Corinne Stoddard earned her first individual World Cup short track speed skating victory, leading a U.S. one-two with Kristen Santos-Griswold on Sunday.
Stoddard won the 1500m in Beijing, overtaking last season’s World Cup overall champion, South Korean Kim Gil-Li, on the final lap. Santos-Griswold slipped in for second, 112 thousandths of a second behind Stoddard.
Stoddard, the 2024 World 1500m bronze medalist, and Santos-Griswold are the only American women to win an individual World Cup short track race in the last 13 years.
Stoddard, 23, previously made 11 individual World Cup podiums, but all of those were second- and third-place finishes.
In her Olympic debut in 2022, she broke her nose in a crash in her first race. They stopped the bleeding in time for her to take part in a relay two hours later. Ultimately, her best finish at the Games was seventh.
“I worked so hard this summer, I really changed basically everything,” she said, according to the International Skating Union. “Last season, seeing myself on the podium so many times without pushing myself as hard as I could have done, I was like, ‘What could I be if I push myself in training?’”
Through three of six World Tour stops, Stoddard ranks second in the overall standings combining results across distances. Only Dutchwoman Xandra Velzeboer has more points.
Stoddard is from the same area of Washington state that produced short track stars Apolo Ohno and J.R. Celski. The 2019 World junior champion in inline skating moved to the Salt Lake City area to train at age 17.
The World Tour next moves to Seoul next weekend with coverage live on Peacock.
