Jordan Pride

Jordan PrideRussia’s bid to become the first man in 32 years with three Olympic golds in long track speed skating was fading on Saturday. Far ahead in the mass start, the final event of this sport in the Milan Cortina Gamesit was Jorrit Bergsma, 40, who joined another skater to distance himself from the pack with several laps remaining.

Stolz still thought that someone else would try to attract the leaders. Nobody did it. Stolz was stunned. He finished fourth behind the mullet-wearing Bergsma, the oldest speed skater to win gold at any Olympics.

“Everyone expected me to come after them, but I wasn’t going to do it,” said Stolz, a 21-year-old from Wisconsin. “If I had chased with five laps to go, it would have blown me up. I thought the other guys would be a little hungrier to do it, but I guess they didn’t want to.”

He won his first two events in Milan, the 500 meters and 1,000 meters. Then came a silver in the 1,500. After Thursday’s result, Stolz said: “I didn’t have it today. I’m not sure why.”

He also didn’t have enough in the mass exit.

Viktor Hald Thorup of Denmark, who initially advanced to the front with Bergsma, took silver. Andrea Giovannini, who imitated Steph Curry’s “Night, night” gesture when helping Italy beat the heavily favored United States in the men’s team pursuit, was the bronze medalist, barely edging out Stolz in a sprint finish.

“I’m very happy for Jorrit. And I’m very happy for Viktor. Other than that, I have nothing printable. Stupidest race I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Stolz’s trainer Bob Corby. “The whole peloton decided, ‘Well, let’s run for the bronze medal.’ How silly.”

Before these Olympics, there had been a lot of talk about whether Stolz could finish with a quartet of golds, and he was asked questions about it in press conferences immediately after his two victories. The last men’s speed skater to claim three speed skating golds in a single Winter Games was Johann Olav Koss at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.

“Well, it’s wonderful to have two golds and a silver,” Corby said. “I pretty much accomplished everything we wanted to do. If I had won the 1,500, I wouldn’t have cared about the mass start at all.”

Stolz offered a similar assessment of his second trip to the Olympics; obtained results of 13th and 14th place in the Beijing Games 2022 when I was 17 years old.

“I thought it was pretty successful: two golds and a silver, that’s pretty good,” he said. “There are some things that could have been better, but overall I’m pretty happy with it.”

Bergsma added this gold to the bronze he previously obtained in the 10,000 meters in Milan. He now has a total of five Olympic medals, including a gold in the 10,000 meters in 2014.

Gold in the women’s mass start also went to a Dutch skater: reigning world champion Marijke Groenewoud, who had finished no better than seventh in her other three races. Ivanie Blondin of Canada was the silver medalist for the second consecutive Games, followed by Mia Manganello of the United States with bronze.

Blondin helped Canada win a second consecutive team pursuit gold at these Olympic Games. Manganello, 36, this season’s World Cup champion in the mass start, took a victory lap with an American flag after the final race of her career.

Bergsma and Thorup left the rest of the men’s field behind in the 16-lap race.

In the end, Bergsma emerged out front alone, with enough of a lead to make it home during the final stretch, pausing to open his arms, raise his fists above his head and blow kisses to the sizable group of Dutch spectators at the Milan Speed ​​Skating Stadium.

Later, while waiting to get on the podium for the medal ceremony, Bergsma turned to Giovannini and said of the race: “I couldn’t believe it. I thought, ‘Is this really happening?'”

Stolz, for his part, could not understand what had happened either.

“I guess you have to expect the unexpected of what people are going to do. Like in the mass start, you would think they would want to chase more to try to catch Jorrit, since I already have two gold medals and the guys who are the gold medal favorites in the mass start didn’t want to chase,” Stolz said. “So, yeah, I wouldn’t have expected that.”