Jutta Leerdam: The 2026 Olympic Gold, Her Record-Breaking 1:12.31, and the Million-Dollar Move to Independence
From the quiet canals of South Holland to the roaring stadium in Milan, Jutta Leerdam has cemented her place as the greatest cultural and athletic phenomenon in the history of speed skating. On February 9, 2026, she didn’t just win a gold medal — she rewrote the record books under the most intense media spotlight the sport has ever seen. This is the complete story of how she got there.
Jutta Leerdam: Quick Facts at a Glance
| Full Name | Jutta Monica Leerdam |
| Date of Birth | December 30, 1998 |
| Birthplace | ‘s-Gravenzande, South Holland, Netherlands |
| Height | 1.81 m (5 ft 11 in) |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Discipline | Long-Track Speed Skating (500m & 1000m) |
| Current Team | Independent — training with Team Novus & Kosta Poltavets (since April 2024) |
| Coaches | Kosta Poltavets (head); Daniel Greig (Team Novus) |
| Olympic Record | 1:12.31 — Women’s 1000m (Milan, February 9, 2026) |
| World Titles | 7 |
| European Titles | 6 |
| Relationship | Engaged to Jake Paul (since March 2025) |
| Education | Commercial Economics, Johan Cruyff Academy, Groningen |
| Estimated Net Worth | ~$5–6 million (2026) |
01 — Early Life & The Making of a Champion
Jutta Monica Leerdam was born on December 30, 1998, in the quiet coastal town of ‘s-Gravenzande, nestled in the South Holland province of the Netherlands. It’s a town few outside the country would recognize by name, but it sits squarely within a nation that has produced more world-class speed skaters per capita than anywhere else on Earth. In that sense, the ice was always going to find Jutta — it was just a matter of when.
Her family background is rooted in sport and openness. Her father, Ruud Leerdam, is a passionate windsurfing enthusiast; her mother’s name is Monique. She grew up in a lively household with four siblings — three sisters (Merel, Beaudine, and Monique) and a brother, Kjeld. Jutta has described her family as “very open — everything is open for discussion,” an upbringing that shaped her well-known frankness in interviews and her willingness to speak about subjects — from menstrual pain to body image — that most athletes carefully avoid.
Her name itself carries a small prophecy. Ruud named his daughter after Jutta Müller, a German windsurfing world champion. “I got the name because my dad used to surf,” Leerdam has explained. “There was a girl who won a lot and her name is Jutta Müller.” A father naming his child after a champion — it now reads like the first line of a fairy tale.
Growing up, Jutta didn’t immediately take to the ice. She first spent eight years playing competitive field hockey, developing the explosive bursts of power, teamwork instincts, and competitive drive that would later define her on the skating track. It wasn’t until age 11 that she switched to speed skating — a late start by Dutch standards, where many champions begin between the ages of four and six. Yet that relative lateness seemed only to concentrate everything she had learned from hockey into a new and perfectly suited discipline.
The tracks around ‘s-Gravenzande became her classroom. Coaches quickly noticed that this tall, powerful girl moved with a natural fluidity and aggression uncommon in someone so new to the sport. The foundations of something extraordinary were being quietly laid.
Alongside her athletic development, Jutta has consistently invested in her mind. She studies commercial economics at the Johan Cruyff Academy of the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen — a programme specifically designed for elite athletes — demonstrating a self-awareness and long-term ambition that reaches far beyond any single race or medal.
02 — Junior Career: A Star Announces Herself
Jutta Leerdam’s progression through the junior ranks was nothing short of meteoric. After joining the competitive speed skating circuit, she rapidly accumulated results that turned heads across the Dutch skating federation and the broader international community.
2017: The Breakthrough in Helsinki
At just 18 years old, Jutta made her first major mark on the global stage at the 2017 World Junior Speed Skating Championships in Helsinki, Finland. She captured both the women’s allround title and the 1500m gold — announcing herself not merely as a promising talent but as a genuine champion-in-waiting. It was a performance that combined tactical maturity with raw athletic power, qualities rarely seen in someone so young.
2017–18: Dominating the Junior Circuit
The momentum from Helsinki carried directly into the 2017–18 season. Leerdam claimed the ISU Junior World Cup titles in both the 1000m and 1500m events, and won the Dutch junior sprint championship, establishing her as the undisputed queen of her age group. The following year, at the 2018 World Junior Championships in Salt Lake City, she finished second in the allround — taking silver behind compatriot Joy Beune and signalling that the transition to senior competition was imminent.
