Jordan Stolz upped his record men’s speed skating World Cup win streak to 18 races in a row by registering the fastest sea-level times in history in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m the last two days.
Stolz, 20, won Friday’s 1000m and then Saturday’s 500m and 1500m (in a 90-minute span) at his home oval in Milwaukee, a World Cup host for the first time in 20 years.
In Friday’s 1000m, Stolz clocked 1 minute, 6.16 seconds to become the first skater to break 1:07 at a venue other than Salt Lake City and Calgary, where most record times are skated with the benefit of altitude. Stolz already owns the overall 1000m world record of 1:05.37 set in Salt Lake City last January.
The previous fastest sea-level 1000m was 1:07.09, set by Russian Pavel Kulizhnikov in 2020 in Heerenveen, Netherlands.
Stolz’s gaping margin of victory Friday -- 1.17 seconds over Dutchman Jenning de Boo -- was greater than the margin separating second place from 13th place.
Then on Saturday, Stolz became the first skater to break 34 seconds in a 500m at sea level. He won in 33.91, beating de Boo in the same pairing by 37 hundredths (greater than the margin separating second place from 10th place).
Stolz previously shared the fastest sea-level time in history of 34.07.
Ninety minutes after the 500m, Stolz won the 1500m in 1:41.46 in the fastest sea-level time in history, breaking his own record.
His margin of victory -- 1.21 seconds over two-time Olympic 1500m gold medalist Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands -- was greater than the margin separating second place from seventh place.
With Friday’s victory, Stolz broke his tie with retired Dutchman Sven Kramer for the longest men’s speed skating World Cup win streak, according to Dutch broadcaster NOS and speedskatingstats.com. The International Skating Union (ISU) could not confirm that Kramer had the record streak.
All of Stolz’s victories during the streak have come in individual events — the 500m, 1000m and 1500m — while six of Kramer’s 15 wins came in the team pursuit. The annual World Cup circuit began with the 1985-86 season.
Also Saturday, Stolz broke his ties for the longest win streaks in World Cup history in the men’s 500m (now nine, one more than Uwe-Jens Mey and Jeremy Wotherspoon) and the men’s 1500m (six, one more than Shani Davis, his former coach), according to the ISU.
Stolz said that Davis told him afterward that his 1500m on Saturday was “the perfect race.”
“Which usually he doesn’t say, so I’ll remember that,” Stolz said.
Stolz’s last defeat on the World Cup came in the 5000m — a distance he rarely skates — on Jan. 28, 2024. His last defeat across his favored 500m, 1000m and 1500m — where he has won 22 World Cup races in a row combined — was on Dec. 10, 2023.
On the women’s side, German Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann won 23 consecutive World Cup starts from 1992-94, according to her Speedskatingstats.com profile.
Stolz debuted at the Olympics at age 17 in 2022 with 13th- and 14th-place finishes. He has since blossomed into the world’s best speed skater.
In 2023, he became the youngest skater to win an individual world title and also the first man to win three individual golds at a single worlds. World championships for individual distances debuted in 1996.
Then last season, Stolz swept the 500m, 1000m and 1500m at worlds again. Plus he won the world allround title — combining results from the 500m through the 10,000m — as the youngest man to take that crown since fellow Wisconsin native Eric Heiden.
Heiden won allrounds in 1977, 1978 and 1979, and then won all five speed skating events at the 1980 Lake Placid Games in arguably the greatest feat in Winter Olympic history across all sports.
Next year, Stolz could win three gold medals at the Olympics across the 500m, 1000m and 1500m. Heiden is the only American to win more than two golds at a single Winter Games in any sport.
Also in Milwaukee, Casey Dawson broke Chad Hedrick’s American record in the 5000m, six days after breaking Hedrick’s American record in the 10,000m.
Dawson, 24, clocked 6:07.93 for fourth place overall, taking 1.75 seconds off Hedrick’s record from 2005, which had been the longest-standing American record among events on the Olympic program.
Dawson’s is the only current American record that wasn’t set at the high-altitude venues of Salt Lake City and Calgary.
Olympic gold medalist Erin Jackson took second to Femke Kok of the Netherlands in the women’s 500m. Jackson made her first individual podium since winning in her second race of the season in November.
Two-time Olympic medalist Brittany Bowe placed second to Japan’s Miho Takagi in the women’s 1000m, marking Bowe’s best World Cup finish this season.
“I’ve been pretty consistent the whole season,” Bowe said, according to the ISU. “I definitely feel that I’m within striking distance.”
The Milwaukee World Cup concludes Sunday with live coverage on Peacock at 2:30 p.m. ET. Stolz is expected to race another 500m (again against de Boo, who nearly beat him last Sunday).
CNBC airs highlights from the three-day World Cup stop on Sunday at 2 p.m.
