It’s fair to say that the Team USA has disappointed so far in the 2026 Winter Olympics, sitting just fifth in the medal table with two golds and seven medals total. But the charge up the medal table might just be beginning for the United States, as the country’s most dominant individual athlete will begin his Olympics on Wednesday.
Short-track speed skating is a sport of fine margins, but Jordan Stolz has proven to be the tightest within those margins. The 21-year-old is the only American athlete favored to win four separate medal events, accounting for nearly half of the events that the United States was favored to win entering the Games. He’ll compete in the first of his four events during the 1000-meter speed skating on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. ET (5:30 p.m. local).
Stolz is a -700 favorite to take home the gold at DraftKings Sportsbook. Dutchman Jenning de Boo is +700 to join his compatriot Jutta Leerdam, who earned gold for the Netherlands in the women’s 1000-meter race on Monday, and Damian Żurek (+800) is a contender to round out the podium and earn Poland its second medal of these Games.
Men’s 1000m Speed Skating prediction, pick
There’s dominance, and then there’s Stolz. He has won each of the five World Cup races so far in the 2025/26 season, with all but one of his wins coming faster than one minute, 7.18 seconds — the Olympic Record time set by the Netherlands’ Gerard van Velde in 2002. In fact, he’s gone under one minute, six seconds thrice, something no other man has ever done, and he hasn’t been beaten in the discipline since 2023.
So, Stolz’s competition comes not from the other men in the field but from history. This season, Żurek has challenged him more, finishing second behind him thrice, while de Boo has only finished second behind him once. Żurek has also bested him in the 500-meter discipline this season and sits second overall in the World Cup standings in both the 500- and 1000-meter formats. The Pole also has a slightly faster top time, finishing in one minute, 6.027 seconds in Salt Lake City, while de Boo’s best time is 1:06.112, which he achieved in Calgary.
If Stolz manages to win, it’d be his first Olympic medal. He competed in the 2022 Beijing Olympics as a 17-year-old but could only manage a 14th-place finish, finishing in 1:09.12 and beating out the South Korean skater, Kim Minseok, against whom he was paired in his heat. In that race, he actually finished one spot (0.04 seconds) behind Żurek, who was also making his Olympics debut. de Boo, who is just a few months older than Stolz, didn’t compete. The 2022 medalist with the shortest odds of winning gold again is Canada’s Laurent Dubreuil, who earned silver, but he hasn’t finished better than 14th at any World Cup race this season.
Barring a fall — which is highly unlikely given that there will be only two racers on the track at once — Stolz is a virtual guarantee to win gold. However, since -700 odds won’t return much value, I’ll take a flyer on Żurek.
