On an afternoon when the Olympic record kept falling, Jordan Stolz skated fast enough to win the gold at any other Winter Games. Just not this one.
The 21-year-old American was foiled in his bid for a third gold medal in eight days on Thursday, winning silver in the 1500m in a time of 1:42.75 after lowering the Olympic marks in the 1000m last Wednesday and the 500m on Saturday and threatening to become only the second American to win more than two golds in any sport at a single Winter Games.
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China’s Ning Zhongyan was the surprise gold medalist, crossing in an Olympic-record time of 1:41.98sec – 0.77sec ahead of Stolz – after seizing the race with early aggression. Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands, the two-time defending Olympic champion in his final Winter Games, came in 0.84sec off Ning’s pace for the bronze to the delight of another Dutch-heavy crowd.
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For the 26-year-old Ning, already a bronze medalist in the men’s 1000m and the team pursuit, it was the first Olympic gold of his career and China’s first speed skating medal of these Olympics.
“When Jordan was skating in the last pair, I still did not think the gold was mine,” Ning said afterwards. “He has been in incredible form all season. Even after he crossed the line, I was still not completely sure. It was only when the result was confirmed that it started to sink in. It is an amazing feeling.”
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The 1500m in speed skating is known as the race of kings because it sits at the perfect crossroads of the sport’s demands. The race requires the raw pace of a sprinter and the endurance of a distance specialist, ruthlessly exposing any weakness in either facet.
Many of the sport’s greatest champions have claimed the 1500m title, making it a proving ground where the most complete skater earns the crown. Only three of the 30 men’s 500m medalists from 1988 through 2022 even skated the 1500m.
Dutch skater Joep Wennemars, perhaps hard-done in the 1000m, laid down the early marker from the 11th pair with an Olympic-record time of 1:43.05, setting off a wall of noise in the banks of orange-clad supporters.
Two heats later, while Stolz calmly made circuits on the inner warm-up lane, Ning lowered that mark with a brilliant display of front-foot skating, putting down second-best early splits of 22.99sec and 47.86sec before taking control at 1100m with a field-best 1:13.80 and never looking back. Nuis, skating head-to-head in the same pair, was fastest after 700m but his early aggression proved costly on the final lap.
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Stolz went off in the final pair, his introduction eliciting deafening roars from a crowd braced for history. What followed was almost conservative. He completed the opening lap ranked fifth at 300m (23.36), where he remained at 700m (48.82), never chasing the blistering early pace set by Ning and Nuis. He closed in 27.60, faster than Ning, and the quickest final lap among the medalists, but it proved too little too late.
He circled the oval slowly with his head bowed after his time flashed on the screen while Ning celebrated with his coaches before taking a victory lap wearing the Chinese flag as a cape. Wennemars finished fourth, despite briefly holding the best time in Olympic history, 0.26sec out of the medals.
“When I saw Ning’s [time], I thought that was really fast,” Stolz said. “I thought, ‘I can skate that time in Inzell, at the last World Cup.’ But here, that’s a really fast time.
“I just didn’t quite have the legs. The beginning part was a little slow. I thought I could maybe get it back, but I was just beginning to die off.
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“Ning had the race of his life. I didn’t have one of my best, but I am still happy with silver. I have two golds and I was actually really happy that Ning was able to pull it off. I really like Ning.”
Stolz entered the Olympics beneath immense expectations, already a seven-time world champion and the favorite here across three individual distances. Had he completed 500-1000-1500 treble – as he did at two of the past three world championships – he would have become the first male speed skater to win three golds at a Games since Norway’s Johann Olav Koss did so at the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994.
Stolz’s trajectory since Beijing 2022 has been meteoric. At 17 as an Olympic debutant, he finished 13th in the 500m and 14th in the 1000m. Four years later, he has won two golds and a silver with one last medal chance in Saturday’s mass start.
Raised in Kewaskum, Wisconsin, and developed at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, Stolz has concentrated on blade setup, ice density and aerodynamic efficiency in pursuit of what he calls “free speed”. The Milan track – a temporary Olympic venue that has already produced some of the fastest times in Olympic history – has played into that mindset.
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Ning’s win on Thursday marked the seventh Olympic record of the competition after Francesca Lollobrigida in the women’s 3000m, Norway’s Sander Eitrem in the men’s 5000m, Jutta Leerdam of the Netherlands in the women’s 1000m, Stolz in the 1000m and 500m, and Dutch star Femke Kok in the women’s 500m.
“After the Beijing Winter Olympics, the level in speed skating just kept getting higher and higher,” Ning said. “It felt like there was a mountain in front of me, and no matter what I did, I just could not get past it.
“But I never stopped believing in myself. I kept telling myself to stay patient, to keep putting in the work, to trust that all the effort would add up one day. Today was that day. Even now, it still feels a little unreal that I was able to do this.”
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