17-Year-Old Jordan Stolz Is the Next Big Thing in U.S. Speedskating

The first-time Olympian got his skating start on his family’s backyard pond at age 5. Now, on the heels of a breakout season, he enters Beijing as a legitimate medal contender.

BEIJING — Jane Stolz is a dental hygienist by trade, but over the past dozen years she has also become an expert in automotive interiors and ice rink parking lots. “I sleep, eat, work, do my taxes—everything—sitting in my car,” she says. Whatever fills the hours until another practice ends.

On this afternoon in late January, however, the Kewaskum, Wisc., mother of two has just returned home from nearby Madison, where her 17-year-old son picked out a fresh set of four-pound, diamond-coated, steel sharpening stones to ship overseas for his star-dusted Winter Olympics debut. This is the first indication that speedskating’s next prodigy isn’t anything like other kids his age, let alone the world-class athletes with whom he will soon share the oval in Beijing. “He sharpens his own equipment,” Jane Stolz explains. “Even US Speedskating is like, there’s no Olympian who does all their blade work.”

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This wasn’t always the case, of course. When Jordan Stolz was around age 7, he was showing such promise that a coach offered to bend his blades to help him turn better and go faster, a tactic typically reserved for older skaters. Upon getting his blades back, Stolz demanded to know what the coach had done. “The guy winked and said, ‘I just put some pixie dust on them,’” Jane recalls. “It was a standing joke until Jordan was winning national titles: We never watched TV, so he never knew what pixie dust was, but every time [the coach] touched them, he’d be like, ‘Did he put that dust on again?’”

Despite the deception, Stolz always showed curiosity in the process, to the point that several years ago he decided to cut out the middle man and give it a whirl. “These blades are over $1,000,” Jane explains. “I said, ‘You’re not just picking your blades out and bending them. If you’re going to try, take [sister] Hannah’s up in the attic.’ He spent two weekends playing around, and got two different types of devices, an old-school and a new-school one. No one else has touched his equipment in three years.”

The handiness is inherited. For instance, Jane and husband Dirk run a taxidermy business in part to help cover Jordan’s speedskating costs; before leaving for China, Jordan filmed an interview for a local TV station in which he sharpened his skates near a giant stuffed bear in the living room. The family also used to maintain a deer and elk farm, and every summer travels to Alaska to fish halibut and salmon and hunt moose, shipping it all back to Wisconsin to satisfy Jordan’s adolescent appetite. “He’ll polish off a two-pound stick of moose hamburger like that,” Dirk says. “It’s a daily thing. He eats quite a lot.”

Away from the oval, out of his skintight track suit, Stolz is just another teenager in many ways. He loves road biking but put up a fight when his mother, worrying about the solo mileage he was logging, wanted to affix a GPS to the frame. “He’s like, ‘C’mon, mom, you can’t follow me,’” Jane says. Asked after a recent training session in Beijing to share his favorite places to explore in the Olympic Village, Stolz replied, “Uh, probably the Pizza Hut, I guess.” Then again, how many Gen-Zers can claim to have survived most of high school without a cell phone? “He got his first one in October,” Dirk says.

But none of these tidbits explain why Stolz is the Next Big Thing in U.S. speedskating, scheduled to compete in the 500 meters (Saturday) and the 1,000 meters (Feb. 18) after smashing the previous long track records in both events at last month’s U.S. Olympic trials at his home rink, Milwaukee's Pettit National Ice Center. “In the second half of last season, he really made a jump,” national team head coach Ryan Shimabukuro says. “Then it was like, OK, he’s thrown his hat legitimately into the ring.”

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Like so many others, Jordan picked up the sport after watching Apolo Anton Ohno tear around the short track during the 2010 Vancouver Games; before long Dirk was behind the wheel of an ATV, plowing off the frozen pond in their backyard to build a makeshift oval. Of the two kids, Hannah, who is a year older, caught on faster at first; Dirk has a video on his phone of little Jordan, frustrated at falling, whining about the ice being too slippery. Still, Jordan was resolute. “He never did any other sports,” Dirk says. “I don't think he’s even thrown a baseball or football. Just always been skating, skating and skating.”

The obsession manifests in many forms. After Dirk bought him a pair of inline skates at a garage sale, young Jordan spent hours doing laps in the driveway, dropping low and putting his hand on the concrete like Ohno. (Every so often, Jane says, Jordan still practices short track to help strengthen his corners.) He is also constantly watching film on his iPad, both of fellow long track skaters—particularly Russia’s Pavel Kulizhnikov, a five-time world champion who is entered in the same events as Jordan in Beijing—and of himself: After the U.S. trials, Dirk recalls, “we went back home and the first thing he does is look at video on my phone and go, ‘I screwed this up…that I could’ve been better on…’”

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Along the way Stolz’s devotion and potential caught the eye of U.S. legend Shani Davis, sparking a mentorship that continues today. “Really all-around he’s helped me a lot,” Stolz says. “Just [in] not overthinking, just trusting the skating, trusting all the stuff he’s taught me.” Some of this tutelage takes place in person: Whenever Stolz travels for events at the Utah Olympic Oval, he and his family crash at Davis’ house in Salt Lake, playing video games and talking speedskating techniques. But Davis is also keeping tabs from afar during the Olympics, Stolz says, reminding him in texts and on calls “just not to worry about the other skaters, worry about what I can do, and then I should be fine.”

Not that Jordan does much worrying in general. “He’s relaxed,” Shimabukuro says. “Cool as a cucumber.” How else to explain the World Cup qualifier in Salt Lake last May when Jordan, faced with a wardrobe malfunction in the middle of the 1,000 meters, broke into a straightaway while simultaneously fussing with his zipper? “It’s plain as day on the video,” Dirk says. “He still ended up getting a junior world record [at 1:07.03] out of that.” Or how he delivered that dominant performance at the U.S. trials despite a sloshing stomach full of kefir and protein drink that he puked up soon after crossing the finish line? “He’s so relaxed,” Jane says. “All the energy, all the motion and strength is going into the ice.”

A recent growth spurt, coupled with the roughly 30 pounds of muscle that he packed on through weightlifting and biking, has positioned Stolz ahead of schedule in terms of his Olympic dreams. “The Dutch coaches were talking to him up in Calgary [at another World Cup event last December], asking his plans, and he never even mentions Beijing,” Jane says. “It’s almost like he’s looking past that.” This tracks with how Stolz responded to a recent question about the pressure he feels to perform here in China: “No, I don't really feel any pressure, because whatever happens, it doesn’t really matter. I’m just hoping to get some good experience out of it, have some fun, try to skate the best race that I can.”

As for everything else beyond skating, his parents aren’t sure what comes next. Dirk recalls Jordan once expressing interest in becoming a lawyer, until he learned how much school and studying that would take; earlier this year, Jane says, he casually mentioned that one day he might want to make a run at qualifying for the Summer Olympics in track cycling. “His idol is Shani, who did five Olympics, so for 20 years of his life he never did anything else,” Jane says. “I told Jordan that he has to have a plan B, in case he breaks a leg or doesn't win all the medals. But this has been his life’s goal.”

Those are conversations for another day, though. In the meantime, it’s best to appreciate Jordan Stolz for who he is in this moment, at these Olympics: a blossoming talent, rounding the corner of his youth and heading into a straightaway of stardom, with a future so bright that it might as well be doused in pixie dust.