U.S. Long Trackers Capture Seven Golds at ISU Four Continents Championships

Jordan Stolz set a pair of Track Records and won four Gold medals to lead a big U.S. medal haul at the ISU Four Continents Speed Skating Championships over the weekend in Hachinohe, Japan.

Among the other individual winners were Erin Jackson and Brittany Bowe, while Stolz joined teammates Ethan Cepuran and Emery Lehman to set a track record while also winning the Men’s Team Pursuit. Rounding out the winners were Austin Kleba, Cooper McLeod and Zach Stoppelmoor in the Men’s Team Sprint.

Stolz — the two-time reigning World Champion in the Men’s 500m, 1000m and 1500m — broke Track Records in the 1500m and 1000m while also winning the 500.

In total, 10 U.S. skaters won medals, including Jackson’s victory in the Women’s 500m and Bowe’s dominant triumph in the Women’s 1000m. Mia Manganello won a Silver medal in the Women’s Mass Start and Kimi Goetz won a Bronze medal in the Women’s 1000m.

Stolz wrapped up the competition Saturday with his track record in the 1000m, winning in 1:08.04. The performance came shortly after skating with Cepuran and Lehman in the Team Pursuit for the first time. The trio won with a time of 3:43.13, defeating Japan by more than a second.

“I got off the ice quickly, ran up to start eating and drink some coffee, and started to rest a little bit,” Stolz said. “It was more of a mental thing to prepare for the 1000m. From when I actually finished, I think it was an hour, so it was all just enough to get some food in.”

Stolz, replacing usual Team Pursuit member Casey Dawson, skated the anchor behind Cepuran and Lehman. Cepuran, Dawson, Lehman and Joey Mantia combined won a Bronze medal in the event at the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games.

“As we saw from the Olympics (Beijing 2022), it’s good to have four strong people in case something happens,” Lehman said. “So we’re definitely open to including him. He’s a phenomenal skater and, as you can see, he can skate the Team Pursuit, as well.”

Stolz opened the competition Thursday by winning the 1500m in 1:44.45, breaking a two-year-old track record by more than a second. He won the 500m the next day in 34.47 seconds, missing a track record by just 0.04 seconds. McLeod placed fourth and Stoppelmoor was seventh.

Four U.S. men notched fifth-place finishes: Lehman in the Men’s 1500m, Stoppelmoor in the Men’s 1000m, Dawson in the Men’s 5000m and Cepuran in the Men’s Mass Start.

Kleba, McLeod and Stoppelmoor, who won last season’s World Cup season Overall Championship in the Men’s Team Sprint, captured that event with a time of 1:19.43.

Bowe, a seven-time World Champion and two-time Olympic medalist, won a Four Continents 1000m crown for the first time and reached the top of an international podium for the first time in nearly three years. Bowe, who holds the World Record at the distance, won in 1:15.65, beating Kazakhstan’s Nadezhda Morozova by 1.51 seconds and third-place Goetz by 1.58. Manganello placed eighth.

“It felt solid,” Bowe said. “I had a really nice chase on the first back stretch, so I think that helped propel me to a pretty fast time for that first lap.”

Jackson, the reigning Olympic Champion at 500m, won the Four Continents title in the event for the second straight year, winning in 38.16 seconds. Goetz finished fifth, and Bowe was sixth.

“It’s just the first race of the season, everyone’s going to be shaking off some rust,” Jackson said. “I will just be excited to see what the rest of the world brings for the World Cups.”

Manganello finished just 0.08 seconds behind Canada’s Ivanie Blondin in the Mass Start. Greta Myers was ninth. Manganello was also eighth in the 1500m.

The long trackers remain in Japan for this week’s World Cup opener in Nagano, Nov. 22-24.

Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic and Paralympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to USSpeedskating.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.