Jordan Stolz Leads a 10-Medal U.S. Performance At World Cup Opener in Nagano

Jordan Stolz won four races and set two Track Records for the second consecutive week as U.S. long track skaters opened the 2024-25 World Cup season with an impressive weekend of 10 medals in Nagano, Japan.

Stolz, the two-time reigning World Champion in the Men’s 500m, 1000m and 1500m, set Track Records in the 1000m and 1500m at the M-Wave and missed a record in the 500m by just .01 seconds. The result comes a week after he won all three distances and the Team Pursuit at the ISU Four Continents Championships in Hachinohe, Japan.

Also winning a Gold medal in Nagano was Olympic Champion Erin Jackson, who won the second of two Women’s 500m finals.

Other medal winners included Kimi Goetz, who finished in third place in the 500m, behind Jackson. Three-time Olympian Brittany Bowe won a Bronze medal in the Women’s 1000m, the event she holds the World Record in. Cooper McLeod won his first World Cup individual medal, a Bronze, in the Men’s 1000m.

Both Pursuit teams added podium finishes as well. Olympic Bronze medalists Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman and Ethan Cepuran won Silver in the Men’s event, while Bowe, Mia Manganello and Greta Myers combined to win a Bronze medal in the Women’s race. This was Myers first ever World Cup medal.

Stolz got things started fast on Friday, winning the Men’s 500m in 34.43 seconds and then coming back to claim the 1500m in 1:43.65, breaking the Track Record by more than a second.

One day later, Stolz set another Track Record in the 1000m, winning with a time of 1:07.18, again breaking the previous mark by more than a second. Stolz also holds the World Record in the event.

“When I went to bed last night,” Stolz said, “my legs were hurting pretty bad. I thought I wouldn’t be able to recover, but I did.”

Stolz wrapped things up Sunday by winning the second 500m while narrowly missing another Track Record. He won the race in 34.41 seconds, falling just .01 seconds short of Tatsuya Shinhama’s 2023 Track Record. Shinhama, of Japan, finished second with a time of 34.49 seconds.

Stolz said he felt “the least amount of pressure for this race because I was already tired. If I don’t win, it’s just fatigue.”

Jackson won the second Women’s 500m in 37.78 seconds, leading a 1-3 U.S. finish, two days after she finished ninth in the first 500m with a time of 38.17 seconds.

“My 100m opener wasn’t up to par on Friday,” Jackson said. “For Sunday’s race, I cleaned up my technique and got back to a 10.4 opener. Happy to be on top of the podium again!”

Goetz finished third in Sunday’s final to make the podium with a time of 37.98. She had missed the podium by just .02 seconds in Friday’s final, finishing fourth with a time of 37.95 in a race won by Japan’s Yukino Yoshida.

Bowe reached the podium in the Women’s 1000m for the second straight week. After winning at the Four Continents, she finished third with a time of 1:15.17 in Nagano among strong competition.

“Everyone’s here and I’m on the podium. It feels like a couple years since I’ve been,” Bowe said. “I was on the podium once last year, but not everyone was there.”

In a race that featured the top two finishers breaking the track record in the Men’s 1000m, McLeod won his first World Cup medal and nearly beat the track record himself. McLeod finished with a time of 1:08.43 to claim the Bronze medal, just .10 seconds slower than the previous track record and 1.25 seconds behind Stolz.

“To win my first individual medal feels almost magical,” McLeod said. “We all train so hard to possibly have a chance of reaching the podium, and in a field so deep the chances are even smaller. So when I realized the position I was in going into the last few pairs, my eyes got big and I felt pure joy like a little kid.”

“When the time finally held up,” he added, “it was just tons of excitement. I was sitting right next to my coach Ryan, so when the moment came, he nearly tackled me off the pad giving me a hug.”

McLeod also finished fifth in the second 500m.

The World Cup moves to China for the second stop, Nov. 29-Dec. 1, in Beijing.

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.