Speedskater Jordan Stolz’s Path to Olympic Gold at Milan Cortina 2026

Just since very little when he first started at age of 9 winning national competitions, if he got 2nd, it wasn't good enough.

In his mind , it's gold or nothing.

Yeah, that's the truth.

I think he's only going to be happy if it's a gold.

Since age 5 and 7, Jordan would tell the first grade teacher, I'm going to be an Olympian, I'm doing speed skating and I'm gonna win the Olympics, and everyone's like, oh yeah, that's great, you know.

I think I did have that confidence, just, I don't know why, it was just there.

I always had the idea that I would someday be in the Olympics.

2010 Olympics came on.

And they're like, oh, what's that?

And I said the Olympics.

Who is who's the fastest, who can jump the highest, who can do all kinds of different things in all different sports.

It sparked interest, that's for sure, and ended up making a short track on the pond and the kids started skating out on the pond and It turned into a daily thing.

My first time skating was on that, you know, frozen pond, after I watched the 2010 Olympics with Apollo that inspired me.

Haven't skated out there recently, but from the memories that I have out there, skating out there late at night in the dark, we had a floodlight on, so, yeah, it was pretty fun.

My sister was better than me in the beginning, so it was always me trying to be better than her, or pushing each other.

Oh, she was really, really good.

Yeah, technically she was phenomenal and just had a big, big engine on her for endurance.

When she could still beat him on the ice, he was not happy.

He was really trying hard.

It was like that for a few years until I started getting a little bit older, a little bit faster.

Yeah, I think we both pushed each other.

My parents go hunting in places like Alaska and they harvest their uh their own meat, so my freezer is full of it.

It's extreme for most people.

We're in a tent with no heat, you just have good warm weather gear, and we're archery hunting, and there's grizzly bears walking around, moose, caribou.

So I get some of the best food that you can imagine, I guess you could say.

When we do get a moose.

Um, it gives us about 500 pounds of deboned meat and we make burgers out of it, steaks, and I mean, it's natural.

Um, there's no such a clean meat .

That's kind of a secret weapon because I mean eating all those clean meats and even as babies, I never fed them baby food.

We made, I made all of our own baby food.

So that's uh made a big difference growing up.

Yeah, he's extremely, extremely focused.

I think he's done everything he can to try to shave off time, you know, um, down to the 100s.

I mean, he's always, since a kid been trying to figure out how to get faster and faster and not chase other people.

He chases himself in his own time.

And I know people are like, oh, isn't it just great to be able to go, you know, you have to support him.

Well, we always support him, but he's hard on himself mentally inside because unless it's first, he's not satisfied.