This past May 17, Eric Heiden stood behind a lectern, shuffled some papers and addressed the U.S. speed skating community at an awards ceremony.
“Well, were there any doubters last year that we weren’t going to be up here again with Jordan Stolz? I hope you eat your words,” Heiden said, drawing laughter from a group that collectively may have harbored zero doubt. “After watching what Jordan accomplished last season, many wondered, how can he top that? Well, he did.”
Heiden, arguably the greatest speed skater in history, spent the next 70 seconds listing his fellow Wisconsinite Stolz’s accomplishments in the 2023-24 campaign.
They included: a world record in the 1000m; world titles in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m for a second time and the world allround title, one of the most storied crowns in global sport awarded since 1893.
Stolz, then 19, became the youngest world allround champion — combining results from the 500m through the 10,000m — since Heiden claimed the second of his three consecutive titles in 1978.
Stolz won U.S. Speedskating’s Eric Heiden Award for excellence for a second year in a row.
“You guys, we’re seeing something special,” Heiden concluded before cueing a three-minute highlight video. “I think we’re going to be here multiple times handing out this award. Jordan, I hope you’ve got a large enough mantle.”
Stolz is shaping up to be a main character for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics. He could compete in up to five events over an 11-day stretch. He could become the second American to earn three gold medals at a single Winter Olympics.
The first? Heiden, who won all five men’s speed skating events at the 1980 Lake Placid Games. It may be the greatest singular accomplishment in Winter Olympic history.
Stolz has drawn comparisons to Heiden since before the 2022 Winter Games. Both made their Olympic debuts at age 17.
Stolz went into those 2022 Beijing Games already the American record holder in the 500m. National media began storytelling about the kid from Kewaskum who watched short track star Apolo Ohno on TV during the 2010 Olympics, then began skating on the pond behind his family’s house.Coach Bob Corby said they hoped he could place in the top six in the 500m and the 1000m at his first Olympics.
He ended up 13th and 14th.
“So it was a little bit disappointing for him, and that left a bad taste in his mouth with Beijing,” Corby said.
The Milwaukee-based Corby trained with Heiden in the 1970s, painted the Heiden family home for a summer job and coached the national team during the 1984 Olympic cycle (after Heiden switched from skating to cycling).
Corby stopped full-time coaching in 1984 but stayed in touch with the sport as a physical therapist. Stolz reached out around 2018, hoping Corby would be up for a comeback.
“It was kind of hard to turn down a 14-year-old, calls you on the phone and asks you to coach him,” Corby said.
Corby previously coached Dan Jansen and Bonnie Blair, who went on to become Olympic champion sprinters. He said Stolz most resembles Nick Thometz, an Olympian in 1984, 1988 and 1992 who lowered the 500m world record and once had the fastest unofficial 1000m time in history.
There are similarities to Heiden, too.
“There’s been things during summer training, bike riding and weightlifting and things like that, that also remind me of Eric,” Corby said, “and certainly things on the ice that he does.”
After the 2022 Olympics, Corby and Stolz didn’t make major changes to the training plan. But something clearly clicked over that offseason.
In his first international race of the 2022-23 season, Stolz became the youngest man to win an individual World Cup, according to Speedskatingstats.com.
Not only that, he won by 1.76 seconds — greater than the margin separating second place from 16th place. Not only that, he did so in the 1500m, an event he didn’t even enter at the 2022 Olympic Trials.
“That’s when the sky became the limit,” Corby said. “That’s when we started planning for bigger and better things.”
Late in the 2022-23 season, Stolz traveled to the Netherlands, the global hotbed of the sport. He competed at the World Single Distances Championships inside Thialf, the Madison Square Garden of speed skating. He became the youngest gold medalist in the competition’s history (since 1996). He became the first man to win three individual gold medals in one edition.
Stolz’s arrival was heralded by the Dutch. In one race, a commentator for NOS, the national broadcaster, frenziedly called him “straaljager,” or fighter jet. De Telegraaf, the country’s largest newspaper, used “wonderkind” to start one headline. A fan gave him a personalized pair of clogs.
“You walk down the street, and everyone’s looking at me,” Stolz said of being in the Netherlands in a familiar refrain for American speed skaters over the decades. “It’s not like in the U.S. where nobody really cares.”
Stolz spent additional time in the Netherlands after the 2022-23 season. He signed with the Dutch club team Zaanlander, though he has remained primarily based in Wisconsin with Corby.
He took his offseason passion for cycling to Europe, scaling the famed Stelvio mountain pass in Italy in about 78 minutes in September 2023.
“I had a headwind on the only somewhat flat part,” he said. “I think I was really in shape after that.”
Before the 2023-24 World Cup season began, Stolz skated the two fastest 1500m sea-level times in history at his home oval in Milwaukee. Most of the fastest times overall are set in the thinner air of high-altitude venues, so separate lists are compiled for lower elevations.
In February, he swept the 500m, 1000m and 1500m world titles again.
In March, he took aim at the world allround championships, an event usually won by a distance skater combining results from a 500m, 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m. It is like the decathlon of speed skating.
Stolz knocked off three-time champ Patrick Roest of the Netherlands to win that title in Inzell, Germany. Stolz and Heiden are the only men since World War II to win an Olympic or world 500m title and a world allround title.After that season-ending event, Corby remembered several hundred people chanting Stolz’s name outside of their hotel. Hours later, the 74-year-old coach woke up before dawn to travel separately to the Munich airport.
Corby stepped out of his room with his luggage. He noticed a light underneath the door of Stolz’s room. Corby opened the door. Stolz was sitting in his bed, thumbing his phone while wearing a U.S. team jacket.
“Hey, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning. Are you going to go to sleep?” Corby asked.
“Sleep? I don’t need any sleep. I’m the world allround champion,” Stolz replied.
“Which was pretty out of character,” a laughing Corby said later. “He doesn’t usually say stuff like that, but I thought it was just great.”
Corby guessed that Stolz celebrated his 20th birthday on May 21 with a six-hour bike ride and a big steak. That was close. It was a four-hour ride, followed by a 55-ounce steak.
“That’s Jordan’s life, right there,” Corby said.
Stolz’s training in Wisconsin has included scaling Sunburst Ski Hill in a bent-over skating position. The hill has about 290 feet of vertical drop. This past offseason, he joined Zaanlander for a two-week altitude cycling camp in the Canary Islands. That included riding up a volcano, El Teide.
Then he went back to Kewaskum. Dutch media met him at a Dairy Queen for a profile.
This fall, Stolz opened the season with victories in his first eight races over two World Cup stops. His winning streaks dating to last winter are historic. The circuit picks back up in Calgary in late January, then in Milwaukee the first weekend of February.
Stolz noted that Calgary is where he skated the second-fastest 500m time in history last February. He missed the world record by eight hundredths.
“If I’m doing a little bit better in the 500m this year, I should be able to break that,” he said.
Stolz added 15 pounds on his 6-foot-1 frame since the 2022 Olympics. Mentally, he has matured, too. Stolz reflected on his Olympic debut, saying, “I just didn’t quite have it. But I think now it’s a bit better.”
“I just started to kind of grow up on the ice,” he said.
Stolz met Heiden for the first time when he received the Eric Heiden Award in 2023.
“He congratulated me on the races,” Stolz said, “and then I think I started asking him about his training.”
In recent interviews, Stolz has shared the joke that he told upon receiving the Heiden Award this past May — a few days before consuming that 55-ounce birthday steak.
“I have something (Heiden) doesn’t have,” Stolz said, “which is two Eric Heiden Awards.”
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