Olympic gold medalist discusses balance between celebrating one victory while vying for others
Growing up in Wisconsin, it was relatively easy for Jordan Stolz to get into speedskating.
Waters are frozen early and often in the frozen tundra, which has made the Midwest somewhat of a hockey hotbed.
But watching Apollo Anton Ohno as a kid, the direction was natural for the 21-year-old.
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This past February, he accomplished the dream by taking home not one, but two Olympic gold medals.
Of course, winning one is a success, but with three other medal events, celebrating wasn’t exactly the easiest.
“Yeah, it’s pretty tough,” Stolz told Fox News Digital in a recent interview. “I mean, I wanted to celebrate, but actually I was really focused on the 500 (meters), because it’s only one day off and then the 500 final.”
Stolz’s first gold came in the 1,000-meter race, but the pressure was on to win a second in the 500.
“I kind of felt like I really needed to win that 500. So I wasn’t really messing around at all,” he said. “So I wouldn’t say it was hard to not celebrate, but competing throughout the entire time of the games, it got a little bit difficult, especially with the 1,500, and the minute I start, there’s a lot of time in between. There’s also things that can get messed up.”
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It was a lifetime of training both on and off the ice in order for Stolz to bring home the hardware, as what’s going into Stolz’s body might be more important than what he does on the rink. Recognizing that importance, he also makes sure his cat, Mitzi, a stray who showed up on his porch looking for food when Stolz was a preteen, is getting a similar nutritional treatment with Nulo food.
“I’m so careful about what I put into to my body. Now I’m just eating, you know, kind of terrible food, not really paying attention, and it’s like, man, I kind of feel like garbage,” Stolz said. So it’s like, I kind of get a taste of what it’s like, you know, bad quality food. So Mitzi, I don’t want her to be eating poor nutrition, because she doesn’t even have a choice, right? It’s up to me to give her what’s right. So that’s why I choose to give him a Nulo.”
While Stolz accomplished his goal, there’s much more work to be done. And he actually may not need to wait until 2030 to do it.
“I’m gonna keep training until the next Olympics,” Stolz said. “Do some World Championships, World Cups, we’ll see what I can do.
“I might try, you know, a little bit of track cycling this summer, maybe in LA ’28’s on the table, but we’ll see.”
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