A Teen Phenom’s Secrets to Success: Long Femurs and His Own Counsel

BEIJING — Every time he has been asked recently about his goal for the Olympics, Jordan Stolz, a 17-year-old American speedskater, has given a similar answer.

He is aiming for the top five in the 1,000 meters, and then hoping. “Anything could happen with somebody messing up their race, and I could get bumped up to the podium,” he said after winning the 1,000 at the Olympic trials in Milwaukee last month.

Privately, however, he is calculating a different path to the podium, one that, if successful, would help redeem what so far has been a disappointing Olympics for American speedskaters. Stolz’s plan would set him down the path of superstardom once traveled by fellow Midwest speedskaters like Eric Heiden and Shani Davis.

During Stolz’s first workout after the trials he asked his coach, Bob Corby, how he could get three-tenths of a second faster in a month. Corby told Stolz that he could gain one-tenth of a second in the first 600 meters of the race by skating the corners better and gain two-tenths by hitting the weight room and improving his endurance for the final 400 meters.

But why, Corby asked, was Stolz fixated on three-tenths of a second? “That is what Thomas Krol beat me by in Salt Lake City,” Stolz told Corby, who recalled the story while laughing about how quickly Stolz’s goals had shifted from making the Olympic team to placing in the top five to beating Krol, who skated the fastest 1,000 meters at a World Cup event in Salt Lake City in December.

“There is going to be a ceiling, no doubt, but for right now I just don’t bet against him,” said Corby, who coached the U.S. team at the 1980 and 1984 Olympics. “He is so good.”

Stolz, who races in the 500 meters on Saturday afternoon in China and the 1,000 meters on Feb. 18, is already successful. He holds the junior world records in both events, setting them in one weekend in December. His 500-meter time is the U.S. record, and he is one of the youngest American speedskaters to qualify for the Olympics.

“I see him and I’m like, ‘Wow, if he can do that, I can do a little bit more,’” said Joey Mantia, 36, the best American men’s skater for the last several years.

Stolz lives with his family on 25 acres in Kewaskum, Wis., about 45 minutes north of Milwaukee. His mother, Jane, is a dental hygienist, and his father, Dirk, is a deputy with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office. Stolz has been home-schooled since he was 10. His older sister, Hannah, was also a competitive junior speedskater, and the Stolz children spent much of their childhood being ferried back and forth to training at the Pettit National Ice Center in Milwaukee.

“We went to every single competition in the Midwest, 15 or 20 of them a year,” Dirk Stolz said. “Trying to pull them out of school every Thursday or Friday was impossible, so no way you could do it being in public school.”

Jordan Stolz’s hobbies outside speedskating include hunting and fishing. His father does taxidermy on the side (“It is how we can pay for speedskating and hunting trips,” he said) and the family used to raise elk and deer for artificial breeding. “Now we just have ponds and my daughter raises some exotic birds,” Dirk Stolz said. Hannah Stolz shot a turkey when she was 13 and was disappointed with how it was mounted, so she learned taxidermy and now enters taxidermy competitions.

Jordan Stolz began speedskating at 5 and has always been driven, even if nobody can quite identify why. “I sometimes wonder that myself,” he admitted. The Stolzes are born-again Christians, and Jane Stolz attributes her son’s motivation to religion. “When they were little we told them God gave them a gift, fast feet, better use it appropriately, and they always have,” she said.

Her son has always been a fast skater, but there was little to suggest he would be able to contend for an Olympic medal at 17. All of that changed two years ago.

One of the many differences between Jordan Stolz and other people who promised to improve themselves during the pandemic is that he actually did it. He started doing strength training for the first time and rode relentlessly on the bike.

Jon Tobon, an 18-year-old speedskater from Wisconsin, dated Stolz’s transformation to a disappointing junior world championship in Poland in February 2020. “After we got back from that trip, I just remember seeing him every single day on the Wattbike,” Tobon said.

All that summer, Stolz would head north on the back roads out of Kewaskum and ride the hills. During the winter speedskating season, he typically rides the bike in the basement at midnight and gets out of bed at 9:30 a.m. or later, a perk of home-schooling.

There was also a growth spurt, in which Stolz gained 30 pounds and grew three inches, to over 6 feet. “We were all kids once, little scrawny kids, but after the last couple of summers he is more of like a man now,” Tobon said.

Stolz is unfailingly polite and has a deep voice that belies his age. He answers questions directly, and in perhaps the most concrete sign that he is actually 17, doesn’t seem to have much interest in analyzing his motivation or why he is so fast.

Which is not to say he is skating solely on instinct; far from it. After Jane Stolz gets off work, she drives to the Pettit and films him skating before taking him home. She once was concerned that he was spending too much time on his iPad until she went over and saw that he was studying videos of himself skating.

The most animated he gets in interviews is talking in-depth about technique, sports science and the mechanics of speedskating.

Part of his success, he believes, comes from his genetics. He explained: “My body. The length of it. The length of my femurs and legs. More legs than torso. Everything straight. Nothing going outward.”

It also comes from his coaching. He was coached by Davis, who won four Olympic medals. After Davis went to consult with the Chinese team, Stolz pulled Corby out of retirement. But Stolz doesn’t follow his coaches blindly.

“I listen to my coach and then I can still do my own thing and figure out things for myself, something that the coach wouldn’t understand,” Stolz said.

Corby and his parents tried to persuade Stolz to race in the first two World Cup events of the season, in Europe in November, so that he could earn crucial qualifying points to help the United States secure spots in the Olympics. But after sleeping on it, Stolz decided that the travel would wreck his training and that he would skate only in the World Cup events in Salt Lake City and Calgary in December.

In Salt Lake City, Stolz broke his own junior world record in the 500 meters. In Calgary, he broke it again and took second overall in the 1,000 meters, helping earn the United States Olympic berths in both events.

“The 17-year-old was right,” Corby said. “He just went to those two World Cups and lit the world on fire. That is how intimidated he was the first time going against the best skaters in the world. Nah.”