What made these junior years particularly notable was the combination of raw speed and composure. Even as a teenager, Jutta didn’t skate like someone still learning the sport. She skated like someone who had been born onto the ice and was simply remembering what she already knew.
03 — Senior Breakthrough: 2018–2022
Leerdam’s transition to senior international competition was seamless. In her inaugural senior season, competing through Team Reggeborgh, she claimed the Dutch national sprint championship — an immediate statement that she was not arriving to learn, but to compete at the very highest level.
2019: First World Championship Gold
The 2019 World Single Distances Speed Skating Championships in Inzell, Germany, produced Leerdam’s first senior world title. Teaming up with Letitia de Jong and Janine Smit, she won gold in the team sprint — confirming the Dutch federation’s confidence in bringing her into the senior fold so quickly. Her explosive starts and powerful mid-race form were central to the Dutch victory.
2020: Individual Supremacy Begins
If 2019 was the warm-up, 2020 was the declaration. At the World Single Distances Championships in Salt Lake City, Leerdam achieved two remarkable results: she defended the team sprint gold alongside compatriots, and captured her first individual world title in the 1000m, setting a personal best and Dutch national record of 1:11.84. That time was electric — the kind of mark that silenced rooms and made competitors glance nervously at each other across the infield.
Also in 2020, she made a significant move off the ice. Together with her then-partner Koen Verweij, she co-founded Team Worldstream — a professional skating team built around their own ambitions and commercial vision. It was an extraordinary entrepreneurial move for two young athletes, and it would shape Jutta’s understanding of sport as a business ecosystem for years to come.
2021: World Sprint Gold in Hamar
The 2020–21 season was disrupted by the global pandemic, limiting competition, but Leerdam nonetheless won gold in the 1000m at the World Sprint Speed Skating Championships in Hamar, Norway, in 2021 — keeping her rhythm and form sharp heading into an Olympic year.
2022: Olympic Silver & World Sprint Champion
The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing represented Jutta Leerdam’s debut on the biggest sporting stage of all. In the 500m she finished fifth, short of her ambitions. But in the 1000m, she produced a race of breathtaking quality, crossing the line in 1:13.83 to take the silver medal, finishing behind Japan’s Miho Takagi.
Silver in Beijing stung. This was the world champion in the event. But the response was immediate and emphatic. Less than a month later, at the 2022 World Sprint Championships, she claimed the overall women’s sprint title — winning a combined four-event competition — and helped the Dutch team win the team sprint world title once again. She also made the move to Team Jumbo-Visma, one of the premier professional speed skating squads in the world. The message to Beijing was clear: the gold was coming.
04 — Career Timeline: Year by Year
2009 — Switches from field hockey to speed skating at age 11, beginning at tracks near ‘s-Gravenzande.
2017 — Wins women’s allround and 1500m titles at the World Junior Championships in Helsinki, Finland, at age 18.
2017–18 — Claims ISU Junior World Cup gold in 1000m and 1500m. Wins Dutch junior sprint championship. Takes allround silver at 2018 Worlds in Salt Lake City.
2018 — Senior debut. Wins the Dutch national sprint championship in her first senior season with Team Reggeborgh.
2019 — Wins team sprint gold at World Single Distances Championships in Inzell, Germany, alongside Letitia de Jong and Janine Smit. First senior world title.
2020 — Sets Dutch national record of 1:11.84 in Salt Lake City to win the 1000m individual world title. Also retains team sprint world gold. Co-founds Team Worldstream with partner Koen Verweij. Purchases villa in Naaldwijk for approximately $1.6 million.
2021 — Wins 1000m gold at the World Sprint Speed Skating Championships in Hamar, Norway.
2022 — Olympic silver in 1000m in Beijing (1:13.83) behind Miho Takagi. Claims overall World Sprint Championship title. Joins Team Jumbo-Visma. Separates from Koen Verweij.
2023 — Reclaims 1000m world title at World Single Distances Championships in Heerenveen, Netherlands. Adds 500m bronze. Begins relationship with Jake Paul.
2024 — Wins European title. Battles left ankle injury disrupting her season. In April 2024, Jumbo-Visma does not renew her contract. Rather than join another team, she goes independent — training with coach Kosta Poltavets and the international Team Novus group, led by Daniel Greig. Wins Dutch national championships in December 2024.
