MILAN (AP) — Jordan Stolz qualified for the final of the mass start Saturday by finishing fourth in his semifinal as he tried to become the first man in 32 years to leave an Olympics with three gold medals in long track speedskating.
The top eight in each semifinal advance to the final later Saturday. Among the others advancing from the first men's semi was Jorrit Bergsma, the 40-year-old Dutch skater who was this season's World Cup champion in the mass
start and took a bronze in the 10,000 meters at the Milan Cortina Games.
Heading into the women's and men's mass start events that wrapped up the sport's competition at the Milano Speedskating Stadium, Stolz already had won the 500 meters and 1,000 meters and added a silver in the 1,500.
After the latter result on Thursday, Stolz said: “I didn’t have it today. Not sure why.”
There had been a lot of talk about whether the 21-year-old from Wisconsin might end up with a quartet of golds: He was asked questions about that at the outset of the news conferences immediately following his two victories.
But going home with a trio of wins would be significant.
The last male speedskater to get three golds in long track at a single Winter Games was Johann Olav Koss at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics (the Norwegian won the 1,500, 5,000 and 10,000).
The only two athletes with more are Eric Heiden, who went 5-for-5 for the United States at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, and Lidiya Skoblikova, who claimed four titles in women's speedskating while representing the Soviet Union in 1964.
The mass start is unlike any other individual event in long track.
Instead of essentially racing against the clock during two-person heats, all of the entrants line up together and do 16 laps — a total of 6,400 meters — simultaneously. That can lead to jostling and create what some skaters call random outcomes.
“The mass start is just kind of a tossup,” Stolz said. “It’s more like a bonus. It’s so hard to say what’s going to happen in that.”
The other American man competing was Ethan Cepuran, a silver medalist in team pursuit in Italy; the squad's women, who compete later Saturday, are Mia Manganello and Greta Myers.
Valerie Maltais, the Canadian who has a gold in team pursuit and bronzes in the 1,500 and 3,000 at these Olympics, said she sees the mass start as really up for grabs.
“It’s anyone’s race. It's completely different. It's not the strongest athlete who will win; it's the smartest. The one who's going to be more patient. The one who's going to have to be bold, maybe in attack. A lot of things will happen,” Maltais said. “It’s hard to predict. You have less control of what’s happening around you. It’s the race where I'm the most nervous when I show up to the line.”
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
