Stolz, Jackson and Men’s Team Sprint Combine For Six Golds At Tomaszow Mazowiecki World Cup
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by Paul D. Bowker
American long track stars Jordan Stolz and Erin Jackson joined with the Men’s Sprint Team to secure six Gold medals at the season’s penultimate ISU World Cup over the weekend in in Tomaszow Mazowiecki, Poland.
Stolz, the two-time reigning World Champion in the Men’s 500m, 1000m and 1500m, won at all three distances again — setting Track Records in the 1000m and 1500m — despite still recovering from strep throat and pneumonia.
“The technique feels good, my strength isn’t even bad, but it’s just that I’m not recovering like I used to during competition,” Stolz said. “It’s probably the antibiotics or something.”
Jackson, meanwhile, reached the podium for the fourth Women’s 500m race in a row when she claimed both Gold medals in Poland. The Men’s Sprint Team of Conor McDermott-Mostowy, Cooper McLeod and Zach Stoppelmoor rounded out the wins while also claiming the season title.
Through five World Cups, U.S. skaters have won 37 medals, including 24 Gold medals. The final World Cup stop is coming up in Heerenveen, Netherlands, Feb. 28-March 2.
Stolz had won a men’s record 18 consecutive World Cup races before finishing second in a 500m event earlier this month in Milwaukee. This weekend, he extended his winning streaks in the 1500m to seven and the 1000m to nine. But it wasn’t easy.
Just an hour after winning the Men’s 500m in 34.49 seconds Friday, Stolz won the 1500m by just inches ahead of Norway’s Peder Kongshaug. They both had finishing times of 1:45.08, beating Stolz’s 2023 track record by .36 seconds.
“I think Peder really likes the track here,” Stolz said of Kongshaug, who was the last to beat Stolz in the 1500m more than two years ago. “He said himself that he prefers this ice. It may not be the fastest, but it suits him well. I felt like I just went too slow in the opener. I was trying to use more pressure instead of rhythm, which was a bad idea here.”
Stolz at one point fell .41 seconds behind Kongshaug but rallied for the win.
A day later, Stolz won the 1000m in 1:08.42, beating the track record by .10 seconds and defeating Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands by .36 seconds. Stolz won it with a blazing final lap of 26.48 seconds.
“On the last lap, it felt like I came back to it,” Stolz said. “I could push really hard. I just didn’t really die off.”
Stolz settled for a fifth-place finish in the second 500m race of the weekend Sunday. It marked his first podium miss of the season.
Jackson, who has been recovering from a back injury, was back on top of her game in Poland. The reigning Olympic champ won both 500m races to climb to the top of the World Cup standings in the event. She defeated two-time Olympic medalist Suzanne Schulting of the Netherlands in both races with winning times of 38.08 and 37.81 seconds.
“It’s just been placements all over the board for the women (this season),” said Jackson, who has three wins in nine 500m races. “So it’s kept kind of open because I know I had a last-place finish in there when I just went easy in Calgary. So I thought I would be out of the room completely, but it’s nice that it’s coming together and hopefully I can hold on to that.”
McDermott-Mostowy, McLeod and Stoppelmoor won the Men’s Team Sprint in 1:19.27, beating South Korea by more than a second. It’s been a banner year for the Sprint Team, which has also included Austin Kleba. The group won two Gold medals and one Silver medal in World Cup competitions, set a world record and also won at the Four Continents Championships.
Several other U.S. skaters notched top-10 performances in Poland.
McLeod nearly won an individual medal in the 1000m, finishing just .01 seconds behind Bronze-medal winner Zhongyan Ning of China. McLeod added eighth- and seventh-place finishes in the 500m.
Casey Dawson finished fifth in the Men’s 5000m.
On the women’s side, Mia Manganello finished fourth in the Mass Start, and three-time Olympian Brittany Bowe finished fifth in the 1000m and 11th in the 1500m. Both skaters are in position to contend for top-three finishes in the season standings on those events.
McKenzie Browne, Sarah Warren and Chrysta Rands-Evans combined for a sixth-place finish in the Women’s Team Sprint.
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.
