It was Brendan Corey's moment to show the world how good he is.
Corey bent his knees atop the starting line and dug his blades into the top sheet of ice when the gun fired.
Darting and dashing around Beijing's Capital Indoor Stadium, the 28-year-old looked every chance of qualifying for a world championship semi-final.
Then it all went horribly wrong in a bloody collision with Olympic gold medallist Shaoang Liu.
"It all happened so fast," Corey tells AAP of the injury he suffered in March.
"It was the last lap of the 1000m and I was doing an overtake on the outside.
"One of my competitors in front of me lost his balance. His foot came up quite high and hit me in the neck.
"That's all I can remember."
Corey's hand instinctively clasped his throat. He refused to free it until the paramedics arrived.
As they bundled him into an ambulance, Corey had no idea how bad the injury was, only that it was very painful.
"I was still in my racing suit and skates," he recalls.
The blade missed his carotid arteries - the blood suppliers to the brain.
The severity of such a blow could have been devastating. Former NHL player Adam Johnson died in 2023 after a mid-game collision in England severed a carotid artery.
But Corey didn't get off unscathed.
"I ended up with a fractured thyroid, which is the Adam's apple," Corey says.
"Every time I would speak or swallow, it would give me pain, because the bone pierced my throat."
It would be understandable if the frightening injury, just 11 months out from the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, ended his career.
But recovering in Australia, Corey was determined not to let fears extinguish his dreams.
Some two months later, the Canadian-born skater was back on the rink in Italy where he trains.
"I was trusting myself that I could still skate," he says.
"When I was in Australia, I think I got on the ice maybe four times total.
"I wanted to chase that feeling of winning a medal again. It's motivated me more than ever to push myself."
Corey returned to a hotly contested world tour competition in October, finishing 11th in the 1500m and 13th in the 1000m in Canada.
One month later in Poland, he was 10th and 11th in the 1500m and 1000m respectively while strengthening his bid for Olympic selection.
A week later, Corey entered the final competition of the season knowing it was his last opportunity to qualify for his second Olympics.
He did.
After finishing the season ranked 18th in the world, the 28-year-old is set to compete in the 500m, 1000m and his specialty 1500m event.
At the 2022 Beijing Olympics, he also crashed - albeit less scarily - in the 1000m quarter-final. In the 500m, he fell an agonising 0.079 seconds short of reaching the quarters.
Corey believes he can become the first Australian to win an Olympic short-track speed skating medal since Steven Bradbury famously stayed on his skates to win gold in 2002.
"I was five years old at the time (Bradbury won), and I didn't start speed skating until I was eight," he says.
Corey's faith follows an eye-catching 2024 world championships performance, where he won Australia's first medal in the competition since 1994 - a bronze in the 1500m.
The contest will be intense, though, because Corey may face eight-time world champion Steven Dubois, Canadian powerhouse William Dandjinou, and Olympic winner Ren Ziwei.
"I would say I'm in for a chance. Speed skating is such an unpredictable sport, as you have seen with Steven's gold medal," Corey says.
"I would say I am one of the top competitors in the sport."
But if it wasn't for another injury, he might not even be at the Olympics.
Born and bred in New Brunswick, Canada, Corey dreamed of flying the red maple leaf flag.
But in the days leading up to the Canadian tryouts, he suffered a concussion.
"I was making my way up the ranks in Canada, and … the day before the Canadian nationals, the team doctor told me not to compete," Corey says.
"The Canadian coaches decided not to take me, and I figured that was a sign that this wasn't the path I was to go down.
"The same year, I met the Australian coach."
The rest is history.
Because his grandparents and mother are dual Australian-Canadian citizens, Corey made the switch in 2019.
Six years on, he plans to spend two months training in Italy to ensure he hits top gear in Milan.
