Dirk Boest Gips (30 July 1864 – 11 November 1920) was a Dutch

sport shooter Shooting sports is a group of competitive and recreational sporting activities involving proficiency tests of accuracy, precision and speed in shooting — the art of using ranged weapons, mainly small arms (firearms and airguns, in forms such ...

who competed in the early 20th century in

pistol A pistol is a type of handgun, characterised by a gun barrel, barrel with an integral chamber (firearms), chamber. The word "pistol" derives from the Middle French ''pistolet'' (), meaning a small gun or knife, and first appeared in the Englis ...

shooting. He participated in

Shooting at the 1900 Summer Olympics At the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, many Shooting sports, shooting events were featured within the concurrent Exposition Universelle (1900), 1900 Exposition Universelle, but only eight events currently are considered as "Olympic" by Internatio ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and won a

bronze medal A bronze medal in sports and other similar areas involving competition is a medal made of bronze awarded to the third-place finisher of contests or competitions such as the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, etc. The outright winner receives ...

with the Dutch pistol team, scoring the most points for his team. He was born in

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Western Netherlands, lo ...

and died in

The Hague The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...

. For a long time his real name wasn't known. The official protocol listed him as van Haan and almost all the sources referenced him as Gerardus van Haan or Gerardus van Loon. For about 40 years, Dutch Olympic historian Anthony Bijkerk had searched the name of the 'missing shooter' (as he himself named van Haan) until in the January 2000 he published an article in the ''

Journal of Olympic History The International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH) is a non-profit organization founded in 1991 with the purpose of promoting and studying the Olympic Movement and the Olympic Games. The majority of recent books on the Olympic Games have been ...

'' with evidence that the 'missing shooter' was Dirk Boest Gips.

References

External links

*
Gerardus Van Laan at databaseOlympics.com
1864 births 1920 deaths Dutch male sport shooters Olympic bronze medalists for the Netherlands Olympic shooters for the Netherlands Shooters at the 1900 Summer Olympics Sportspeople from Dordrecht Olympic medalists in shooting Medalists at the 1900 Summer Olympics {{Netherlands-sportshooting-bio-stub