A journey that began when he was 9 years old and took him all over the world — from his home in Oak Park,Ill., to the Olympics in Sochi, Pyeongchang and Beijing, and to global competitions in Norway and Poland — ended Tuesday in the most bittersweet of ways for Emery Lehman: with a flag-draped lap around the ice and a silver medal, seconds short of a dream finish.

For the first four laps of the final race in the men’s speedskating team pursuit, with Lehman in the middle of a trio of Americans who arrived in Milan with the solitary goal of winning gold, Team USA held a growing lead that portended the sort of finish Lehman and his teammates envisioned. For the past season, they had dominated this event on the world stage.

They’d won two world championship races. They’d set a world record just three months ago.

And then suddenly, just when Lehman and his teammates entered the final half of the one race they’d most wanted to win for years, their lead narrowed, then disappeared completely. Italy, skating on home ice in front of a crowd that roared louder in the final laps, surged ahead and won by 4.51 seconds, leaving the Americans a consolatory silver medal.

When it ended, Lehman and his teammates, Casey Dawson and Glen Ellyn’s Ethan Cepuran, tried to look happy. They smiled politely while they took their place on the podium and lowered their heads for their medals. They waved to the crowd. They hid well whatever heartbreak or disappointment they carried.

Second place was not what they anticipated after years of training together and rising to the top of their sport. It wasn’t what they expected after setting a world record in team pursuit in 2024 and then breaking it, by a little more than a second, in November in another memorable performance at the Speedskating World Cup in Salt Lake City.

“I don’t think it’s really something that needs to be said,” Lehman said last month, at the U.S. Speedskating Olympic trials in Milwaukee, of the goal of winning gold in team pursuit. His coach reminded him and his teammates of the stakes often, Lehman said, “but between the three of us, it’s just something that’s understood.”

The three had grown close, and Lehman, 29, and Cepuran, 25, are especially so. Cepuran’s father was among Lehman’s first speedskating coaches, and Lehman, who also excelled in hockey and lacrosse growing up, could remember plenty of times at the rink, in his younger years, watching Cepuran try to keep up with the older kids.

Last month, during the trials in Milwaukee, they reflected on their history and bond.

“I’ve known Ethan since he was sitting on a bucket in the middle of the ice,” Lehman said.

“He’s somebody that I’ve looked up to my whole career,” Cepuran said.

Even then, in the midst of qualifying for another Olympics — Lehman’s fourth and Cepuran’s second — there was a sadness about it because they knew their time skating together was nearing the end. Lehman, who played club hockey at Marquette and earned a graduate degree in engineering from Johns Hopkins, already had decided to retire from competitive speedskating.

He’d devoted his life to the sport for most of the past 15 years, traveling around the world and moving to Salt Lake City, where he spent much of the year training for world championship events. When Lehman competed in the Olympics the first time, in 2014, he was at the time the youngest male ever to make an American Olympic speedskating team.

He was 17 then, and as time passed he watched even younger and faster skaters enter into the sport. Record times became faster. The margins between winning and finishing second, or worse, kept shrinking. The training sessions sometimes felt longer. He said he would not miss the feelings of failure that sometimes accompanied elite competition.

“I’d say well over half the time I’m unhappy with the results or the times or how I’m feeling, or, you know, whatever it is, and that’s tough,” Lehman said last month. “It’s tough to deal with every day. So I don’t think I’ll miss that too much.”

But in the same breath, as he sat inside the rink where he had become an Olympian again, he said he would miss training and chasing excellence. Chasing gold.

Four years ago in Beijing, Lehman won a bronze medal in team pursuit. He, Cepuran and Dawson arrived in Milan as the event favorite, but among them, only Lehman arrived knowing this was it: his final chance to win gold. Cepuran and Dawson, 25, might have another chance in four years. For Lehman, who is moving back to Chicago, there are no more chances.

“Now that it’s real,” he said of his speedskating journey ending, “it’s kind of crazy.”

When his final race ended Tuesday, the Italians began a fervent celebration. NBC’s cameras showed their coach pulling himself over the edge of the rink to join them and locals cheering in the stands.

In the background, there was Lehman with an American flag draped around his back, skating around the Olympic ice one last time.

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