On an afternoon of falling Olympic records, Jordan Stoltz skated fast enough to win a gold medal at any other Winter Olympics. Just not this one.
The 21-year-old American suffered a setback in his bid for a third gold medal in eight days on Thursday, winning silver in the 1500m in 1 minute 42.75 seconds after lowering his Olympic times in last Wednesday’s 1000m and Saturday’s 500m, and could become just the second American to win more than two gold medals in any event at a single Winter Olympics.
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Chinese player Ning Zhongyan unexpectedly won the gold medal with an Olympic record time of 1 minute 41.98 seconds, 0.77 seconds ahead of Stoltz. He won the game with a strong advantage early in the game. Two-time defending Winter Olympic champion Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands delighted another Dutch spectator when he won bronze 0.84 seconds slower than Binin in his final Winter Olympics.
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For the 26-year-old Ning, who has already won bronze medals in the men’s 1,000 meters and team pursuit, this is the first Olympic gold medal in his career and China’s first speed skating medal at this Olympics.
“When Jordan skated the last pair, I still didn’t think the gold medal was mine,” Ning said afterward. “He’s been in unbelievable form all season. Even after he crossed the line, I still wasn’t entirely sure. It was only when the result was confirmed that I started to understand it. It’s an amazing feeling.”
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1500m speed skating has been called the race of kings because it sits at the perfect crossroads of the sport’s needs. The race requires the raw speed of a sprinter and the stamina of a long-distance specialist, ruthlessly exposing weaknesses in either.
Many of the sport’s greatest champions have won the 1500m, making this a proving ground for the most complete skaters to win crowns. From 1988 to 2022, only three of the 30 men’s 500m medalists even skated the 1500m.
Dutch skater Joep Wennemars, who may have struggled in the 1000m, took the lead in Group 11 with an Olympic record time of 1 minute 43.05 seconds, causing a ruckus among the orange-clad supporters.
After two heats, while Stoltz calmly circled the inside warm-up track, Ning lowered that mark with a stellar front-foot slide, posting second-best times of 22.99 seconds and 47.86 seconds in the early going, before taking control of the race with a meet-best 1:13.80 at 1100m and never looking back. Nuis, skating side by side in the same pair, was fastest after 700m, but his early aggression proved costly on the final lap.
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Stoltz came on the final pair, and his entrance was met with deafening cheers from a crowd ready to embrace history. What follows is almost understatement. He completed the first lap in the 300m (23.36) in fifth place and then stayed in the 700m (48.82), never able to catch up to the blistering pace set early by Ning and Nuis. He ended up finishing in 27.60, faster than Nin and with the fastest final lap among the medalists, but his time proved to be too slow.
After his time flashed on the screen, he took a slow lap around the oval with his head down, while Ning celebrated with his coach and then took the victory lap wearing the Chinese flag as a cape. Wynnemars finished fourth, although he briefly held the best time in Olympic history (0.26 seconds behind the medal).
“When I saw Ning [time]I thought it was really fast,” Stoltz said. “I thought, ‘I could skate in Inzer at the last World Cup. ‘But time flies here.
“I just didn’t quite have the legs. The beginning part was a little slow. I thought I could get it back, but I just started dying.
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“Ning had the best race of his life. I didn’t get the best result, but I’m still happy with the silver medal. I got two gold medals, and I’m really happy that Ning was able to win. I really like Ning.”
Stoltz enters the Olympics with huge expectations, already a seven-time world champion and the favorite in all three individual distance events here. If he can complete the 500-1000-1500 triple crown – as he has done in two of the past three world championships – he will become the first male speed skater to win three gold medals at the Olympics since Norway’s Johann Olav Koss did so at Lillehammer in 1994.
Stoltz’s trajectory has been meteoric since the 2022 Beijing Olympics. At the age of 17, he competed in his first Olympic Games, finishing 13th in the 500m and 14th in the 1,000m. Four years later, he won two gold medals and a silver in Saturday’s mass start and had his last chance at a medal.
Stolz, who grew up in Keawaskum, Wisconsin and developed at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee, focused on blade setup, ice density and aerodynamic efficiency in pursuit of what he calls “free speed.” The Milan circuit – a makeshift Olympic venue that has produced some of the fastest times in Olympic history – epitomizes this mentality.
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Ningning’s victory on Thursday marked the seventh Olympic record in the event, behind Francesca Lollobrigida in the women’s 3,000m, Sander Etreme of Norway in the men’s 5,000m, Jutta Riordan of the Netherlands in the women’s 1,000m, Stolz in the 1,000m and 500m and Dutch star Femke Kok in the women’s 500m.
“After the Beijing Winter Olympics, the level of speed skating is getting higher and higher,” Ning said. “It felt like there was a huge mountain in front of me and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get over it.
“But I never stopped believing in myself. I kept telling myself to be patient, to keep putting in the work, and to believe that all the hard work was going to pay off one day. Today was that day. Even now, it still feels a little unreal that I was able to do this.”