Jordan Stolz, the world’s fastest speed skater over the last four seasons, trails Dutch rival Jenning de Boo after the first day of the two-day World Sprint Championships.
De Boo, the Olympic 500m and 1000m silver medalist behind Stolz, skated faster than Stolz in both of those distances on Thursday on home ice in Heerenveen, Netherlands.
De Boo skated the second-fastest sea level 500m in history — one hundredth off Stolz’s Olympic winning time — and similarly dominated the 1000m, going 1:06.52 to distance Stolz by 62 hundredths.
“Jenning’s doing very well, I’m not at my best, so it’s kind of tough, but doing as much as I can,” Stolz said. “Just after the Games, had such a big lead up to that. Now coming off of it, it’s not quite there.”
In the women’s competition, Olympic 500m gold medalist Femke Kok of the Netherlands had the fastest 500m and 1000m times. In the 500m, she skated the second-fastest sea-level time in history — 36.67 seconds — to break her own track record at the famed Thialf arena.
Skaters race those two distances again Friday, live on Peacock at 1 p.m. ET. The four results are combined to determine the overall world sprint champions.
SPEED SKATING WORLDS: Full Results | Broadcast Schedule
Stolz has yet to win a world sprint title. He finished fourth in 2022, when he was a budding 17-year-old, and skipped the event in 2024 to focus on the World Allround Championships, which he won.
Stolz is racing both the sprint worlds Thursday and Friday and the allround worlds Saturday and Sunday, a double nobody has skated to completion — yet alone winning both — since the two championships, which are held biennially, were combined starting in 2020.
Allrounds typically favor more distance-oriented skaters; the men race a 500m, 1500m, 5000m and 10,000m over the two days.
Why do both sprints and allrounds?
“I think the opportunity is there and the potential to try and do something really great, so I should act on that,” Stolz told Dutch broadcaster NOS.
Stolz can become the third man to win both titles in a career, joining fellow Americans Eric Heiden and Shani Davis.
Davis, who formerly coached Stolz and is still a friendly adviser, won allrounds in 2005 and 2006 and sprints in 2009. Heiden won both in 1977, 1978 and 1979 when they were not held on the same weekend.
“I’m going to be praying a lot before this weekend, to be honest with you,” Stolz said before the competition. “It’s going to be probably the hardest combination race of my life. ... I think I’m going to be in a lot of pain, but I’ll try my best.”
