The Dutch don’t call him “fighter jet” for nothing.
American speed skating phenom Jordan Stolz dominated his second race of the 2026 Winter Games, flying to 500m gold in Olympic record time. It’s the first time an American man has won the event on the Olympic level since Joey Cheek in 2006.
With his win in the 1000m Feb. 11, Stolz, 21, now stands as the only American to win multiple gold medals at the Milan Cortina Games and joins fellow American speed skater Eric Heiden to win the 500m and 1000m as the same Olympics.
FULL RESULTS
Paired with Dutch rival Jenning de Boo for the second time in Milan, Stolz rocketed off the start line but began the race slightly behind — as he often does. By the first corner, he found his groove, crossing the finish line a narrow 0.11 seconds ahead of de Boo, who finished 2nd with a time that also snapped the previous Olympic record (33.88 seconds).
The two also went 1-2 in the 1000m, both posting times that broke the old Olympic mark.
Stolz’s final time of 33.77 shaved nearly half a second off the mark set by China’s Gao Tingyu (34.32) at the 2022 Beijing Games. It was just 0.08 seconds off his personal best of 33.69, earned at the Calgary Olympic Oval, where skaters benefit from high altitude.
“I think it was the best 500 he ever skated. It just was phenomenal.” said Bob Corby, Stolz’s coach. “It was a great start, a great opener, and then once he got around the corner, then he just turned on the after burners and just burned up the back stretch — and that was part of the plan because we knew that, ‘Jenning is going to be behind you. You can’t see him, and he is going to be coming after you and setting up that last corner … You got to go as hard as you can,’ and he did. He executed it perfectly.”
It’s also not too far off from the world record of 33.61, which has held since 2019.
If they had been racing at the rink in Salt Lake City, known as the fastest ice on earth due to the thin air, Stolz — and de Boo — may have eclipsed the world record as well, U.S. teammate Cooper McLeod said.
“[It’s] for sure a world record [in Salt Lake City]. Almost no question,” McLeod told the media after the race. “The ice is pretty good here. It’s pretty fast for a sea-level track, but we just watched some special, historic skating … The Olympic record was lowered by almost a half-second today. That doesn’t happen.”
