MILWAUKEE (AP) — Now star speedskater Jordan Stolz can really turn all of his attention to being fully prepared to pursue four gold medals at the Milan Cortina Olympics.
During the U.S. long track speedskating trials, Stolz didn't actually need to perform well or produce good results. To earn his spots for the Feb. 6-22 Winter Games, the 21-year-old from Wisconsin simply needed to show up at the starting line for his quartet of events at the Pettit National Ice Center, where he first took lessons at age 6: the 500, 1,000 and 1,500 meters and the mass start.
“This weekend there were some up and downs,” Stolz said. “Overall, I think I’m in a good spot.”
So Stolz wasn't entirely focused on the trials, which he wrapped up Monday by winning the mass start. That followed a “How did he do that?!” third-place finish Saturday in the 1,000 after falling all the way down on the ice early, before getting back up and pushing all the way to the end; the fastest time by anyone Sunday in the 500 and an overall finish of second in that event after sitting out Monday's heats; and a decision to save energy and essentially skip the 1,500 on Sunday, merely showing up and taking a couple of strides before heading to the sideline.
Asked Monday about the mistake in the 1,000, Stolz said: “It’s more so kind of a rare occurrence, just from all the training going into the competition and having a cold. So it's not something that's going to bother me too much. It’s not going to be in my mind in Milan.”
His coach, Bob Corby, called that recovery “a testament to what a phenomenal athlete he is.”
In Milwaukee, Stolz cared more about keeping to the training guidelines set up — and handwritten in a black notebook — by Corby, and getting healthy after dealing with a head cold, all with the aim of making sure he peaks where it really counts: in Italy, where the opening ceremony is exactly a month from Tuesday.
“I'm really pleased where we are right now,” Corby said.
When the Olympics do roll around, the focus is going to be on Stolz, who is considered a likely face of the 2026 Games — just watch NBC's ads promoting its upcoming coverage — and widely regarded as the best in the world at his sport.
"When you have a horse like Jordan ... you feel pretty good about going (there)," said Ted Morris, U.S. Speedskating's executive director.
Stolz owns two world championship titles at each of the 500, 1,000 and 1,500, and holds the world record in the 1,000. His dominant results in the World Cup this season prequalified Stolz for his four Milan races.
“There's a lot of confidence there,” Stolz said.
Rightly so.
He's admired by teammates and, Corby says, feared by skaters from other countries.
“You could see it in their faces,” Corby recalled about Stolz's competitors at World Cup stops in the Netherlands and Norway over the first two weeks of December, when he went a combined 7-0. “They were like: ‘OK, I have six weeks until the Olympics, and I don’t think that's enough time to catch him.' You could see that a few people were kind of down.”
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