March 2025 — Jake Paul proposes on a private beach surrounded by white flowers and candles, with her parents secretly flown in. The ring: a 12.3-carat oval-cut diamond estimated to be worth close to $1 million. She says yes.
November 2025 — Opens the 2025–26 pre-Olympic season with a World Cup 1000m victory at the Olympic Oval in Salt Lake City, Utah. Goes on to win three World Cup 1000m golds in the season.
December 2025 — Crashes during the 1000m at the Dutch Olympic Trials. The committee selects her for the Games anyway, based on her dominant World Cup form throughout the season.
February 9, 2026 — Wins the women’s 1000m gold at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in 1:12.31, setting a new Olympic record. Jake Paul weeps openly in the stands as she crosses the finish line.
05 — The Crowning Moment: Olympic Gold at Milano Cortina 2026
No moment in Jutta Leerdam’s career rivals what happened on February 9, 2026, inside the speed skating oval in Milan, Italy. The 2026 Winter Olympics, women’s 1000m final — a capacity crowd, an athlete who had carried the weight of “almost” since Beijing four years earlier, and everything she had sacrificed riding on a single lap and a half of the ice.
The pressure was extraordinary. Minutes before her pairing, Dutch teammate Femke Kok had posted a searing time that smashed the existing Olympic record and planted a marker for the entire field. Then Jutta stepped out, lined up against her longstanding rival Miho Takagi, and skated the race of her life.
She stopped the clock at 1:12.31. A new Olympic record. Gold.
Hand over mouth, tears streaming down her face, she looked up into the stands where her fiancé Jake Paul was sitting. He was weeping openly, shaking, hands pressed to his face. She blew him a kiss. Her coach Kosta Poltavets called it “a work of art.” Images of Paul in the stands, and of the couple’s emotional embrace in the mixed zone afterwards, became the defining viral moments of the 2026 Winter Games — seen by hundreds of millions of people who had never previously watched a speed skating race in their lives.
The path to that moment had been anything but smooth. She had battled a serious left ankle injury in 2024. She had been dropped by Team Jumbo-Visma. She had crashed at the Dutch Olympic Trials in December 2025, leaving the ice in tears. She had spent ten months in near-total isolation from her personal life, pouring everything into her Olympic preparation.
In December 2025, when asked about her preparations, she was characteristically direct: “The only thing I could do today was skate fast. That is exactly what I did, and it resulted in something very nice.” As understatements go, it is one for the ages.
“The fact I am Olympic champion now still has to sink in. I am very happy with this. It means a lot.” — Jutta Leerdam, February 9, 2026
06 — Major Championship Honours
Olympic Medals
- Gold — 1000m, 2026 Winter Olympics, Milan (Olympic record: 1:12.31)
- Silver — 1000m, 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing (1:13.83)
World Championship Titles (7)
- 1000m Individual — 2020 (Salt Lake City), 2023 (Heerenveen)
- Team Sprint — 2019 (Inzell), 2020 (Salt Lake City)
- World Sprint Overall — 2022 (Hamar)
- World Sprint 1000m — 2021 (Hamar)
- Junior Allround — 2017 (Helsinki)
European Championship Titles (6)
- Multiple sprint discipline titles, most recent confirmed in 2024
Dutch National Titles
- 15+ titles across the 500m, 1000m, and sprint allround
Key Records
- Dutch national record, 1000m: 1:11.84 (Salt Lake City, 2020)
- Olympic record, 1000m: 1:12.31 (Milan, 2026)
07 — Skating Style, Strengths & What Makes Her Unique
At 1.81 metres tall, Leerdam is among the tallest elite sprint speed skaters in the world. In a discipline where aerodynamics, leverage, and stride mechanics are everything, her height is both a tool and a challenge. The advantage: her stride length gives her a mechanical edge over shorter competitors, allowing her to cover the 1000m oval with fewer, longer strokes. The challenge: taller skaters must work harder to maintain the low, tucked aerodynamic position that minimises wind resistance at speeds of 50–55 km/h.
Over the years, and under the guidance of coaches including Jac Orie at Jumbo-Visma and Kosta Poltavets in her independent phase, Leerdam has transformed that physical challenge into a signature strength. Her skating position is now technically refined: crossover steps in the corners generate enormous centrifugal power, and her straight-away technique is smooth, locked-in, and relentlessly efficient.
