Winter Olympics: Jordan Stolz wins 2nd speedskating gold medal

MILAN — Canadian speedskater Laurent Dubreuil had just finished his pairing in the Milano Cortina Olympic Games’ 500 meters when a teammate told him he had just taken down the Olympic record with a 34.26 second clocking.

“And in my mind I was, ‘Yeah, probably not for long,’” Dubreuil said later.

Dubreuil would hold the record for maybe five minutes Saturday before Team USA’s Jordan Stolz took the mark down to 33.77 for his second gold medal of the Games. Jenning de Boo of Netherlands was also under the old mark – if you can call a record set five minutes earlier old – with a 33.88 clocking in the same pairing as Stolz.

Dubreuil, 33, skating in his third and final Olympic Games, held on for the bronze medal.

“I don’t think happens often that you set an Olympic record and you lose by about half a second,” he said.

Such is the reality this era of Stolz and de Boo.

“Those two guys are way too far ahead,” Dubreuil said.

“Stolz’s era has already begun,” de Boo, 22, said. “I am part of it. I hope my era is yet to come.”

And for the second time at the Milano Cortina Games, Stolz was just that much faster than the Dutchman, the pair repeating their 1-2 finish in the 1,000 meter Wednesday. The American finished that race in an Olympic record 1:06.28, a half-second ahead of de Boo, with bronze medalist Ning Zhongyan of China more than a second back.

Stolz, the 21-year-old from West Bend, Wisconsin, now takes aim at a third gold medal in Thursday’s 1,500, an event in which he’s a large favorite. And a fourth gold could come his way in the mass start – a 6,400-meter, 16-lap event with 24 participants – on Feb. 21.

“I am really happy so far to win two,” Stolz said. “I think if I have a good 1,500, it should turn out well. I am hoping for gold in that. The mass start is just kind of a tossup. It is more like a bonus. It is so hard to say what is going to happen in that, but I would love to win the 1,500. Hopefully I can.”

A victory Thursday would put Stolz further into a conversation that started as almost as soon as he crossed the finish line Saturday night at the Milano Speed Skating Arena.

“I think Jordan’s the greatest speedskater of all time,” Dubreuil said. “They are the two best sprinters of all time.”

But what sets Stolz apart from even de Boo is his range.

“I think what sets him apart is just his physiological,” Dubreuil said. “He has the power but also the endurance at the same time. You look at all the top sprinters, all the guys who went faster than his 9.5 (for the first 100 meters). Not a lot of guys open faster than him, but all those who do just die at 300 to 400 meters.

“And he’s the huge favorite for the 1,500s. If I raced the 1,500, I would finish last and probably wouldn’t even medal against the women because I’m training for the 500. And he’s a sprinter that’s good at everything. That’s what’s incredible. His ability to put power on the ice when all those other people, the top sprinters are dead. It’s unbelievable to watch. It’s not something we can copy because he’s just physically superior to us.

“If Jordan did another sport like short track, Jenning would be the greatest sprinter of all time.”

If Stolz was going to be vulnerable in Milano Cortina, the consensus was that it would be in the 500.

“I imagined going away with gold,” de Boo said. “I knew I had to skate a time of 33 (seconds) to be in contention for gold, but I did not expect Stolz to do it in 33.7. He was just too fast.”

In his pairing with Stolz, De Boo kept it close the whole way until the final stretch. With American legend Eric Heiden, winner of five speedskating gold medals at the 1980 Olympic Games in Lake Placid, in attendance and sitting next to Olympic gymnastics champion Simone Biles, Stolz had too much strength coming off the final turn.

“Thirty-three, seventy-seven, that’s wild. That’s very, very fast,” said Team USA’s Cooper McLeod, who was 22nd in 34.90.

Indeed, Stolz’s time was just .16 off Russian Pavel Kulizhnikov’s nearly seven-year-old world record of 33.61 set in the high altitude of Salt Lake City at the ISU World Cup Speed Skating Final.

McLeod was asked how fast Stolz would have gone had Saturday’s race been at high altitude.

“For sure a world record,” he said. “The ice is pretty fast for a sea-level track. But we just watched something special in speedskating. The Olympic record was lowered by almost a half second today. That doesn’t happen.”