Jordan Stolz feeling "pretty good all around" ahead of the 2024 World Speed Skating Championships in Calgary
The American teenager, who captured four gold medals at the World Cup season finale, is a favourite to dominate at the 2024 World Speed Skating Championships scheduled from 15-18 February in Calgary. He tells Olympics.com how he is taking high expectations to the worlds, what he feels about drawing comparisons to some great champions of his sport, and much more.
Just over a year ago, Jordan Stolz was a blossoming talent, speed skating’s next prodigy.
He turned heads when competing at the Beijing 2022 Olympics when he was only 17.
Much has changed in the months since.
The American became the youngest skater to win a title at the single-distance championships.
And the three titles he won at the 2023 World Championships, made him the first male skater to win the 500m, 1000m and, 15000m in the same year.
Stolz is also more mature and has sharpened his execution around the curves.
What remains unchanged is his calm demeanour, quiet determination, and the desire to go even faster, which has seen him drop his timings over the last few years.
“I'm feeling a bit better than I did last year going into it,” he tells Olympics.com on the eve of the 2024 ISU World Speed Skating Championships scheduled from 15-18 February in Calgary, Canada.
“I feel pretty good all around. I wasn't winning any of the 500s before I came to the World Championships last year, but now I won the past three of them, so that's, for sure, a good sign. And then the 1000m, the same with the 1500m.”
Indeed, the reigning world champion has hit some top skating speeds this season.
Of his 14 career World Cup wins, he’s clinched 10 this period, and Calgary offers him a chance to better that and improve his technique, as he continues to prepare for his Olympic return at Milano Cortina 2026.
“I'm really looking forward to the next one. It should be good. I think I have a good mindset going into it,” he says.
Jordan Stolz takes high expectations to Calgary
The expectations are higher for Stolz going to his second senior World Championships.
Quite different from last year as he readied to compete at the famed Thialf oval in Heerenveen, Netherlands.
Many of the 12,000 Dutch supporters in attendance had already watched his powerful skating style, that had propelled the American to a breakout 2021-22 season when he became a world junior record holder in the 500m and 1000m.
But when he rounded off the world championships, stunning local hero and three-time Olympic champion Kjeld Nuis in the final of the 1,500m, he captured the speed skating world's attention.
“I guess I gained some fans,” said Stolz, who was presented with the Oscar Mathisen Award as the world’s best skater in 2022-23.
“It was a really, really nice feeling.”
“Obviously there's going to be an expectation from that, from other people, but I just have to go out and see what I can do in the race.”
He’s just coming off another sterling performance on the World Cup circuit.
Four gold medals at three distances in Salt Lake and Quebec, including a world record and two track records.
“That’s for sure a good sign,” he told us.
“But it's never going to be easy.
“I would just like to have the best race and see what I can do with the others. But I don't think there's going to be any possibility of a world record in Calgary. I think winning gold or medalling is the most important thing, regardless of the time.”
The making of America's next speed skating star
That’s not the only thing on Stolz mind after missing out on any of the overall World Cup season championships.
It's mainly because he didn’t compete in the Beijing stop.
“I would also like to try and win some of the World Championships, the World Allround in March. There’s the World Sprints [too], so I have to decide which one I am going to do. The World Allround is like the next biggest thing to the Olympic medal.”
The phenom, who grew up skating on a frozen pond in the backyard of his family home, clearly knows what will set him on the path to greatness - some real top-notch skating.
Raised in suburban Milwaukee, he wasn’t even aware of his home city’s speed skating excellence until he watched Apolo Anton Ohno, the most decorated U.S. Winter Olympian, competing at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
The "high speeds and leans in the turns" spurred in Stolz a desire which grew to a skating passion.
“We bought a pair of hockey skates and just made like a track, and we would just go out there and pretend I was Apolo or something since I was only five years old… and I really enjoyed the skating and kept skating till now,” he recalled.
His meteoric rise has been fascinating to watch.
From being one of the world’s best in the 5000m as a junior, he continues to display the maturity on ice and focus, that has him touted as America’s next great speed skater.
Jordan Stolz on drawing comparisons to Olympic champions
With Stolz, it’s not just about how fast he can skate, but how he does it.
His technique in rounding the curves is extraordinary.
Talking to Sports Illustrated, his mother, Jane, described how young Jordan began mastering the turns. A coach who was impressed with his skills, bent his blades when he was about seven years, to help him ‘turn better and go faster’- mind you - that's a trick usually reserved for older skaters.
“I know a lot of people say it’s very close to Shani [Davis], and he really likes my turns, that’s a plus,” Stolz offered on his mentor, the American skater who also started making history as a teenager as could compete in both short-track and long-track events.
“He really kind of perfected his, so if he can say mine are good, I must be doing something right.”
But he isn’t the only skater the Wisconsin native likes to look up to.
“There are also great skaters like Jeremy Wotherspoon who I like to watch and compare myself to.
"Back then, they were skating really fast, and they would probably be doing even better now if they were still skating. And we also have Eric Heiden too, five gold medals, I don't know if it can ever be done again,” he concluded on Heiden, the only athlete in the history of speed skating to have won all five events at a single Olympic Games.
Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympian Stolz doesn’t always have to look too far in the past to move forward.
The halibut and salmon fishing enthusiast also likes to look inward for motivation.
An insight into his workout routine, guided by long-time coach Bob Corby, shows that he not only puts in the work on ice but works equally hard off season.
“A lot of biking and a lot of weights, it's like changing up, kind of repetition of being on the ice. And when you're on the bike going up the mountain, you're about half an hour in, and you're dying,” he said of his ‘time off’.