The U.S. speedskater Casey Dawson makes it to Beijing but loses his race.

Casey Dawson skated one of his slowest 1,500-meter races in years on Tuesday, but that wasn’t entirely the point. Just making it to the starting line was a victory.

Dawson, an American distance speedskater, did not join his teammates in flying to China two weeks ago. A positive test for the coronavirus had ruled that out. Instead, he stayed behind in Salt Lake City and trained, and tested, and trained, and tested, to the tune of 45 tests over the last three weeks. The results alternated between negative and positive.

“Once I got a negative, I was riding high,” he said. When he got a positive, he was on the ground, crying.

Finally he produced the four negative tests required to make it into Beijing’s closed-loop system that separates Olympics participants from China’s general population, but that was only the start of his journey. Dawson flew from Salt Lake City to Atlanta, took a red-eye flight to Paris and then another to Beijing. He did push-ups and other exercises on the flights, and slept a few hours. He was too nervous to sleep more.

Once he arrived in Beijing at 6:50 a.m., 12 hours before his race, he discovered that his checked luggage had not made it. He still isn’t sure where it is. He thinks Paris. He brought one of his skinsuits and his custom-molded skating boots in his carry-on luggage — everything needed to race, except for his blades.

His coach reached out to the coach of Haralds Silovs, a Latvian skater who uses the same kind of blades as Dawson. Silovs kindly lent him a pair.

He still had to pass another coronavirus test: the one at the Beijing airport that everyone attending the Games must pass. He isolated in his room in the Olympic Village for a few hours until the result came in. Negative.

Fate tried everything to deny Dawson a chance to race, but even fate was not that cruel.

He skated a 1:49.45, the 28th slowest of 29 times. His speed died on the final, and hardest, lap. But he made it to the line. “Stepping to the line was the biggest thing for me,” he said.

Dawson had missed the 5,000-meter race earlier, and couldn’t realistically compete in the 1,500 meters. He sounded upbeat, as upbeat as a clearly exhausted athlete can be. But he was also upset.

“There is obviously anger and a lot of emotions going through my head,” Dawson said. Who is he upset with?

“Just the whole situation,” he said.