Jordan Stolz calmly looks ahead to trying to win a 3rd Olympic speedskating gold
MILAN (AP) — Jordan Stolz is so preternaturally calm and apparently impervious to nerves that the two-time Olympic gold medalist’s coach, Bob Corby, does occasionally wonder whether his star speedskating pupil might be a little too relaxed.
One example: Before Stolz was due to compete in the 500 meters at the Milan Cortina Games, Corby found him laying down in the athletes’ lounge, not a care in the world, as race time was getting closer.
“I’m like, ‘OK, OK. Are we going to warm up? Are we going to warm up?’ Finally, I shook him,” Corby recounted Saturday following Stolz’s victory in the 500 that came on top of an earlier win in the 1,000 at these Olympics. “And he goes, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Looks at his watch. ‘I still have 45 seconds until my alarm goes off.’”
A smiling Corby explained: “That’s just normal behavior for him. One of the other coaches asked me one time: ‘So do things bother him?’”
Sure doesn’t seem so on the ice.
As long as Stolz is healthy, the 21-year-old from Wisconsin tends to finish first, no matter the setting or circumstances. His first career Olympic golds — making him only the second man, along with Eric Heiden at Lake Placid in 1980, to complete the 500-1,000 double at one Winter Games — had been anticipated, if not downright expected, by many before competition began in Milan.
He holds the world record in the 1,000 and is unbeaten in that event this season. He won five of nine World Cup 500s this season. He is a two-time world champion in both of those events, plus the 1,500, which is coming up Thursday.
And then Stolz will race in the mass start on Feb. 21, his fourth, and last, event.
Does he ever have a case of the jitters?
“Oh, yeah. For sure,” Stolz said. “Before the 1,000, I was feeling nervous, just because it was the first one and it’s, like, the Olympics, right? And it’s super important. Even just watching (others race the 5,000 last weekend ) made me a little bit nervous, because you’ve waited four years to get here and now you only have one chance to win. And I’ve been winning all the 1,000s, I don’t know for how long, and I thought, ‘I really don’t want to lose this one.’”
That triumph meant the tension receded for the 500.
“I felt a lot less pressure today, just because I got the first one out of the way,” Stolz said Saturday. “And I thought this one’s, like, not worth stressing over, because it’s going to be a toss-up, either way.”
He used a good start and his usual finishing verve to get past Jenning de Boo of the Netherlands in their head-to-head heat at the sport’s shortest distance. On Wednesday, in the 1,000, Stolz also shared the ice with de Boo in a heat and also came through at the end, that time after trailing with 400 meters to go.
Corby called the 500 performance the best of Stolz’s career.
“I would agree with that,” Stolz said. “I didn’t feel too many difficulties in it.”
Well, then.
“He loves training. He loves racing. He does not get that anxious and nervous when he’s out there,” Heiden said. “I don’t know if he really is concerned about what everybody else is doing. He’s more concerned about: Is he going to perform up to his expectations?”
Stolz’s father, Dirk, said he and Jordan spoke on the phone at about midnight on Friday night.
Listening to “the tone of his voice,” Dirk Stolz said, made him realize Jordan was not anxious. He was confident.
“You see some athletes, just mentally — they might be physically all there, but all of a sudden, the pressure comes in and it affects their performance, and I don’t see it with Jordan a whole lot. He’s pretty relaxed,” Dirk Stolz said. “At the end of the day, it’s another race at another place, really, with different scenery, right? That’s how you got to look at it.”
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics