02/17/26 02:11:00
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02/17 14:09 CST Italy's men and 2022 champion Canada's women win the Olympic
team pursuit speedskating gold medals
Italy's men and 2022 champion Canada's women win the Olympic team pursuit
speedskating gold medals
By HOWARD FENDRICH
AP National Writer
MILAN (AP) --- 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 on
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 current 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 bronzes in the individual
500 meters and 1,000 meters at these Winter Games. Her career totals: two
golds, four silvers and four bronzes.
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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
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