![\"Jordan](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2261636218-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMILAN \u2014 After Jordan Stolz won his first gold medal, setting an Olympic record in Wednesday\u2019s 1,000-meter speedskating competition, the hardware did not leave his sight.<\/p>\n
Stolz called his mother, Jane, that night and sent her a picture of the medal on his pillow at the athletes\u2019 village; he was going to sleep with it.<\/p>\n
Stolz, who told The Athletic he would sleep with Saturday\u2019s 500-meter gold too, may soon run out of room on his pillow, following another record-setting performance that has quickly made the Wisconsin native the Winter Olympic hero the United States has been waiting for.<\/p>\n
A night removed from a disastrous men\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was possibly the best 500 I ever saw him skate,\u201d said Stolz\u2019s coach, Bob Corby, who gave Stolz one piece of advice: when he got to the last corner, he had to burn on the backstretch.<\/p>\n
Stolz obliged, following a 9.55 in the first 100 meters \u2014 that put him just ahead of the Dutch silver medalist Jenning de Boo \u2014 with a 24.22 finisher that was the fastest split time of the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like: whatever he decides to do, he can be the best in the world at it,\u201d said Laurent Dubreuil of Canada, who won bronze. \u201cIt\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stolz\u2019s opening 100m time was slower than Dubreuil\u2019s and the fifth fastest in the field. But Stolz, 21, who passed de Boo on the final lap during the 1000m 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems like he doesn\u2019t get tired,\u201d Dubreuil said. \u201cI really don\u2019t understand how that\u2019s possible for somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stolz is redefining the sport\u2019s limits, particularly in the United States. Not since Eric Heiden\u2019s five golds in 1980 has an American speedskater won multiple gold medals at a single Olympics.<\/p>\n
Stolz won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m proud to be mentioned in the same sentence as Jordan Stolz,\u201d said Heiden, who was in the stands Saturday and gave Stolz a big hug. \u201cThat kid is a stud.\u201d<\/p>\n
A stud who somehow hasn\u2019t let the grandness of the Olympic stage get to him. Despite being one of the faces of NBC\u2019s coverage, Stolz eschews the spotlight.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, several heats away from his race, Corby found Stolz reclining in a chair peacefully. \u201cAren\u2019t we going to warm up?\u201d Corby said he told his star. Stolz glanced down at his phone alarm, remarkably unbothered. \u201cI still have 45 seconds,\u201d he told Corby, the coach said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n The pairing of Jordan Stolz and Jenning de Boo, pictured in the background, produced the two fastest times of the day in the men\u2019s 500 meters. (Elsa \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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 game plan. Since he was little, Stolz\u2019s parents have remained remarkably grounded about their approach to sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur method was we\u2019d never be hard on him. I see some parents go crazy on their kids when they don\u2019t win,\u201d Dirk said. \u201cAnd we looked at it as a strategy of, \u2018Hey, figure it out, what do you need to change? And go for it again.\u2019 I think that relaxes you under the pressure, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even as Dubreuil set an Olympic mark several heats earlier, Stolz didn\u2019t 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\u2019s an enormous gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a racehorse,\u201d Heiden said of Stolz. \u201cHe goes to the line, and he just wants to race and see his ability. He doesn\u2019t have a lot of concerns about what other people are doing. I don\u2019t think he ever gets anxious or nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Once when Jordan was sick, Dirk found his son watching Pavel Kulizhnikov\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s when I started realizing, oh, not only is he going to be really good,\u201d Corby said, \u201che\u2019s going to be really good very fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
They both still had to wait for Poland\u2019s 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\u2019t touch Stolz either, sending the crowd into a frenzy when they realized Stolz was the champion.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Stolz is so famous in the Netherlands that he once got out of a parking ticket. If the Dutch weren\u2019t so respectful, he would be mobbed on the street. Everyone knows who Stolz is there. Now, he\u2019s becoming a household name in Stolz\u2019s home country.<\/p>\n
The 500 was, even by Stolz\u2019s own admission, his most difficult race. He admitted he was a little nervous before the 1,000, unsure of whether his international dominance \u2014 in what has been his best distance \u2014 would carry over. On Saturday, his mind was clear, his thoughts simple: skate a clean race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy so far to win two,\u201d Stolz said<\/p>\n
It should be a walk in the park now, right? As usual, Stolz demurred.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s a walk in the park. I still have to do the right things,\u201d he said. \u201cYou never know what can happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Olympic upsets in other sports have shown us that. Still, as Stolz prepares for his remaining events, the 1500m 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe kid doesn\u2019t, nothing freaks him out,\u201d Dirk said. \u201cThe moment never seems to, he doesn\u2019t get scared and he just goes for it and he\u2019s always been like that. He\u2019s always had that drive in him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 After Jordan Stolz won his first gold medal, setting an Olympic record in Wednesday\u2019s 1,000-meter speedskating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,15559],"class_list":{"0":"post-133786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news","11":"tag-olympics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}