Italy's men knock off favorite U.S. to win speedskating team pursuit

MILAN — The U.S. men's team pursuit trio of Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman and Ethan Cepuran dominated that speedskating event lately. They are the reigning world champions and world record-holders. They won five World Cup titles. They came to the Milan Cortina Olympics in search of just one thing: the gold medal. They'll leave with the silver, though, because they could not keep up with Italy's Davide Ghiotto, Andrea Giovannini and Michele Malfatti and lost to them twice at these Winter Games, including by 4 1/2 seconds in the final Tuesday. China took the bronze. "You can't just be the best going in," Lehman said after his last race before retirement. "You have to be the best on the day you compete." Giovannini celebrated his country's first Olympic title in the event since the 2006 Turin Games by mimicking NBA star Steph Curry's "Night night" gesture. "The Americans were an inspiration for us, because these last two years, they almost always won. ... We knew we had worked a lot for this race, but the favorites were the Americans," Giovannini said. "They made us raise our level." Canada collected its second consecutive Winter Games title in women's team pursuit when Ivanie Blondin, Valerie Maltais and Isabelle Weidemann — the same athletes who won gold four years ago in Beijing — finished in 2 minutes, 55.81 seconds, nearly a full second ahead of runner-up Netherlands. Japan defeated the U.S. for the bronze. "We promised each other," said Maltais, who got the bronze in the individual 3,000 meters on Feb. 7, "that we're going to empty the tank." Buoyed by raucous cheering from the home crowd at the Milano Speed Skating Stadium, the Italian men clocked 3:39.20. The United States started the final well and led for the early stages. But the Italians charged ahead over the closing laps, extending their advantage. When it ended, as Giovannini and Co. celebrated, Dawson, Lehman and Cepuran leaned over, hands on knees. "There's always going to be bitterness. We came out here to win," Dawson said. "The last four years, the dream was to get gold at these Games. … This is the last go-round for us three." This was was supposed to be, the Americans hoped, the crowning achievement for a trio that set the world mark in November and took home a bronze from the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Dawson, Lehman and Cepuran are fond of saying that they might not necessarily be the three strongest skaters, but they know they are the best team around, helped by advancements such as being at the forefront of the revolutionary switch to the pushing method and the use of computer technology to study aerodynamics. They prioritize this event over individual races; indeed, Dawson withdrew from the Olympic 10,000 meters last week to focus on team pursuit. But the Italians simply were better: The final was a rematch of a quarterfinal won by the Italians on Sunday. The Americans were able to remain in medal contention despite that loss because the four fastest quarterfinal times advanced out of that round and they were still second-best overall. Still, Giovannini said, that quarterfinal result "helped, a lot, to reduce the American team's certainty. They were the favorites and the team to beat. Beating them gave us some extra confidence." Japan's Miho Takagi, Ayano Sato and Hana Noake took the women's bronze by defeating the U.S. trio of Brittany Bowe, Mia Manganello and Giorgia Birkeland in the third-place race. For Takagi, it is her 10th Olympic medal, including bronze in the individual 500 meters and 1,000 meters at these Winter Games. Her career totals: two golds, four silvers and four bronzes.