Jordan Stolz didn’t just win gold in his three races. The 21-year-old from Kewaskum set three track records at the ISU speed skating World Cup No. 3 event over the weekend in Hereenveen, Netherlands, the speedskating capital of the world, icing out all of his competition and firmly winning over Dutch fans who regard this sport as the best.
“They absolutely cannot believe him,” said Stolz’s coach, Bob Corby, when reached by phone Dec. 8. “They’re, like, blown away. They’re like, no one has ever set three track records in one competition at this rank.”
And then? Stolz freaked out everyone with a collision and a fall. (He’s OK.)
The bottom line: We are 62 days from the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympic Games in Italy and Stolz has emerged as the overwhelming favorite for his sport and his country, and just in case things feel a little routine, a little predictable, he scares most of us out of our wits. This is how Jordan Stolz is, bold and brash, and poised to shake up the speedskating scene.
First, the races:
The 1,500 meters
Stolz kicked off the weekend with a track record in the 1,500-meter race, smashing a 5-year-old mark, with a time of 1 minute, 42.552 seconds.
“I’m really happy to have a track record here,” Stolz told ISU social media. “Because I’ve been trying for awhile.” He beat Kjeld Nuis, the longtime veteran and countryman favorite who has been making a strong run in recent weeks, for the gold medal.
Stolz is teaching us all something about this middle-distance race.
“He has this ability to skate 1,500 meters multiple different ways, and he’s the only speed skater I’ve ever known in my entire life who was able to do that,” Corby said, laughing. “You’re supposed to skate it a certain way. He comes over after the race, he goes, ‘What you think?’ And I go, ‘Well, let’s see, how to skate 1,500 meters. Version 10.’”
Stolz is such a wonder here, he is forcing Corby to analyze his 1,500 race frame by frame on the replay video.Stolz can look like he’s starting out too slowly, for example.
“It looks like, dude, what are you doing?” Corby said. “This is too slow. But what you’re missing is that he’s so efficient, and he puts so much power into the ice that it doesn’t look like he’s going that hard. And then you see, no, he’s going really hard.
“I just think he’s figuring it out a little bit, getting to know the ice a little bit. And also, he is young. He’s still learning how to skate 1,500 meters − even though he’s the best in the world at it.”
The 1,000 meters
Then Stolz took gold in the 1,000-meter race the next day with a time of 1:06.380.
This was probably his best race of the weekend.
“He finished the race, did a lap, came over, sat next me, and said, ’I think that might have been the best thousand meters I’ve ever skated in my life,’” Corby said. “It was almost exactly 1 second slower than his world record. But he said before the race that his legs felt so good that he felt like he hadn’t done anything the day before, and the day before was the 1,500.
“So that’s why he attacked the race with like a vengeance. That 1,000 meters was beyond belief. I thought that for sure would have been a world record in Salt Lake City [where the ice is fastest in the world].”
The 500 meters
He completed the weekend with a 33.9-second time in the 500, setting the track record first set by Stolz’s Netherlands rival, Jenning de Boo.
“That was really good,” Corby said. “It was phenomenal, and he’s also making 9.5 (seconds) in the 100 meters kind of usual now, and that is really good news, for the opener. I really thought that three guys were going to go under 34, and then when it was only in one, like, well, OK, we’ll take it. It was extremely good race.”
How did this happen?
Corby explained that Stolz’s times dropped so much because he had been racing such a demanding schedule that Corby prescribed rest. And a rested Stolz looks unbeatable.
“This was completely unplanned,” Corby said. “The plan was to just skate good and maybe win a couple of races and that’s all it was. But because of the two meets in Salt Lake and in Calgary − there are five races each weekend and each one finishing with the mass start − it was really hard racing. We needed a rest a little bit more then we wanted to.
“The last eight to 10 days, lead up to Hereenveen, he just kept getting better and better and better, including on the week from Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“We didn’t intend to peak at all. It’s just a little rest. So it was a pretty phenomenal.”
That (darn) Mass Start
Stolz has decided to keep racing in the bumper-car derby that is the mass start, because he is just that good. But last weekend, he fell when a Norwegian skater appeared to knock him down. So he finished in 24th place.
“Yeah, he was trying to get into a place where he didn’t fit, and he knocked them − both of them went down,” Corby said. “He fell after like six or seven laps, he could never catch him back. So the Norwegian kid got last, and Jordan got second to last.
“He’s fine. He’s perfectly fine,” Corby said about Stolz’s health and status.
The wipe out apparently drew debate among international speed-skating experts, analysts and pundits with some wondering why Stolz was risking so much now by skating in the mass start.
So apparently, it is Stolz’s insistence that he race the Mass Start.
In the Netherlands, Stolz is famous – probably more so than any sports star we have here.
“Yeah, they love him,” Corby said. “They just absolutely love them. They know speed skating so well. Yeah, that they understand that they’re watching something like once-in-a-lifetime-type thing.
“Oh, you know, all the kids run up and they want their picture, and they want autographs and then the people come up to me and say he’s going to be Olympic champion. I know it, and stuff like that.“
Back at it
You can hear it in Corby’s voice now – there’s pressure on both him and Stolz. It’s more than the media attention and sponsorship deals that are rolling in. It’s the knowledge of the fact that the Olympics are still 100 days away. It’s too soon to be tapering for a peak performance.
“There’s a lot of pressure because now we have to get back into training – now,” Corby said. “In fact, he’s probably not going to do very well this weekend because we can’t peak. We got to get going, we got to get going with some training.”
The final World Cup of the season, No. 4, is this weekend in Hamar, Norway.
“There’ll be a little bit of a break for our Olympic trials,” Corby said, “and then a little bit more training and then the full on, the full peak, for Milan.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jordan Stolz wins, sets speed-skating track records − and survives a fall
Reporting by Lori Nickel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
