Beijing • Three flights over the span of nearly 24 hours, dozens of COVID-19 tests and an unfamiliar pair of skates. Casey Dawson certainly went through a lot of trouble to take his four laps around Beijing’s Ice Ribbon on Tuesday night.
“I’m just running on pure adrenaline,” the Park City speedskater said after making his Olympic debut in the 1,500 meters, where he finished second-to-last. “I’m definitely fatigued and everything. I mean, I was skating on not my set up and everything, so it was just quite the experience just to get to the line. I didn’t think I was going to get here in the first place.”
A mixture of positive COVID tests and protocol confusion kept Dawson, 21, grounded in Utah when his teammates left for the 2022 Winter Olympics last week. It wasn’t until Saturday that he finally got the clearance to travel to China. The next day he was on a flight — or, rather, a series of three flights from Salt Lake City to Atlanta to Paris to Beijing — hoping he would arrive in time to race the 1,500 meters. It was the only individual event he had left in these Games after missing Sunday’s 5,000.
Sleepy, jet-lagged and stiff, he arrived in Beijing at 6:50 the morning of his race. His bags with his gear, however, did not.
Still, almost exactly 12 hours later, with a pair of borrowed blades strapped to his feet, Dawson finally got to step on the ice and toe the starting line.
“Stepping to the line was the biggest thing for me,” he said. “Like, I didn’t think I was going to get to the line in the first place. I thought my individual chances were gone, gone with the wind. And so just stepping in line for the 1,500 meters, it was amazing.”
Dawson’s trials were reflected in his performance. His time of 1 minute, 49.45 seconds was 6.24 slower than gold medalist Kjeld Nuis of Norway. It also was just shy of 6 seconds slower than his personal best at the distance, set in December at the Utah Olympic Oval in Kearns.
But he didn’t finish last. And his determination to even suit up earned him kudos from both his teammates and skaters from other countries.
“It’s something I wouldn’t want to do,” said the USA’s Emery Lehman, who finished 11th (1:45.78). “Usually when you travel that long, I think we waited three days before we skated, maybe two. So for him to come in, touch the ice and then skate all within, I don’t know what, it was [within] 12 hours of landing and the time change and the jet lag and sitting on a plane for that long. It’s something I’m glad I would not have to do.”
Great Britain’s Cornelius Kersten said even competing on his backup blades is enough to throw him off, not to mention ones belonging to someone else.
“It’s a situation that nobody would want to be in,” he said. “That shows a lot of passion for him to want to do that.”
In the weeks between qualifying and Olympic competition, athletes in every sport fretted that a positive COVID-19 test would rip away the years-long work they put in to compete at the Games.
Canadian figure skater Keegan Messing didn’t arrive until a day before the men’s short program competition because of COVID. And American Vincent Zhou caught the virus while in the bubble and had to pull out the day before the men’s singles competition began.
Few cut it as close as Dawson, though.
The computer engineering student at the University of Utah tested positive for the coronavirus within days of returning home from the Olympic trials in Milwaukee. That was in mid-January, and since he is vaccinated and wasn’t showing any symptoms, he was confident he would have enough time to recover and stop shedding the virus before the flight to China at the end of the month.
But confusion over what labs the Chinese government had approved to conduct PCR tests and over how many negative tests he needed to produce — at first it was two, then it was four — kept him stranded in Salt Lake City.
The opening ceremony came and went, and then the chance to race the 5,000. Finally, with just hours to spare to make the 1,500, his Olympic dream took flight.
Dawson said he didn’t expect his luggage to be waiting for him when he got back to the athletes’ village. Believed to be somewhere in Paris, it might arrive in time for the Feb. 15 team pursuit. At this point, though, Dawson’s not worrying about it.
“Just being here is just amazing,” he said. “And, I mean, if I get my luggage or not, I’m still an Olympian.”