Jutta Leerdam to skip the 2026-27 season: the Olympic 1,000 m champion takes a year off the ice
Jutta Leerdam will not defend her title this season. The Dutch speed skater — Olympic champion in the 1,000 m at Milan-Cortina 2026, ahead of Japan’s Miho Takagi on 9 February — announced on 15 September that she will sit out the entire 2026-27 season. She steps away at the very peak of her career.
It is not a retirement. Leerdam says she is following her feelings and wants to dedicate this year to the commercial and media projects that have grown around her profile. She already took silver in the 1,000 m at Beijing 2022; now speed skating loses its biggest draw for a full year, while her rivals inherit a clear lane in the sport’s blue-riband distance.
Pauses like this are part of elite sport — and of the ice business: when the calendar changes, the rink has to be ready. At Napapiri, the real-ice rink expert since 1993, we build so the ice performs from the first day of the season to the last, with more than 30 years of experience in rental, sale and leasing for municipalities, event organisers and clubs worldwide.
Photo: Asatur Yesayants / YantsImages, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Jutta Leerdam in the women’s 1,000 m at the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Games).
