MILAN — Keeping Jordan Stolz from getting another medal seemed to be more important for his competitors than winning one of their own.
Stolz finished fourth in the mass start Saturday, Feb. 21, after several of the top medal contenders refused to chase down an early breakaway. It all but assured Stolz would not be on the podium for the fourth time in as many races at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics.
‘I actually didn’t expect this to happen, just because I felt like the gold-medal favorites in the mass start were going to be more hungry to try and get a medal,’ said Stolz, who leaves these Olympics with two golds and a silver. ‘But they all were just kind of expecting me to go for it and, yeah, it didn’t really work.’
Stolz was not as heavy a medal favorite in the mass starts as he was in the sprints, though he did make the World Cup podium twice this season, including a win in Hamar, Norway.
The mass start is a 16-lap pack race similar to cycling’s Tour de France. The goal is for skaters to position themselves so they can make a furious sprint on the final lap, chasing down early breakaways so no one gets out too far ahead.
It helps to have a teammate in the race who can do some of that work so the person with the better medal chances can conserve their energy. But Stolz was at a disadvantage from the beginning after Ethan Cepuran barely missed out on the final.
(Greta Myers played this role in the women’s mass start, and it was decisive in Mia Manganello winning the bronze medal.)
Jorrit Bergsma of the Netherlands was one of the favorites for gold, having won the mass start season title. He made a break in the third lap, and Denmark’s Viktor Hald Thorup went with him. But none of the other contenders gave chase, which meant Stolz couldn’t, either.
If he’d tried to go too early, he’d have expended precious energy catching Bergsma and Thorup and risked not having any left for the final sprint. The pack likely would have followed him, too, meaning all his work would have been for nothing.
‘If I’d have known that, that they would have been reluctant to chase even when none of the guys have a medal (here), I probably would’ve attacked a little bit more,’ Stolz said. ‘But if I would’ve done that, they still would’ve just followed me and I would’ve just canceled out.’
Had Cepuran been in the race, he could have chased Bergsma and Thorup down. But he wasn’t. Instead, Stolz kept looking back at the pack, which included Italy’s Andrea Giovannini and Czechia’s Metoděj Jílek, both of whom had World Cup wins this season, and Beijing Olympic champion Bart Swings of Belgium, as if to ask if anyone was going to go.
But they sat tucked in behind him as the laps dwindled. Swings’ teammate Indra Medard did make a move after the halfway point of the race, but it wasn’t enough to bring along the rest of the pack.
‘If they’re all sitting behind me at four laps to go and I’m not building the pace and the two guys in front just keep getting further and further ahead, that’s clear to me that they were kind of settling for third,’ Stolz said.
Stolz started sprinting with about a lap and a half to go and Giovannini quickly gave chase. The two were almost even as they came down the final straightaway before Giovannini dove over the finish just ahead of Stolz.
Stolz finished 0.09 seconds behind Giovannini.
‘I was the only one from Italy, so I knew it wasn’t easy to control the race,’ Giovannini said. ‘So that’s it, we stayed in the group and went for the final sprint.’
Despite the way the mass start unfolded, Stolz is hardly disappointed with how these Games went. The 21-year-old set Olympic records on his way to winning both the 500 meters and 1,000 meters, and also won silver in the 1,500 meters.
His three medals are the most by any U.S. Winter Olympian at a single Games since fellow speedskater Chad Hedrick also won three in Turin in 2006.
And now he has a valuable lesson for next time.
‘There’s planning that I could have done a little bit better,’ Stolz said, referring to imagining a scenario like this in the mass start. ‘But overall I think it was successful.’