America’s Next Great Speedskater Is Coming for the Dutch

Still, when Heiden talks about his emergence as a star, he could just as easily be referring to Stolz. “In ’77, I won the men’s allround world championships,” Heiden said. “The next weekend, I went to the junior world championships; it was like taking candy from a kid. I went to the world sprint championships, and my confidence was raging.”

Demands on Stolz’s time — from sponsors, fans and the media — are already rising, and soon the pressures Nuis and Krol have experienced will find him, too. If he performs as well as everybody thinks he will over the next three years, he will be one of the faces of the American team at the 2026 Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

Three days before his first race, Stolz was sanguine about it all. He feels confident and prepared, and prefers to focus on the process. “And if it’s a perfect race and I still haven’t gotten a medal, then I’ll just have to accept that,” he said.

His approach is an appropriate one for speedskating, a simple sport. There are no heats and no qualifiers. There are no re-dos. There is one race, and the skater with the best time wins. As Stolz chases his first world championship gold medal, he has embraced an approach that will be recognizable to any teenager.

“When it’s all or nothing, you just have to go out like it’s all or nothing,” Stolz said. “So, I’ll just have to, I guess, send it.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/sports/olympics/jordan-stolz-speedskating.html