Jordan Stolz Could Be the Michael Phelps of Speedskating

American Jordan Stolz is a bona fide speedskating phenom, a potential Michael Phelps of these upcoming Winter Olympics. He’s poised to lift his sport into mainstream consciousness, just like Eric Heiden, Dan Jansen, and Bonnie Blair did before him. But in the United States, even near his home in Kewaskum, Wisc.—some 50 minutes northwest of Milwaukee—Stolz wanders around in near anonymity. “Walk into a Piggly Wiggly,” Stolz tells TIME in a video interview from Wisconsin, “nobody knows who you are.” 

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Over in Europe, however—especially in the speedskating-mad nation of the Netherlands—he’s afforded the status typically granted to outstanding athletes. “I feel like every KLM flight I get on, all the flight attendants know me,” says Stolz. “They treat me a little bit extra nice. That’s always cool. Maybe do some autographs on the plane ride.” People ask him for pictures on the street in Holland. He’s gotten a free haircut there. Got out of a parking ticket. 

While Stolz, 21, would enjoy some more recognition stateside, he also benefits from the best of both worlds. Privacy and peace at home and fame abroad isn’t a terrible deal. “I don’t know how it would be here if people knew you that well,” he says. “Would they treat you the same as the Dutch people do? Because the Dutch people are super respectful towards their athletes. They don’t really want to get in the way. But here, it might be a little different.”

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If the U.S. Olympic Industrial Complex gets its way, Stolz will soon find out. NBC, that Olympic star-making machine, will give Stolz prominent promotion: he’s already appeared alongside Hollywood hotshot Glen Powell in an Olympic teaser ad that debuted in September on Sunday Night Football, the most-watched prime-time program in America. Honda has added Stolz to its Olympic athlete sponsor quad, and in early 2025, he signed with Octagon, the agency that counts Simone Biles and Michael Phelps as clients. Like Phelps and Katie Ledecky, Stolz will compete in multiple races—in his case, the 500 m, 1,000 m, 1,500 m, and mass start—his quest for four golds highlighted throughout the Olympics. 

“Watching Jordan Stolz develop has felt like I imagine it felt watching a young Michael Phelps,” NBC Sports analyst and 2006 Torino Olympic 500-m gold medalist Joey Cheek said in late December, before the U.S. Olympic speedskating trials. “He can win at multiple distances, under wildly varying conditions. When he’s at his worst, he still wins medals, and when he’s at his best, he’s unbeatable.” 

Stolz has heard the Phelps comparisons. “But I haven’t really thought about or put it together in my own mind,” he says. “Because I don’t want to get ahead of myself.” 

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Stolz owns the world record in the 1,000 m and has two World Championship wins in each of three different distances: the 500 m, the 1,000 m, and the 1,500 m. He’s also earned wins in each of these races at the first four World Cup stops this season, while notching his first mass-start victory in Norway in December. 

Watching Apolo Ohno in the 2010 Olympics inspired 5-year-old Jordan and his sister Hannah–older by one year—to try speedskating. “I just wanted to be fast,” says Stolz. “I wanted to look like Apolo going around the short track.” Their parents turned a frozen backyard pond into a makeshift rink. As Stolz, who is now 6 ft., hit a growth spurt in his early teens, he focused on long track, where there’s more room to stride. “I like long track because you don’t have another person who’s going to be right next to you and knock you over and then you can’t win the race,” he says. “People are hitting you and stuff.”

(Hannah quit speedskating when she was 16 but is now a nationally competitive bird taxidermist.)      

Stolz, who made his Olympic debut in Beijing, at 17—he finished 13th in the 500 m and 14th in the 1,000 m—has done the work to reach the pinnacle. He’s hiked a volcano in the Canary Islands and cycled there to build endurance. After last season, he spent six hours at a Dutch factory, testing 77 different blades to find the ones that would give him the best feel on the ice. 

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Can anyone beat Stolz? He mentions Jenning De Boo of the Netherlands as a rival: De Boo won the 500 m at the 2025 Worlds, though a bout with pneumonia before those championships affected Stolz’s performance (he finished second). “He’s pretty cool,” says Stolz. Kjeld Nuis, also of the Netherlands, is the two-time defending Olympic champion in the 1,500 m. Stolz is less sure what to make of him. “He’s always in the media saying stuff and likes to talk a lot about me,” says Stolz. “He’s, like, up and down. Some days he’s trying to be super nice. And then other days he then turns around in the media and is like, ‘Yeah, Jordan does this, and I do that.’ Then he’ll be super nice. So I’m not going to say anything until after the Games.”

Reached for comment, Nuis said he’s never said anything negative about Stolz and never will. “He’s already so much better than I was at his age,” he wrote to TIME. “I don’t like to talk about him, but I get all these questions about him. Because he is the man to beat at this moment. I admire the way he skates and I hope the best for him. Next Heiden coming up.” (American Eric Heiden won five speedskating golds at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, becoming the first Olympian to ever win five individual-event titles at a single Games.)

Stolz believes that while Dutch fans, who will likely flock to Italy for the Olympic speedskating events, will be pulling for their own skaters, they’ll also have a soft spot for him. “I don’t think they have bad feelings towards me,” he says “Just because I’m not super arrogant like their skaters are.” 

He’s riding high into Milan. “The work is done,” says Stolz. “I just have to maintain and do what I’ve been doing. So I don’t see how it could go downhill or wrong. I’m not saying some guys can’t get better. But as long as I stay healthy, I’m pretty confident I can do the same race as I’ve been doing. So I’m really happy with where I’m at.”