The United States' trio of Casey Dawson, Emery Leham, and Ethan Cepuran advanced to the men's team pursuit semifinals Sunday, finishing 2nd in their qualifying heat with a final time of 3 minutes, 39.37 seconds.
The event consisted of four quarterfinals featuring two teams each. The four fastest teams moved on to the next round.
The American trio has completely rewritten the team pursuit playbook over the last five seasons, skating to three world records, five straight World Cup season titles, Olympic bronze (2022) and world championship gold (2025). They entered the Olympics riding a six-race undefeated run on the international stage, skating their last three races before the Games over two seconds faster than the runner up.
The three skaters led the way nearly the whole way through Sunday's race, posting the fastest splits through the middle six-and-a-half laps (of eight total). A slight dip in speed toward the end gave Italy, with whom they were paired, the edge.
Italy crossed the finish line 0.97 seconds ahead of the United States. The Italian squad of Davide Ghiotto, Andrew Giovannini, and Michele Malfatti won the world title in 2024.
"Since October, we knew that Italy was going to come here and skate," Lehman said. "We're world champions, but they're also world champions, and they're on home ice ... We would be silly not to think that they were going to come and not skate fast."
Italian athletes have far exceeded expectations at the 2026 Games, collecting 22 total medals — a figure second only to winter sports giant Norway's 24. In speed skating alone, they've collected two golds (both from Francesca Lollobrigida), one bronze, and four other top-10 finishes.
The U.S. squad is confident they can put a winning race together when it really counts, though.
"We've come in with the pressure of being favorites for it," Cepuran said. "Today isn't a step backwards necessarily, because sometimes you have to take a step back to go two steps forward and [meet] our goal to come out on Tuesday and win it all."
China and the Netherlands filled out the final two qualifying spots. The Netherlands claimed bronze in the last two of three total team pursuit races contested on the World Cup level this season. China placed 3rd in the other.
The four countries will compete in the semifinals and finals Tuesday, Feb. 17.