Milan: Jordan Stolz was always destined to be the next great American speedskater. He’s got tree-trunk thighs, impeccable balance and a stunningly high tolerance for the horrific pain required to chase four gold medals in Milan.
But before he even laced up his first pair of skates, one crucial twist of fate broke his way to make all of this possible—and it’s one that he had absolutely no control over at all.
Stolz was born in Wisconsin.
Most of the time, Wisconsinites are best known for their love of cheese curds, beers and braving subzero temperatures at Lambeau Field. But introduce a 400-meter oval and a pair of razor-sharp skates, and proud cheeseheads turn into something else entirely: some of the fastest athletes in the world.
“He’s very lucky,” said Jeff Brand, Stolz’s first coach, “to have been born in this area.”
Specifically, the area that contains the most influential rink in American speedskating. The Pettit National Ice Center, in Milwaukee, is one of two Olympic-grade long-track ovals in the entire U.S. And it possesses a strange power to turn Midwestern kids into motorcycles on ice.
If the luckiest thing an aspiring speedskater can do is grow up in the Netherlands—the Dutch hold a record 133 Olympic medals in the discipline—then the next best option is to be raised within driving distance of the Pettit. Since the 1980 Games, Americans have won 19 gold medals at the Olympics in long-track speedskating, and 16 of them were won by skaters either raised or trained in Wisconsin.
Stolz, 21, is just the latest contender to roll off the conveyor belt. He was 5 years old when he and his sister became obsessed with American short-track legend Apolo Anton Ohno. So his father Dirk, a deputy sheriff, did what any Wisconsin dad would do: He made the bitterly cold climate work for his kids.
The Stolz family had a pond in their backyard in Kewaskum, Wisc., and Dirk hooked a plow to his ATV to shove snow off of the frozen surface. He cleared enough space for a miniature oval and erected lights so that practice didn’t have to end when the short winter days did.
“Jane was kind of against it, because she didn’t want the kids to fall through the ice,” Dirk said of Stolz’s mother. “So we put on life jackets. That was the compromise.”
But it was the nearby rink without a drowning hazard that changed the course of Stolz’s career. When his parents went looking for a space where their budding phenom might have the chance to grow into a larger loop, they settled on the Pettit.
“He would have been a good skater no matter what,” Brand said, imagining the possibility that Stolz had been from California or Massachusetts. “But it would have been a long time until he found the right track.”
The twist was that the Stolzes hadn’t just found a convenient facility. They’d landed on the greatest incubator of speedskating talent anywhere outside the land of tulips and windmills. Pettit has a knack for churning out gold medalists as often as Juilliard graduates first-chair violinists.
The building not only houses some of the most promising young talent in the sport—on any given day, it also contains a good chunk of America’s collected speedskating wisdom. Olympic champions return for impromptu workouts. All-time greats spend their retirements dispensing advice to the next generation.
“You’ve got five-time Olympic gold medalists, the best known skaters in history calling out splits and holding clipboards,” said Joey Cheek, a former Olympic champion. “There’s this incredible institutional knowledge.”
And day after day, Stolz spent every spare moment soaking it up. Youth practices often began just after Olympians’ sessions ended, which meant the young Stolz could watch the best in the world endure the grueling drudgery of training.
“He did things that 18 or 19-year-old skaters don’t do,” Brand said. “When he was 13.”
Stolz is poised to join the best Wisconsin speedskaters of all time—which simply means becoming one of the best of all time, period. By winning races across five distances in 1980, Madison native Eric Heiden became the only athlete in American history to win five golds at one winter Olympics. Stolz hopes to become the first American in any discipline to win four golds since.
And he has done it by declining to join the rest of the U.S. speedskating team at its home oval in Salt Lake City, where the altitude makes the ice easier to glide. He preferred the intensity of training at sea level.
Stolz knew that if he was going to dominate in Milan, there was only one place he could prepare: It had to be Wisconsin.
Write to Robert O’Connell at robert.oconnell@wsj.com