Kewaskum’s Olympic speedskating hero Jordan Stolz, who captured three medals – two golds and a silver – at the Winter Games in Italy earlier this year is committed to participating in the 2030 Winter Olympics in France but is considering scrapping one of his races.
Stolz won gold medals, first in the 1,000 meters, then the 500 meters, setting Olympic records in both races, at this winter’s Milan Cortina Games. With a silver medal in the 1,500 meters, Stolz became the only U.S. athlete to win two individual golds and three medals altogether at the Winter Games. Stolz also raced to a fourth-place finish in the mass start.
“I’ll target the same events, but maybe not the mass start, just because it’s a little bit annoying,” Stolz said, Olympic medals in hand, in an appearance Tuesday at a Milwaukee Press Club event at the Newsroom Pub. “I’ll try and improve because the guys in Holland, and other (skaters) around the world are going to get better just from studying things and watching me.”
Stolz, who turned 22 on May 20, cemented his place among the best U.S. Winter Olympians ever with his performance at the Milan Cortina Games. His main rival in the 500 and 1,000 meters is Jenning de Boo, a 22-year-old from The Netherlands who took silver behind Stolz in both his gold-winning events in Milan.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Speedskating is a national pastime and deeply woven into Dutch culture, something that is evident to Stolz when sizing up the competition for the next four years leading to the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps.
“They put a lot of money into it. Here, it’s just kind of me and my personal sponsors and my coach,” Stolz said. “Over there, they have professional teams behind them, and they spend millions of dollars trying to get better.”
Stolz also pointed out, seemingly dismayed, that although France will host the 2030 Winter Games, there reportedly have been serious discussions about having the speedskating competition held in the Dutch national arena in Heerenveen since there are no suitable alternatives anywhere in France – essentially home ice for his stiffest competitors. “That’s going to be huge for them, so I’ll just try and be ready,” Stolz said.
Stolz, however, has had great success at the iconic Thialf rink in Heerenveen, sweeping the 500-, 1,000- and 1,500-meter races and setting track records in all three at a World Cup competition there in December 2025 in the weeks leading up to the Milan Cortina Games.
Hesitating on Chaotic Mass Start Race
Those three events will be the focus of Stolz’s training and competition leading up the 2030 Winter Games. Stolz discussed the thought process that has him considering sitting out the mass start competition. He continues to express surprise and frustration at how the mass start race unfolded at the Milan Cortina Games, when an early breakaway by the Netherlands’ Jorrit Bergsma and Denmark’s Viktor Hald Thorup left the main pack behind, with the medal favorites choosing not to chase.
The Olympic mass start race featured 16 skaters racing simultaneously in a single pack for 16 laps in a tactical, cycling-style competition. Skaters wear helmets because of the risk of collisions and falls at high speeds.
“I was hoping to get a little bit of help,” Stolz said about the Olympic mass start race. “I just feel like everybody kind of sacrificed their own race because they didn’t want me to be able to win at the end, because I think they knew I’d be able to outsprint them. It was just kind of a super messy race, and makes me not want to do it again, but I probably will.”
Training Off the Ice
During the “off-season” for speedskating, Stolz is focused on weight training and going on long, often intense rides, sometimes for up to four or five hours, on his bicycle.
“Obviously, you need a huge aerobic base to be able to skate fast and recover, so I do like four-hour, five-hour bike rides,” Stolz said. “A (speedskating) race is only 30 seconds, or a minute, or a minute and 40 seconds, so a four-hour ride doesn’t seem like it’s necessary, but it really is.”
Last summer, Stolz crashed his bicycle during summer training and got a deep, gnarly gash along the shin of his right leg, leaving a wound down to the bone that required 16 stitches to close but only kept him down for about a week.
In late summer or early fall, Stolz will return to the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, where he has trained since childhood, and shift to on-ice training once again.
Stolz, who also competed at the 2022 Beijing Games as a 17-year-old, finishing 14th in the 1,000 and 13th in the 500 before a meteoric rise to the top of his sport, pointed out that being the world’s best speedskater goes far beyond the physical aspects of training and competing. He began studying speedskating blades as a teenager and now has his own blade technician.
“I started doing my own blades, and it takes a lot of time,” Stolz said. “I spent probably two or three years learning how to do it myself, just because I didn’t trust the people who were doing it for me. Then I started working with my blade tech and I took him to the Olympics.”
Stolz also monitors ice conditions at venues around the world while often engaging in technical conversations with ice experts like Pettit Center general manager Paul Golomski, who was part of a four-person ice tech crew at the Milano Speed Skating Stadium for the run of the Milan Cortina Olympic Games after handling a similar role for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Looking Ahead to Salt Lake City
With his sights set on the 2030 Winter Olympics, and likely the 2034 Games in Salt Lake City, Stolz said he’s given little thought to what will come after his speedskating career winds down.
“I haven’t thought that far down the road yet, with four more years to go, maybe eight for Salt Lake City, but maybe a coaching job,” he said. “It would be fun to have a team and try and make skaters the best they can be, because I think I have some good insight.”
To close the event, Stolz, with his mother Jane looking on, signed a section of chalkboard, as is tradition, that will hang in the Newsroom Pub, joining the signatures of other local speedskating royalty in Bonnie Blair-Cruikshank and Dan Jansen.
