Jordan Stolz Captures Five Medals, Men’s Pursuit Team Wins Again At Calgary World Cup

Jordan Stolz won three Gold medals and reached the podium in all five of his races, Casey Dawson set a National Record while winning his first individual race, and the U.S. Men’s Team Pursuit added a second straight victory as the ISU Speed Skating World Cup continued over the weekend in Calgary, Alberta.

In total U.S. skaters racked up 10 medals in the Nov. 21-23 competition, including five Gold medals, and broke another three National Records. Americans have now reached the podium 18 times in the first two of five World Cup stops.

Both World Cups were qualifiers for the 2026 U.S. Olympic Team.

Stolz, a 2022 Olympian and seven-time World Champion, won races at three distances for the second consecutive week: Men’s 500m, 1000m and 1500m. He added Bronze medals in another 500m race and the Mass Start, an event in which he made his World Cup debut just one week ago.

He won the 1000m in 1:06.006 and the 1500m in 1:42.103. After taking third place in the first 500m with a time of 34.028 seconds, Stolz won the second 500m in 33.793 seconds.

“My legs were a little tired, but I felt like I could get everything into the ice,” Stolz said of Sunday’s 500m race. “When I got on the ice this morning for a warm-up, I just felt really connected.”

Stolz’s third-place finish in the Mass Start came one week after placing 15th, and it sparked a few childhood memories.

“I grew up pack racing when I was younger,” Stolz said. “From the time I was 5 until 14, it was all pack races.”

Coming off a World Record at last week’s World Cup opener in Salt Lake City, the Men’s Team Pursuit won again. This time the team of 2022 Olympic Bronze medalists Ethan Cepuran, Emery Lehman and Casey Dawson blew away the competition with a run of 3:35.341 and defeated runner-up France by more than two seconds.

“Coming off the high from last weekend, I think we are a little too confident,” Dawson said. “We always need to treat ourselves as the underdogs, and that’s how we do every race. We don’t look at the time at the end of the day. We look at our race and how technically we skated it. We might have won by two seconds, but there’s so many things we need to work on, and execution is more than the time. We can win at any race and still have poor execution.”

Dawson added a second consecutive U.S. Record in the 5000m, this time winning his first World Cup individual race in a track record time of 6:01.841. Finishing with a blazing final lap of 27.57 seconds, Dawson defeated Norway’s Sander Eitrem by .028 seconds. This is the first time an American has won a World Cup 5k in 20 years, since Chad Hedricks in 2005.

“Something clicked this past season, and I learned how to pace my race,” Dawson said. “I know my strengths. I know I can finish fast. It’s better to skate 27.5 in the last lap than do it in the first lap and die.”

Two National Records also fell on the women’s side. Three-time Olympian Brittany Bowe, two-time Olympian Mia Manganello and Giorgia Birkeland combined for a fourth-place finish in the Women’s Team Pursuit with a time of 2:53.584. In addition, Greta Myers set a National Record for the second consecutive week in the Women’s 3000m with a time of 4:00.705.

Three U.S. women also won individual Bronze medals: Bowe in the 1500m, Manganello in the Mass Start, and 2022 Olympic Gold medalist Erin Jackson in the first 500m. Jackson added a seventh-place finish in the second 500m, and Bowe took fifth in the 1000m.

Cooper McLeod had a pair of top-10 finishes, placing fourth in the Men’s 1000m and ninth in the first 500m; he was 12th in the second 500m race. Cepuran finished 10th in the Mass Start.

The World Cup begins its European leg on Dec. 5-7 in Heerenveen, Netherlands.

Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic and Paralympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to USSpeedskating.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.