MILAN — The scoreboard in the far corner of a convention hall-turned-speed skating stadium said Dutch skater Jutta Leerdam had just set an Olympic record in the women’s 1,000-meter race Monday afternoon. Now it was time for two of the sports world’s biggest internet celebrities to cry.
“That’s a good thing, I think,” said the most famous female athlete in the Netherlands, with 5.3 million Instagram followers.
Up in the temporary steel stands that ring the ice, Leerdam’s fiancé, the YouTube superstar-turned-boxer Jake Paul, dabbed his tattooed hands around red, soggy eyes and stared speechless as Leerdam skated her teary victory lap. He was in a VIP section for skaters’ families and Olympic officials. Around him, Leerdam’s family jumped and hugged and danced in place.
Paul didn’t jump or hug or dance or say anything. Instead, he sat on his seat and cried.
This wasn’t how the internet is accustomed to viewing its newest celebrity supercouple. Leerdam’s Instagram is filled with a stream of professionally posed photographs showing her with spotless makeup, looking nothing like the sobbing wreck with black streaks under her eyes. Paul is usually seen throwing haymakers in a ring or getting into social media tussles over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. They do not seem the weeping types.
“Not usually,” Leerdam said. “But at the same time, he also, like, knows the pressure I felt and the buildup and everything. So, yeah, I think he’s just, he’s just felt everything with me.”
The Olympic spirit isn’t always about unknowns finally living out lifelong dreams or underdogs fighting against impossible odds. Sometimes, it’s about really rich, famous people who fly around in private jets and have drivers and security guards and see an Olympic record on a scoreboard and act as uncool as the rest of us. Sometimes, Jutta Leerdam looks deranged and Jake Paul is caught treating life as something other than a follower-seeking social media bit.
What happened in the building that Olympic organizers are calling the Milano Speed Skating Stadium was very real. An incredibly famous speed skater known for her looks thundered around the oval with powerful strides that left the stands nearly filled with Dutch fans delirious.
“To be able to deliver like that is huge,” said American Brittany Bowe, a two-time Olympic bronze medalist who finished fourth Monday.
Leerdam’s Instagram life and her soon-to-be-husband’s own celebrity has made her a target bigger than any other speed skater from the world’s top speedskating country. The silver medal she won in the 1,000 at the 2022 Beijing Olympics hasn’t always been the first thing mentioned about Leerdam in recent years. She didn’t make things easier for herself when a photo of her coming to Milan in a private jet appeared online.
On Monday, she talked a lot about the pressure she felt here. She has skated well this past year, winning several races, and was arriving here as the top-ranked woman in the 1,000. The mania around her personal and skating life had exploded so much that her face here felt like a sideshow. The media seats were all taken two hours before the race began, and an army of photographers lined the ice.
Leerdam says she likes the hysteria. The pressure, she said, motivates her. She enjoys putting pressure on herself, she added, because it makes her even better.
“I try to, like, really use it in my advantage and just really let it make me even sharper,” she said.
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She also skated in the last group and watched, with chagrin, as skaters before her kept going faster and faster. She wondered whether she could match them. She seemed sure Paul felt the same.
So, when she roared past Japan’s Miho Takagi on the second of three laps, the crowd seemed to sense something big, and the cheering grew. Then came the biggest roar of all when her final time was posted on the scoreboard. After wiping away her tears, she ran to her Netherlands teammates in the ring’s middle to celebrate while Paul stood amazed.
Photographers lined the walkway below the VIP section. Medal podiums were pulled into place, the flags were made ready — two Dutch flags for Leerdam and her silver medalist teammate Femke Kok and Japan’s for Takagi — Holland’s national anthem was played and Leerdam wiped tears from her face with her palms while Paul held his hands to his lips as if in prayer.
They were at once together and yet far apart, separated by a ribbon of ice. One photographer aimed his lens toward Leerdam while crossing another over his shoulder to also get photos of Paul. The camera shutters clicked and clicked.
More than an hour later, after the crowd had left and all the tears had been wiped away, Paul came to the edge of the interview area known as the mixed zone, where Leerdam was slowly making her way through lines of questions. As his entourage stood nearby, he kissed her on her cheek (now cleaned of black streaks). Then he looked at the dozens of people gathered around and said: “The GOAT!”
He turned around and, with his security guards following, walked quickly from the improvised skating arena, into the Milan dusk and toward a waiting car and the rest of their lives as a celebrity couple with the memory of a gold medal to share.