Speedskating diva Jutta Leerdam delivers drama, celebrates gold medal

MILAN — Jutta Leerdam has made a career of keeping us guessing.

What will Jutta do next?

Around the speed skating oval?

Off the track?

On social media?

Yet here was Leerdam dancing and hopping and bopping across the stage at the Team Netherlands House, the Milano Cortina Olympic Games 1,000-meter gold medal she had won less than five hours earlier bouncing along with her, showing up as scheduled a few minutes before 11 p.m. Monday night, waving and blowing kisses into a sea of orange, somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 well hydrated Dutch, all of them loving her right back.

“Jutta! Jutta! Jutta!” roared the crowd in a deafening chant had echoed across Milan all night as Leerdam clapped her hands above her head urging them on.

“Jutta! Jutta! Jutta!”

All was forgiven.

Jutta had fooled us again.

I mean what kind of diva doesn’t keep her fans waiting?

The Italians created the term “diva” sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It stemmed from the word divine and was meant to elevate women, primarily opera singers or performers, to goddess status. Somewhere along the way “diva” evolved into a different connotation.

No one redefined or embodied the term more than La Divina,  the Diva of La Scala, Maria Callas, the New York-born soprano, who lived in Milan from 1951 to 1960, a time she described as her “golden period.”

“I’m not an angel and I don’t pretend to be an angel,” Callas once said. “It is not one of my roles. But I’m not even the devil. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like to be judged for that.”

Which was what essentially Leerdam, who has never ignored nor denied her diva status, was saying when she touched off a major national scandal by cutting off the Dutch media in the build-up to the Olympic Games.

“I wanted to stay in my bubble for a bit and prepare for the competition,” she said in an interview with a Dutch television network. “I don’t necessarily have to share a lot.”

But the Dutch media continued to try and burst Leerdam’s bubble and the Netherlands’ public couldn’t seem to get enough of her.

Speedskating and her speedskating mad country have never seen anyone like Leerdam, the social media and cultural phenomenon, the sport’s one true rock star, the Diva of the Oval. More than 5 million follow Leerdam on Instagram, another 2.1 million on TikTok, Leonardo DiCaprio, Eminem and Lindsey Vonn among her followers.

“She’s one of one,” U.S. speedskater Brittany Bowe said. “She obviously has a platform that nobody has had in the speed skating world.”

In the Netherlands, Leerdam is so big that as she skated a victory lap around the Milano Speed Skating Stadium Monday, Willem-Alexander, the Dutch king, and Queen Máxima, climbed out of the stands to get a trackside selfie with the new Olympic champion.

Leerdam was already a transcendent star and international sensation before she began dating American social media personality Jake Paul in 2023.

She won her first World title in 2020 and became World Sprint champion in the 500 and 1000 meters combined in 2022. In between World titles and world records, Leerdam kept her followers up to date with everything Jutta.

Jutta at the gym.

Jutta on the beach.

Jutta on the red carpet with Paul.

Jutta out on the town with Paul.

Paul proposing to Jutta.

Jutta and Paul in a limo.

Jutta shopping.

Which in part explains the Dutch media’s anger when Leerdam refused to give interviews leading up the Milano Cortina Games. Her media boycott prompted an association of Dutch sports journalists and photographers to file an official protest on Friday, the opening day of the Games,  with the head of the Netherlands delegation.

The protest seemed to work when Leerdam agreed on Saturday to speak to the media.

“I didn’t want to make a drama out of it,” she said.

But after sitting through a tense interview with NOS, a Dutch television network, Leerdam stormed out of the arena without speaking to other journalists.

“Of course, I share a lot online, and I also talk about how I’m doing, so I don’t feel like I have to do it elsewhere,” Leerdam, the Olympic 1,000 silver medalist in 2022, told an NOS interviewer. “Because I’m already quite open, I think .”

She further fueled the controversy when she posted photos of her flying to Milan in a private jet, a gourmet meal in front on her, while her teammates traveled to the host city on a commercial flight.

“She lives like a millionaire,” Johannes Gerrit Derksen, a former Dutch soccer player turned TV personality, said on the air. “Her behavior is horrible.

“The Netherlands is getting tired of her.”

