstedentocht - the 11 towns tour - a 200-kilo-metre (125-mile), six-hour, skating marathon round the frozen canals of northern Holland on the coldest day of the year - with a chill of minus 20 degrees C.

It must be one of the hardest races in sport. Competitors have been known to die of exposure, some have lost toes from frostbite, others find the sweat freezing across their eye sockets.

Conditions - the canals have to be frozen to a depth of 15 centimetres along the entire length of the course - are rarely right for the race, which is why the go-ahead is given so late and why Saturday was only the 15th time it had taken place since its inauguration in 1909.

This weekend's race was the first since 1986, so adjudicator Henk Kroes's announcement on Thursday: "It giet oan" - it's on - launched an immediate wave of national excitement.

It brought perhaps half a million Netherlanders from their beds for the 5.30 a.m. start in the obscure little town of Leeuwarden, in Friesland province.

It is a race of which is little known outside Holland - no non-Dutchman has ever won it - but it obsesses and excites the Dutch like no other sporting event. More than 16,000 of them laced on their skates on Saturday, hundreds of thousands lined the route and the rest of the country watched non-stop coverage on television.

For Bert Verduin, the Dutch. champion, a 32-year-old commercial flower grower, known in the local press as the Napoleon of the frozen water, Saturday's race could not have come at a worse time. He had just won the national championships, an altogether lesser event, the previous Monday and it always takes days to recover.

"Even going upstairs hurts. I need a week, but there's nothing to be done. I have been waiting for this for 11 years and if it's now, that's just the way it's got to be. I haven't got enough strength in my legs. .. I don't expect to win, but I do expect to be one of the first."

Most of the champions seem to be farmers. It used to be said that to train for the Elfstedentocht you needed to skate 100 km three times a week and then go home to milk the cows, standing up to strengthen the back muscles.

As dawn broke, the skaters moved gracefully across the flat landscape at a steady 20 mph, in chains of a dozen or more for company on the long journey. At each of the 11 small towns on the route they had cards stamped to show they had passed through.

This is no smooth, Olympic course. The ice is pitted and cracked, with flurries of snow sweeping across and crowds sometimes pressing so close that there is a gap of only six or eight feet. For the low bridges, the skaters had to duck.

Every time it has been raced, there has been an engaging mix of rank amateurism and ferocious competitiveness. The first race was not run until 1909, when there were 23 competitors. In 1912, there was a thaw, so some in the race took a train to the finishing line.

In 1917, the winner Coen de Koning - much hated because he came from far away Arnhem - threw sand behind him as he skated and disabled the competition. In 1940, five skaters, in a gesture of wartime solidarity, crossed the finishing line together, holding hands, and were disqualified. In 1942, three competitors froze to death. In 1954, half the field pulled up when they saw a sign saying End, without reading the small print underneath: "in 500 metres".

In 1963, there was a blizzard so ferocious only 70 of the 10,000 starters finished. After that, the race wasn't run for 22 years.

In 1985 and 1986, it was won by Evert van Bentham, a cheese farmer, whose brother Henk was one of this year's favourites, but since then, until this year, it has never been possible to stage it.

Pressure for it to take place again had been mounting. This year, if the weather was right, it had to go ahead.

Gradually, the first dozen skaters drew clear of the field. Then, as they swept along the bleak canals, across the flat landscape, past the little towns with their swaying oompah bands and their cheering spectators, the leaders came down to six.

After six-and-a-half hours, the front runners began to sprint for the line with the wind at last behind them. And at last, there was the yellow line across the ice, passed first by rank outsider Henk Angenant, a 29-year-old brussels-sprout farmer. His time of 6 hours, 49 minutes, 18 seconds was a minute slower than the record set in 1985.

The favourite Erik Hulzebosch finished second and in deep distress. "Go away, I don't want to talk to anyone," the 29 year-old crane driver yelled at the cameramen. Bert Verduin was philosophical. He came third after all: "I had to slow down. I had a lot of problems with the wind. I am sad I didn't win."

Around him, the party had already started.

What you race for is a small silver cross - gold if you win - and the honour. And, if you are Mr Angenant, the sponsorship deals.