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Jutta Leerdam delivered the defining race of her career on Monday night, roaring to Olympic gold in the women’s 1000m and setting a new Olympic record of 1min 12.31sec to lead a Dutch one-two and deliver the Netherlands’ first medals of the Games.
The 27-year-old finished 0.28sec ahead of compatriot Femke Kok, who had briefly held the Olympic record after clocking 1:12.59 earlier in the final group. Japan’s defending Olympic champion Miho Takagi took bronze in 1:13.95.
Inside a packed 7,000-seat arena in Milan’s western suburbs, the atmosphere felt closer to Heerenveen than Lombardy. Most of the crowd wore Dutch orange, turning the venue into a rolling wall of noise as the final three heats unfolded. Among them was Leerdam’s fiance, the boxer-influencer Jake Paul, who wept uncontrollably from the second row after she won as her own tears left streaks of eyeliner down her face.
Kok ignited the building first, skating against American world record-holder Brittany Bowe and posting 1:12.59 – a time that, at that moment, stood as an Olympic record and set off the first wave of celebrations in the stands. But the decisive moment came one race later.
Drawn in the final pair against Takagi, Leerdam delivered a masterclass in pacing and control. She opened in 17.68 seconds and produced the fastest 600m split in the field at 43.78 before closing with authority to stop the clock at 1:12.31 and lower the Olympic record.
Her final lap of 28.53 seconds completed a performance built on middle-phase efficiency rather than explosive opening speed, moving her to within seven-tenths of Bowe’s world record of 1:11.61.
“I knew that if during the race I would feel tired, I wasn’t allowed to feel tired,” Leerdam said after clinching gold. “I told myself: ‘You have 80 years to recover from this. You can feel tired after. You don’t want to live with that regret. You fought so hard for this.’”
For Leerdam, the result represented both redemption and culmination. In Beijing in 2022 she finished second in this event behind Takagi. On Monday night, skating directly against the same rival, she reversed that storyline in a single, technically precise kilometer.
“After the finish line I was surprised, very tired and very emotional,” she said.
For anyone encountering Leerdam for the first time this week, the gold medal is only part of her story.
The skater from the Westland region of South Holland, has become one of the most recognizable athletes in winter sport. A two-time world champion and three-time European champion in the 1000m in addition to the Beijing silver, she has also built an audience that extends far beyond the oval, with more than five million followers on Instagram and millions more across other platforms.
That visibility has made her one of the most talked-about figures at these Games. In Milan, she has largely bypassed traditional media, choosing instead to communicate directly with supporters through her own channels. The approach has frustrated some Dutch reporters beholden to a skating-mad readership but reflects a career-long pattern: Leerdam has consistently chosen to operate on her own terms. Former teammates and coaches say external criticism has often sharpened her focus.
That fierce independent streak traces back to childhood. Family members have described her as intensely driven from an early age – someone who, once she chose skating, pursued it with unwavering focus. She initially excelled at hockey before switching over as a preteen, drawn to the individual nature of the sport and its clarity of outcome. In later interviews, she has described speed skating as brutally honest: the clock decides, not opinion.
By her mid-teens, that focus was already being paired with a broader vision. Former speed skater Ben van der Burg, who also grew up in Westland, has said Leerdam’s family recognized early that elite performance could coexist with commercial opportunity – an approach that would later make her one of the most marketable athletes in Dutch sport.
On the ice, the results followed quickly. By 18 she was already a world junior champion, and within a few seasons of moving into the senior ranks she had established herself among the world’s best at the distance. Leerdam developed into one of the leading skaters of her generation, winning multiple world titles.
Off the ice, she has been unusually open on her own channels, speaking about menstrual health and the pressures of weight management during her teenage years – conversations that former skaters and coaches say helped normalize subjects long treated as taboo in elite sport.
Her profile expanded further in 2023 when she began a relationship with Paul. The couple, who announced their engagement last year, maintain a long-distance relationship between Puerto Rico and the Netherlands and have essentially become the Taylor and Travis of speed skating: #couplegoals writ large through one of the most visible crossovers between Olympic sport and digital-era celebrity.
Paul watched Monday’s race surrounded by the camera crew that frequently documents his life. His presence – and the couple’s combined social media reach – has brought an unusual level of external attention to a sport that traditionally exists outside the global celebrity ecosystem.
It has also brought its share of notoriety. Paul has generated headlines at these Olympics for outspoken social media commentary on US politics and culture, including inflammatory posts during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show that triggered intense online backlash and a public disagreement with his brother Logan. Earlier in the Games he was seen sitting with US vice-president JD Vance at a women’s hockey game, adding to the unusual level of attention surrounding Leerdam beyond the rink.
Yet within speed skating, Leerdam’s reputation remains grounded in performance. Aside from a fall in the 1000m at the Dutch Olympic trials, she arrived in Milan in flying form, including a track-record performance earlier this season in Inzell where she defeated Kok in the 1000m, a result that reinforced her status as the skater to beat in her signature distance.
Former competitors say that combination – commercial visibility alongside consistent elite results – is what ultimately defines her place in the sport. Without the results, she would be an influencer who skates. With them, she has helped reshape how a speed skating star can exist in the modern sporting landscape.
Monday’s race may ultimately come to represent the pinnacle of that career. Leerdam indicated last year that these Games could mark her final Olympic appearance. She is also scheduled to skate in the 500m on Sunday.
If this was her signature moment, it arrived in the cleanest possible form: an Olympic record in the final group, revenge against the defending champion who once denied her gold, and a performance delivered under maximum expectation in front of what effectively became a Dutch home crowd desperate for its first breakthrough of these Games. For a skater who has spent much of her career balancing elite sport, public scrutiny and global visibility, it was the clearest possible statement.
