speed skating
- No man had ever won three singles titles at a world championship
- The 18-year-old began skating on the pond in the family’s backyard
At 18, Jordan Stolz already looks like one of the most dominant winter athletes in the world.
On Sunday, he ended a couple of extraordinarily successful days by becoming the first man to win three individual gold medals at a single distance World Speed Skating Championships. His victory in the 1500m coincided with previous wins in the 500m and 1000m. His time of 1 minute, 43.59 seconds in the 1500m on Sunday was good enough to beat two-time Olympic champion Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands by 23 hundredths of a second.
UNBEATABLE 🔥
After winning 500m and 1000m gold 🏆, Jordan Stolz 🇺🇸 clinched the 1500m title 🥇, becoming the first male speed skater to win three individual gold medals at a World Individual Distance Championships 👏 #speed skating #WorldSpeed pic.twitter.com/WjC0kQA2qg
— ISU Speed Skating (@ISU_Speed) March 5, 2023
“I felt really good this weekend, better than all year, and I hit my peak too,” Stolz told the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal after Sunday’s race. “With all the racing at the beginning of the year and a lot of hard training, I came here and just rested for 10 days. And I just felt super comfortable on the ice. So technically, yeah I think it was the best lap time I’ve ever ridden, especially in the 500s and 1000s. The 1500s were pretty good – almost perfect.”
US speed skating prodigy Jordan Stolz becomes youngest-ever world champion
His victory in the 500m on Friday made him the youngest-ever gold medalist in the history of the World Championships in the individual distance.
Stolz began skating on his family’s three-acre backyard pond in the small village of Kewaskum, Wisconsin, about 45 minutes north of Milwaukee. He was inspired while watching Apolo Anton Ohno’s short track exploits at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics on TV. After initially training on the short track, after a few years he switched to the long track and began winning national championships when he was in fifth grade.
Since becoming the youngest man to win a World Cup individual race in November and setting a course record in the process, Stolz has lived up to his tremendous promise by dominating last month’s World Junior Championships, winning the 500m, 1000m and 1500m and adding bronze medals to the other two Individual competitions: 5000 m and mass start. He also won gold in the men’s team sprint.
He became only the third speed skater in history, after Eric Heiden (1977 and 1978) and Beth Heiden (1979), to win world titles at junior and senior levels in the same season.
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