The 1000m: Her Natural Home
While she competes in both the 500m and 1000m, the 1000m is unambiguously her dominant event. The distance requires both explosive speed and the ability to sustain it — managing lactic acid buildup and maintaining form under intense fatigue. It demands a particular kind of competitive intelligence: knowing when to commit, when to conserve, and when to pour everything into the final straight. Leerdam possesses this intelligence in extraordinary measure, honed through years of competing at the absolute top of the sport.
Mental Resilience
Perhaps equally impressive as her physical abilities is Leerdam’s mental architecture. The ankle injury of 2024, the Jumbo-Visma departure, the crash at the December 2025 trials — any of these could have broken a less grounded athlete. Instead, they seem to have steeled her. Her comments after winning Olympic gold were characteristically composed: grateful, proud, and already looking forward. That groundedness is a genuine competitive advantage, and it is something coaches, teammates, and rivals have consistently noted about her.
08 — Teams, Clubs & Coaching Journey
Team Reggeborgh (2018–2020)
Leerdam began her senior career with Team Reggeborgh, one of the major Dutch professional skating outfits. Under this framework, she won her first senior Dutch championships and her breakthrough world titles in 2019 and 2020.
Team Worldstream — Co-Founding Her Own Brand (2020–2022)
In 2020, alongside then-partner Koen Verweij, Leerdam co-founded Team Worldstream — a professional skating team built around their combined ambitions. The move was extraordinary for two athletes still in their early twenties. “If I hadn’t set up my own team, I would not be where I am now,” she has said. “I have changed a lot in my career and I have learned a lot from that.” The experience gave her a business education that most athletes never receive.
Team Jumbo-Visma (2022–2024)
In 2022, Leerdam joined Team Jumbo-Visma — one of the premier professional speed skating squads in the world, also famous in professional cycling. Under coach Jac Orie, she found the technical support and competitive environment to maintain her world-class level. The arrangement ran until April 2024, when the two parties did not renew their contract.
Going Independent — Team Novus (April 2024–Present)
Jumbo-Visma’s decision not to renew proved to be the making of Leerdam’s Olympic destiny. Rather than join another established team, she chose to go fully independent. She linked up with coach Kosta Poltavets and began training partly with the international Team Novus squad, led by Daniel Greig. Greig has described her work ethic in the months before the Olympics as “extraordinary.” Training between Heerenveen and various camps in the United States, she built her own programme from the ground up.
The result: three World Cup victories in the 1000m in the 2025–26 season and, ultimately, Olympic gold.
09 — Personal Life: Love, Family & Relationships
Family
Jutta’s connection to sport runs through the family. Her father Ruud was a windsurfing enthusiast, her mother Monique raised her alongside four siblings — sisters Merel, Beaudine, and Monique, and brother Kjeld. The family atmosphere was, by Jutta’s own description, warm, direct, and open. Her second cousin Dione Voskamp is also a competitive speed skater, who won team sprint gold at the 2022 World Sprint Championships in Hamar.
Koen Verweij (2017–2022)
From 2017 to 2022, Leerdam was in a relationship with Dutch speed skater Koen Verweij. Their five-year partnership encompassed shared sporting lives and, in 2020, a shared business venture in Team Worldstream. They separated in 2022, and both have gone on to new chapters.
Property: Villa in Naaldwijk
In 2020, Jutta purchased a villa in Naaldwijk — close to her hometown of ‘s-Gravenzande — for approximately $1.6 million. The six-bedroom property reflected her growing financial independence and her desire to build long-term roots alongside her athletic career.
Jake Paul: The Relationship That Changed Everything
In early 2023, an unexpected direct message arrived in Jutta Leerdam’s Instagram inbox. Jake Paul — the American social media superstar turned professional boxer — was reaching out. What began as an invitation to appear on his podcast became one of the most-discussed romances in sport and entertainment.
Leerdam has admitted she initially found Paul’s approach unconventional — she once described initially thinking him “arrogant” based on his public persona — but meeting him in person changed her view entirely. The couple went public in April 2023. Their two worlds — elite winter sport and American entertainment media — collided in spectacular fashion.
On March 22, 2025, on a private beach, Paul got down on one knee. He had secretly arranged for Jutta’s parents to be flown in without her knowledge. The ring: a 12.3-carat oval-cut diamond, estimated to be worth close to $1 million. They both cried. The world went slightly wild.
Throughout the Olympic preparation, Paul was Leerdam’s loudest and most emotional supporter. On the morning of her race in Milan, he posted on Instagram: “Today is your day baby. You’ve worked your whole life for this. We all love and support you so much — go get em champ.” When she crossed the line in Olympic record time, he sat in the VIP stands openly weeping. The image of his tears and their embrace in the mixed zone became one of the defining moments of the 2026 Winter Games.
