Jordan Stolz takes 1500M silver at Olympics behind Ning Zhongyan

MILAN — American speedskater Jordan Stolz’s bid for a 3rd gold medal on the Milan Cortina Olympics got here up brief with a loss to China’s Ning Zhongyan within the 1,500 meters Thursday.

Ning received in an Olympic-record time of 1 minute, 41.98 seconds. Stolz, skating within the day’s final warmth, completed 0.77 off the tempo, including a silver to the golds he claimed within the 500 and 1,000. The 21-year-old from Wisconsin will take part in his final race, the mass begin, on Saturday.

Only two speedskaters have received at the least 4 golds at one Games: Eric Heiden of the US went house with 5 from the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, and Lidiya Skoblikova, representing the Soviet Union, claimed 4 in 1964.

When Stolz completed and his time flashed on the world’s videoboards, Ning started leaping up and down with different members of China’s crew. He then grabbed a flag and wore it like a cape for a victory lap.

Ning picked up his third medal on the Milano Speed ​​Skating Stadium, a brief facility that has been producing swift instances, after bronzes within the 1,000 and crew pursuit. He received China’s third-ever gold medal in speedskating.

Kjeld Nuis of the Netherlands, who received the 1,500 on the 2018 and 2022 Olympics and holds the world file, obtained the bronze Thursday, 0.07 behind Stolz.

When wholesome, Stolz has primarily been favored in each race he entered lately. He is a two-time world champion at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 and owns the world file within the 1,000.

After setting Olympic data within the 500 and 1,000 — and changing into the one man apart from Heiden to finish that double at a Games — Stolz had his sights set on changing into the primary males’s speedskater to win a trio of golds at one Games since Norway’s Johann Olav Koss did it on the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994.

Dutch skater Irene Schouten received three girls’s races on the Beijing Olympics 4 years in the past.

Asked to sum up his journey to Italy heading into Thursday, Stolz stated: “It’s a success, but it’s more of a partial success if I don’t win the 1,500, just because I’ve been so good in that distance for so long. So I hope I can win that one.”

His first profession Olympic golds had been anticipated, if not downright anticipated, by many earlier than competitors started in Milan.

“I think Jordan,” stated Canada’s Laurent Dubreuil, the bronze medalist behind Stolz within the 500, “is the greatest speedskater of all time.”