Even before the media blow-up, Leerdam’s Olympic build-up had been anything but smooth. She crashed in the 1,000 at the Netherlands Olympic Trials on December 26 and only advanced to Milan in the event after receiving a special berth from the Netherlands selection committee.

The NOS interview revealed a skater who was tense and on edge.

When the interviewer pushed her on images of her receiving treatment on her ankle, an injury that previously had bothered her, Leerdam snapped. “I don’t want to get into that.”

Paul then created further distraction with a post on his X account criticizing U.S. freestyle skier Hunter Hess. Responding to a reporter’s question last week, Hess said, “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

“From all true Americans If you don’t want to represent this country go live somewhere else,” Paul wrote on X. Paul has 4.4 million followers on the social media platform. Paul was photographed next to Vice President J.D. Vance at a U.S. women’s hockey game minutes after the post.

It was into this atmosphere Leerdam skated out onto the arena oval for her a few final few warm-up laps

“I always put a lot of pressure on myself. So I am used to it and it does help me perform even better,” she said. “There is of course pressure and expectations from the outside.

“I did a lot of good races this year, so I was kind of also the favorite. That is not always easy going into the Olympics. I tried to use the pressure to my advantage and let it make me even sharper than normal.”

She waved and blew kisses to a crowd seemingly dressed only in orange.

“I saw orange everywhere,” said Japan’s Miho Takagi.

Leerdam would skate in the 15th and final pairing that brought the Dutch crowd to its feet with the very first heat when the Netherlands Suzanne Schulting skated 1 minute, 15.46 seconds, a time that led the competition for the next 10 pairings until Erin Jackson was clocked in 1:15.00.

Jackson’s time as the race leader was brief. Two pairings later, Femke Kok, Leerdam’s countrywoman and arch rival, broke the Olympic record with a 1:12.59 clocking and pulling Bowe to a 1:14.55 mark, putting her into second.

“I was really surprised by the time because it was so fast,” Kok said.

Finally, Leerdam and Takagi were up.

Leerdam was .21 behind Kok’s pace through the first 200 but then posted the fastest 400 meters of the competition (26.10), moving her into the virtual lead with a lap to go.

“I saw her skate, and I was just like, ‘sh–. It’s not enough,’” Kok recalled.

Leerdam stretched her lead over the final 400, finishing in 1:12.31. Kok had held the Olympic record for less than five minutes.

Takagi held on to finish in 1:13.95 to knock Bowe out of the bronze medal in what was the 37-year-old four-time Olympian’s final season. Four years earlier, Bowe had claimed the 1,000 bronze medal at the Beijing Olympics by a mere tenth of a second.

“It’s tough, but what can I say?” Bowe said. “This sport, every 1,000 meters that I’ve skated has really made me into the woman I am today.”

Leerdam looked to her right at the trackside clock and grabbed her head in disbelief and then began a victory lap. In the stands, Paul sobbed while the King and Queen made their way down the bleachers and the crowd began to chant.

“Jutta! Jutta! Jutta!”

“I have won a lot of things in my career,” Leerdam said. “I am a world champion, but I have never been an Olympic champion before, so this was really something that was still missing. So it feels very complete, it feels surreal.”

It was a performance all the more impressive considering she had skated with the weight of 18 million Dutch on her shoulders.

“I can’t even imagine the amount of pressure and expectations that has been on her the past couple of years, and then really in this moment,” Bowe said. “And so for her to be able to deliver an Olympic record performance like that is so commendable.”

That pressure was evident as Leerdam entered an arena holding room to greet her family and friends after the medal ceremony. Every time the room’s door opened a crack the three dozen reporters and photographers crowding around it shouted, “Jutta! Jutta! Jutta!”

Nearly four hours later, Leerdam danced, right on time, onto the stage in an exhibition hall often used for fashion shows, the chants once again building.

The hall was only a few blocks from where Callas lived during her time in Milan.

“An opera begins long before the curtain goes up,” Callas once said, “and ends long after it comes down.”

So there was Jutta Leerdam, Olympic champion and diva, having survived the drama leading up to her operatic triumph, now enjoying her golden period. As streams of orange, white and blue paper rained down on a mosh pit of orange, Jutta, the divine one, the speed skating goddess, joined the crowd in singing Queen’s “We Are The Champions.”

She hit every note.