MILAN — After Jordan Stolz won his first gold medal, setting an Olympic record in Wednesday’s 1,000-meter speedskating competition, the hardware did not leave his sight.
Stolz called his mother, Jane, that night and sent her a picture of the medal on his pillow at the athletes’ village; he was going to sleep with it.
Stolz, who told The Athletic he would sleep with Saturday’s 500-meter gold too, may soon run out of room, following another record-setting performance that has quickly made the Wisconsin native the Winter Olympic hero the United States has been waiting for.
A night removed from a disastrous men’s figure skating outing for the United States in which heavy favorite Ilia Malinin finished eighth, in a Winter Olympics in which injury (Lindsey Vonn, Chloe Kim, Jessie Diggins) and underperformance (Malinin and skier Mikaela Shiffrin) have taken center stage, Stolz gave Americans something to feel good about.
Stolz took an event considered to be his weakest entering the Milan Cortina Games and turned it into a clinic on why he is the best in the world, shattering an Olympic record in the process with a time of 33.77.
“That was possibly the best 500 I ever saw him skate,” said Stolz’s coach, Bob Corby, who gave Stolz one piece of advice: when he got to the last corner, he had to burn on the backstretch.
Stolz obliged, following a 9.55 in the first 100 meters — that put him just ahead of the Dutch silver medalist Jenning de Boo — with a 24.22 finisher that was the fastest split time of the day.
“It’s like: whatever he decides to do, he can be the best in the world at it,” said Laurent Dubreuil of Canada, who won bronze. “It’s incredible.”
Stolz’s opening 100m time was slower than Dubreuil’s and the fifth fastest in the field. But Stolz, 21, who passed de Boo on the final lap to take gold, has become famous for finishing races, for showcasing a kind of peak power when his thighs are burning and his lungs are gasping that many of his competitors marvel at.
“It just seems like he doesn’t get tired,” Dubreuil said. “I really don’t understand how that’s possible for somebody.”
Stolz is redefining the sport’s limits, particularly in the United States. Not since Eric Heiden’s five golds in 1980 has an American speedskater won multiple gold medals at a single Olympics.
Stolz won’t match Heiden; he only plans to race in four events. Heiden jokingly thanked him for not doing the team pursuit, and Stolz later joked with reporters that now he sort of wants to enter. Jokes aside, Stolz is vying to be one of the most decorated Winter Olympians in U.S. history. The parallels between him and Heiden are uncanny: both Wisconsin men who got their start skating on frozen ponds in their backyards, bringing a lesser-known sport to the forefront of American consciousness.
“I’m proud to be mentioned in the same sentence as Jordan Stolz,” said Heiden, who was in the stands Saturday and gave Stolz a big hug. “That kid is a stud.”
A stud who somehow hasn’t let the grandness of the Olympic stage get to him. Despite being one of the faces of NBC’s coverage, Stolz eschews the spotlight.
He is by nature quiet, mild-mannered and stoic. Corby is often asked by other coaches at big competitions: Does anything bother Stolz? The answer appears to be not really.
On Saturday, several heats away from his race, Corby found Stolz reclining in a chair peacefully. “Aren’t we going to warm up?” Corby said he told his star. Stolz glanced down at his phone alarm, remarkably unbothered. “I still have 45 seconds,” he told Corby, the coach said.
Stolz, like the decorated Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, is incredibly adept at keeping his mind clear and not letting outside pressure affect his skates. He prefers to cycle in silence in the warmup area and he doesn’t set a goal time because Stolz only wants to concentrate on what his race looks like, not some number his competitors might be worried about.
Stolz called his parents Friday night, like he often does before a big race, and his father, Dirk, could tell his son had no nerves. Jordan seemed confident and excited. He already had one gold, and he had a gameplan. Since he was little, Stolz’s parents have remained remarkably grounded about their approach to sports.
“Our method was we’d never be hard on him. I see some parents go crazy on their kids when they don’t win,” Dirk said. “And we looked at it as a strategy of, ‘Hey, figure it out, what do you need to change? And go for it again.’ I think that relaxes you under the pressure, too.”
Even as an Olympic mark was set by Dubreuil several heats earlier, Stolz didn’t flinch. The ice was fast. He knew he could go faster and he did, obliterating that short-lived record by nearly a half-second. In a 500m speed skating sprint, that’s an enormous gap.
“He’s a racehorse,” Heiden said of Stolz. “He goes to the line, and he just wants to race and see his ability. He doesn’t have a lot of concerns about what other people are doing. I don’t think he ever gets anxious or nervous.”
Stolz fell in love with skating at five years old when he saw Apolo Ohno and Shani Davis at the 2010 Winter Olympics. He and his sister, Hannah, convinced Dirk to let them try to skate on the family’s lake. The following year, he joined a speedskating club. Stolz would beg Dirk to plow off a clean circle on their lake so he could practice his crossovers well into the night.
Once when Jordan was sick, Dirk found his son watching Pavel Kulizhnikov’s world-record performance on an iPad, trying to figure out how to beat him. Jordan was 12. By 17, he had qualified for the Beijing Olympics and the following year had won two World Cup races.
“That’s when I started realizing, oh, not only is he going to be really good,” Corby said, “he’s going to be really good very fast.”
On Saturday, Stolz raised his arms overhead at the finish, but did little else to celebrate when he saw his time. De Boo fell over from sheer exhaustion. Stolz nearly did, too.
They both still had to wait for Poland’s Damian Zurek, who had beaten Stolz in the last two World Cup races in this distance. Zurek, the second-to-last heat, finished in 34.35. Just off the podium. The last pair couldn’t touch Stolz either, sending the crowd into a frenzy when they realized Stolz was the champion.
While Saturday’s crowd was Dutch-heavy, Stolz skates professionally in the Netherlands. He celebrated his 1000m win with an American flag on his back and with a multicolored helmet he often dons in the Netherlands after a big win.
Stolz is so famous in the Netherlands he once got out of a parking ticket. If the Dutch weren’t so respectful, he would be mobbed on the street. Everyone knows who Stolz is in the Netherlands. They’re finally starting to in Stolz’s home country.
The 500 was, even by Stolz’s own admission, his most difficult race. He admitted he was a little nervous before the 1,000, unsure of whether his international dominance –in what has been his best distance– would carry over. On Saturday, his mind was clear, his thoughts simple: skate a clean race.
“I’m really happy so far to win two,” Stolz said
It should be a walk in the park now, right? As usual, Stolz demurs.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a walk in the park. I still have to do the right things,” he said. “You never know what can happen.”
The Olympic upsets in other sports have shown us that. Still, as Stolz prepares for his remaining events, the 1500 and the mass start, the challenge will be to continue to shut out the world and race his race. No one close to Stolz doubts he can do it.
“The kid doesn’t, nothing freaks him out,” Dirk said. “The moment never seems to, he doesn’t get scared and he just goes for it and he’s always been like that. He’s always had that drive in him.”
