[3] Mulier was the major pioneer in establishing and promoting cricket and football in the Netherlands as he founded clubs in both sports.

[2][5] Willem Johan Herman Mulier was born on 10 March 1865 in the Frisian town of Witmarsum, and he grew up in a well-to-do, respectable family in Friesland.

[2][7] An ancestor of the family, Jan Mulier, fought alongside Louis I, Prince of Condé, in the French Wars of Religion in the 16th century.

[5] In 1869, his father founded the IJsclub Haarlem (Haarlem Ice Club) in Omstreken and in that same winter he instructed his servant and housekeeper to put the four-year-old Pim on skates in the ditch in front of the house to train speed skating together with his older brother Pieter and a house boy.

He practiced a lot of them while growing up and thus developed into an all-around athlete who competes in different sports such as football, skating, running, cycling, tennis, cricket, and bandy.

[6] Pim Mulier had his first contact with football while studying at Ramsgate in England, and he quickly developed an interest in the sport as he become one of the best youth players of the college.

[5] After negotiations were held, the mayor gave them permission to use it "as a wrestling arena for Pim Mulier and his companions" ("worstelstrijdperk voor Pim Mulier en zijn kornuiten"), and he used the term "wrestling arena" because initially, the members of HFC played football according to the rugby rules of the game, but from 1883 onwards, it was mainly football according to English rules.

Many people, including Mulier, did not like that, so he set up his own sports clubs, such as the NVAB, NVB, and NAB, which were mostly based on the English model, which he had experienced while studying there.

[2] On 26 February 1888, he and his friend Klaas Pander participated in the International Distance Trial for Amateurs, which was held between Haarlem and Leiden on the Leidsche Trekvaart, which means that about thirty kilometers had to be driven.

It was the first long-distance skating competition ever held and Mulier was beaten only by Pander, who drove 3 minutes and 15 seconds faster than his friend.

Remarkably, he was not present in the inaugural tournament in 1909 and was also absent from the roll call in 1912, but he participated in the third edition of the Elfstedentocht, on 27 January 1917, at the age of 51, and he was able to complete it, thus achieving the cross that he himself had designed in 1909.

[1][8] Later that day, he gave a speech during the award ceremony and carried out the kick-off with Janna van der Weg, who was the only woman to complete the tour.

In 1891, Mulier, with the assistance of Charles Goodman Tebbutt, which he had met in 1883 in Ramsgate, introduced bandy (a combination of football and hockey played on ice) to the Netherlands.

[16] To this end, they added Bandy to the skating clubs of Amsterdam and Haarlem and then recruit members who were willing to go through the schedule of both jobs.

[17] Mulier laid at his villa in The Hague an impressive botanical garden, which even students from Wageningen are drawn to come to this day.

He presented a sketch to Cornelis Jacob Sickesz, Director-General of Agriculture, who incorporated Mulier's thoughts into a new law.

[2] Due to his good background, Pim did not have to work to earn a living, and in fact, he only had one paid job throughout his life.

[8] In addition to his journalistic activities, he wrote and published several other books under the pseudonym Pim Pernel, which he had used since 1935 as an alias for Het Vaderland.

After having made a study trip through British India from 1905 to 1907, he returned to the Netherlands in the last year and was approached as an editor for Indies affairs at the Algemeen Handelsblad.

He thus pioneered work for various branches of sport, which Mulier has always regarded as a means of good development of body and character and a noble form of leisure.

[citation needed] To him, sport was an instrument of nationalism: it contributed towards the strength, vitality and character of "Young Holland".

[18] In his biography, Rewijk argues that after 1910 Mulier lost interest in developing sports in the Netherlands because he was disappointed by the rapid changes in society.

Later he regularly looked back to the early years of the sport, which, according to him, were characterized by less roughness of the game, more respect, and a sportier attitude on the part of the practitioner.

[5] Mulier's departure from the Netherlands in 1899 was preceded by family disputes: at first, his mother, now widowed, had rejected his new marriage in 1895 as she considered it a "mesalliance".

[citation needed] His brother Pieter led a "frivolous" life as a single bon vivant and his sister Eldina feared that the family tradition of lucrative marriages would not be continued.

[8] Numerous sports officials from the associations that Mulier had founded spoke at the funeral, such as KNSB chairman Mr. Vliegen, who paid tribute to him.

[5] Mulier has often been awarded for his efforts as a director and organizer, being appointed for the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 1940, honorary citizen of the municipality of Wonseradeel in 1950, which includes his birthplace Witmarsum, and received one of the first Silver Carnations from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds for the propaganda and related organizational work for many branches of sport.

[20] The sculpture was made by the artist Frank M. Zeilstra and placed on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Keatsferiening Pim Mulier in 1986.

[20] In 2015, in celebration of Mulier's 150th birthday, numerous sports activities were organized from 10 March, when the kick-off was given at the Grote Markt in Haarlem, until November.

[23] On 12 April 2002, the independent, non-profit Mulier Instituut was opened in Utrecht, which studies sport from a social science perspective.