Wedding plans, Jutta has confirmed, are on hold until after the competitive season concludes. Fans expect a major celebration in 2027.
10 — Fashion, Branding & Life Beyond the Rink
Jutta Leerdam represents a genuinely new kind of elite athlete: someone who competes at the absolute pinnacle of their sport while simultaneously building a cultural and commercial presence that far exceeds the traditional boundaries of their discipline. Speed skating is not historically a mainstream media sport. Leerdam has changed that equation entirely, at least for herself.
Social Media
With 6 million followers on Instagram and over 2.4 million on TikTok, Leerdam is one of the most-followed speed skaters in history and comfortably one of the most prominent Dutch athletes on social platforms globally. Her content is genuine rather than manufactured — a mix of race highlights, training insights, fashion moments, travel, and the unvarnished reality of elite athletic life. She was ranked among the top Instagram influencers in the Netherlands, an extraordinary achievement for someone competing in a sport that rarely generates viral moments.
Major Brand Partnerships
Her commercial portfolio spans sportswear, luxury fashion, tech, and lifestyle:
Nike · Dior · Hugo Boss · Skims · Celsius · Worldstream · Body&Fit · Thinkwise · KaFra Housing
The Nike partnership, which she announced in late 2025, is particularly significant: “This has been a dream since I started skating. Grateful to be a part of the Nike family.” The Dior and Hugo Boss relationships place her in the luxury fashion space — an unusual and prestigious position for a speed skater, and a testament to her physical presence and personal style.
Madame Tussauds
Leerdam’s cultural footprint in the Netherlands is perhaps best symbolised by her wax figure at Madame Tussauds Amsterdam — a distinction that places her among the country’s most recognisable public figures, not just athletes.
Reality Television
She featured prominently in Jake Paul’s HBO Max reality series “Paul American,” which aired in 2025, giving global audiences an intimate view of her life, ambitions, and the discipline that underpins her athletic success. The series introduced Leerdam to audiences who might never have watched a speed skating World Cup.
Financial Profile
Her estimated net worth of $5–6 million as of 2026 is built through competition earnings, brand deals, and social media. Crucially, by going independent in 2024, she now retains a higher percentage of her commercial earnings than most contracted athletes. Social media income from Instagram alone is estimated between $12,000 and $20,000 per month. With Olympic gold now on her mantle, industry analysts expect her commercial earning power to rise significantly in 2026 and beyond.
11 — Legacy & What She Means for the Sport
Speed skating has never had an athlete quite like Jutta Leerdam. The Dutch have produced extraordinary champions across generations — Sven Kramer, Ireen Wüst, Yvonne van Gennip — legends who dominated their eras. But Leerdam operates in a different media landscape, and she has navigated it with a sophistication and self-awareness that her predecessors simply didn’t need.
She represents continuity in Dutch sporting excellence while simultaneously embodying the modern athlete’s expanded role as public figure, entrepreneur, and cultural icon. Her Olympic record of 1:12.31 is a technical legacy written in time. Her millions of followers, her luxury brand deals, and her wax figure in Amsterdam represent a different kind of legacy — one that has broadened the global audience for speed skating and shown that Olympic-level sport and mainstream celebrity can coexist, productively and authentically.
Her academic pursuit — studying commercial economics while competing at world championship level — signals the long-term thinking behind everything she does. She is building a post-athletic life deliberately, not leaving it to chance, and the foundations being laid now suggest that Jutta Leerdam will remain a significant figure in Dutch sports and business culture for decades after her skates are finally hung up.
For young athletes everywhere, she offers a compelling model: you can be world-class on your own terms, you can build a personal brand without compromising athletic integrity, and you can take a niche sport and make the world stop and pay attention through sheer force of excellence, character, and presence.
12 — Conclusion
Jutta Monica Leerdam is the Olympic champion, world champion, record holder, fashion icon, entrepreneur, and cultural phenomenon who has fundamentally changed what it means to be a speed skater in the 21st century.
She started late, by Dutch standards. She came from a town few people have heard of. She lost her professional team in 2024 and chose to go it alone rather than follow the safe path. She crashed at her own national trials two months before the biggest race of her life. And then she went to Milan and skated 1:12.31 in front of the world, broke the Olympic record, and made her fiancé cry in the stands.
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