MILAN — Last Wednesday night, shortly after 1 a.m., Jordan Stolz's coach went to speak with the speedskating superstar.
Bob Corby found Stolz in the Olympic Village, still cradling the gold medal that he had secured earlier that evening by winning his first of four races on the sport's biggest stage.
"Oh, you got a little trophy there?" the 75-year-old Corby quipped. "What did you do? Did you win a little tee ball tournament?"
Stolz grinned before gesturing toward his medal and saying, "I've been thinking about this for a long time."
At first glance, Stolz and Corby might appear to be these Olympics' most mismatched pairing — an unflappable 21-year-old speedskating phenom and the feisty white-haired grandfather who he lured out of retirement. And yet speedskating's odd couple have brought out the best in each other during their seven years working together.
Stolz has flourished under Corby's old-school training methods, establishing himself as the planet's most dominant speedskater with a real chance to add two more Olympic gold medals to the two he has already won in Milan. And Corby has reveled in helping a star pupil seize his moment in the spotlight more than four decades after an Olympic coaching flop that haunts him to this day.
The only speedskater ever to win five gold medals at the same Olympics endorsed Corby as the ideal coach to help Stolz chase greatness. Eric Heiden used to train with Corby and to this day refers to him as "the Skate Whisperer."
"He doesn't let his ego get in the way of letting Jordan do his thing," Heiden said. "He knows when to offer advice and coach and then understands when to let Jordan's innate talent take over."
Leaving Sarajevo empty handed
Decades ago, Corby himself once had aspirations of competing at an Olympics in speedskating. He trained relentlessly for the 1972 and 1976 Winter Games, experimenting with yoga, nutrition and an array of different drills and exercises in an effort to shave just a few tenths of a second off his best times.
It wasn't enough. There were always world-class American skaters who were faster than Corby at every distance. But those experiences helped Corby as a coach when he started working for the Madison Speedskating Club and for the U.S. International Speedskating Association while also studying physical therapy at the University of Wisconsin.
One year after Heiden swept all five men's speedskating races at the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, the USISA tasked Corby with the job of helping prepare American speedskaters for the 1984 Olympics in Sarajevo. He inherited a young, inexperienced group since Heiden and many other top Americans had chosen to hang up their skates.
The buildup to the Sarajevo Games was marred by infighting over staff shortages, fundraising failures, training sites and coaching methods.Reports from the time perioddescribe a schism between speedskaters who supported Corby and those who backed other USISA coaches.
The results once those Olympics started were also deflating. The Soviets and East Germans dominated. The Americans came home empty-handed. At 18 years old, Dan Jansen took fourth in the men's 500. Twenty-year-old Nick Thometz finished one spot behind Jansen in the 500 and a hard-luck fourth in the 1,000. Bonnie Blair, then 19, cracked the top 10 in the women's 500. But there were no American medalists, not even a paltry bronze.
"It was very disappointing," Corby said. "You knew that they were just teenagers skating against 25- and 26-year-olds with more years of training, but it still was disappointing to go through the whole thing with them and not get a medal somewhere. I spent a long time afterward trying to analyze if I could have done anything to change things, to make it a little better."
Corby stepped away from the national team after 1984 but continued to coach speedskaters into the late 1980s. Then he gradually disappeared from the sport altogether as his physical therapy practice began getting busier and his kids showed a preference for soccer and skiing rather than speedskating.
The first time that Corby met Stolz, he had no intention of coaching him. Speedskating coach Bobby Fenn, a longtime close friend of Corby's, invited him to come watch a short-track meet in Madison nearly a decade ago. When they arrived, Fenn pointed to a rail-thin 12-year-old boy who he coached and told Corby, "Watch this kid. He's pretty good."
Corby, too, recognized Stolz had potential after watching him skate. He met Stolz and his parents that day through Fenn. He stayed in touch sporadically, even providing physical therapy to the young skater after he suffered a hip flexor.
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By then,Stolz's speedskating ambitions had outgrown the backyard pondwhere he and older sister Hannah famously learned to skate. Stolz's parents took him and Hannah to Milwaukee a few times a week to work with Fenn, a world-class coach best known for developing Shani Davis into an Olympic and world all-around champion.
Then on Oct. 8, 2017, Fenn didn't show up to the rink for a scheduled practice session. Later that day, the Stolz family learned the 73-year-old had passed away suddenly, the cause of deathreportedly a heart attack.
Fenn's death was very hard on both her children, Jane Stolz said. Hannah gradually retreated from speedskating, preferring to focus on her passion forraising exotic birds and doing taxidermy.Jordan also drifted. Davis filled in for Fenn for a little while, but when he accepted an opportunity to coach junior skaters in China, Jordan was coachless again.
While Corby had occasionally offered guidance and support during this time period, Jordan needed more than that. He asked Corby if he'd be willing to return to the speedskating world for the first time in more than two decades to coach him full-time.
The timing, as Corby puts it, was "serendipitous" with him preparing to step back from his physical therapy practice. Plus, Corby says, "How on earth do you say no to a 14-year-old kid who calls you and asks you for help?"
Turning a scrawny kid into a powerhouse
Armed with pages of handwritten notes about which training techniques he'd keep from the buildup to the 1984 Olympics and which he'd scrap, Corby tailored a plan specifically for Stolz. Stolz spends much of his summer on his bicycle, building leg strength and aerobic capacity. He powers through draining sets of heavy squats, explosive jumps and single-leg workouts. He also hones his technique away from the ice, imitating his stride on a slide board or using cables as a resistance tool to simulate cornering on ice.
The emphasis on weight training helped Stolz evolve from a talented but scrawny kid into a powerhouse. By the time speedskating began to emerge from the COVID pandemic, Jordan didn't just stand out among skaters his own age anymore. The 16-year-old took on the fastest men in America and beat them, clocking a national junior record time of 34.99 seconds in the men's 500 at the 2021 U.S. Speedskating Championships.
"I remember thinking, 'Holy cow,'" Corby said. "This kid really has some talent."
The holy cow moments didn't stop there.
At 17, Stolz won both the men's 500 and 1,000 at the U.S. Olympic Trials, qualifying him to participate in the Winter Games in both events.
At 18, he swept the gold medals in the 500, 1,000 and 1,500 at world championships.
At 19, he did it again.
Now Stolz is trying to top all of those feats at these Winter Games. He's halfway to four gold medals, having already set a pair of Olympic records while outdueling Dutch sprinter Jenning de Boo to winthe 1,000andthe 500. He'll be a heavy favorite to win his third gold medal on Thursday in the 1,500, a distance he has dominated on the World Cup circuit. Then there's the race that Stolz refers to as "a bonus," the chaotic, unpredictable mass start.
When asked why the partnership between he and Stolz has turned out so well, Corby said that Stolz responds well to being pushed — especially when the results show that the training programs are working.
"He can handle a pretty big workload," Corby said. "He saw a real benefit to doing these types of workouts."
Spend even a few minutes at the speedskating arena in Milan on one of Stolz's race days, and the bond between him and Corby is obvious. Corby is the last person Stolz speaks with before a race and the first person he high fives after he crosses the finish line.
"This experience has been great," Corby said with a laugh, "It doesn't seem to bother him having a white-haired guy hanging around."
MILAN — Last Wednesday night, shortly after 1 a.m., Jordan Stolz's coach went to speak with the speedskating superst...
