American skater Apolo Anton Ohno leads the field as they cross the finish line for the penultimate time, covering the inside line heading into the final corner.
He heads a quartet of tightly packed skaters, all sweeping around the top bend of the tight, 111m-long Salk Lake Ice Centre short track speed skating venue.
A fifth competitor skates alone behind that four, Steven Bradbury, an Australian, at 28 the oldest man in the field, skating within his limits, unable to match the younger skaters' acceleration in these closing stages of the 1,000 metres.
Final lap. Ohno's left arm goes down to the ice to assist his slingshotting around the tight curve — a necessity as the speed ramps up to around 50km/h.
The home nation's gold medal favourite had the crowd on its feet, shrieking its support.
He dares a glance behind him, spotting the figure of Chinese skater Li Jiajun looming on his right shoulder, the Chinese 10-time world champion having made a superb exit to challenge the lead down the back straight.
Lee can't seem to get there though. He puts his left arm on Ohno's shoulder, initiating contact down the back straight but Ohno stands strong, shrugging him off with a swipe of his right arm.
But the challenge for Ohno is far from over. Korean Ahn Hyun-soo's distinctive yellow and blue kit appears on his inside, a blur of colour in his peripheral vision.
Outside him, Li loses his footing and disappears from contention.
But then he feels it, Ahn's arm across his midriff, the Korean's head on his arm, his competitors weight exaggerated by the forces pressing hard into his thighs.
The centrifugal force exerted on Ahn as he tried to take a tighter line on the inside had become too much. The Korean lost his footing and instinctively leaned on Ohno to try in a forlorn attempt to stay upright.
The American's face betrays an instant flash of shock and panic.
He can see the finish line. The gold medal that would cement him as a hero of the Games.
But impossibly it is slipping as much as he is, the blue and yellow Korean bulldozer taking his skates from under him and denying him traction.
"They bump! They bump! Total wipe out!" screams American commentator Ted Robinson on NBC as the crowd similarly screams itself hoarse in recognition of the carnage that's unfolding beneath them.
Ahn spins and slides into the barriers, hit from behind by Canadian Mathieu Turcotte who had nowhere to go but follow the Korean into the padding.
Ohno would only have been tangentially aware of that though as he too is spun around, banging into the pads back first and bumping back into the circuit.
He would, however, have been painfully away of the figure in green sliding past as he scrabbled to his feet before flinging himself across the line in second.
He could not have avoided seeing the Australian skating around the bend, arms aloft, even if he had tried to ignore it.
He could not have missed the boos raining down from the stands.
"Just when you think you've seen everything in short track we get stunned again," Robinson said in disbelief.
Stunned was right.
Nobody was more disbelieving than Bradbury, who had just made history as Australia's first ever Winter Olympic gold medallist.
The Americans were furious.
When the result was confirmed — finishing orders in short track speed skating are never confirmed until the chief referee says so — another cascade of boos erupted from the crowd.
Fuelling the indignation was the identity of that chief referee: Jim Hewish. An Australian.
Australian Chef de Mission Ian Chesterman vouched for Hewish's impartiality, noting that he had ordered the re-race of the 5,000m relay earlier in the week that cost the Australian team a spot in the final.
But that barely sated a crowd already indignant over a judging scandal at the figure skating earlier in the Games.
"I went over first and for a split second I thought 'Oh, my God, I have won', and then the judges were talking and I was very confident they would have a re-race," Bradbury said.
"I don't know if there is cause for a re-race, but I am glad they didn't."
In fairness, it was about time that Bradbury had some luck — and didn't he get it throughout the entire program of races that day.
Bradbury thought he had been eliminated in the quarter-final after finishing third behind Ohno and defending world champion Marc Gagnon, but Gagnon was disqualified for obstructing another competitor, giving Bradbury the spot.
Then, in the semi-final, Bradbury decided to hang back, mirroring the approach he would go on to take in the final. Incredibly, the same thing happened, with Satoru Terao disqualified for causing a final corner collision that allowed Bradbury to steal in and claim first place and a spot in the final.
Salt Lake City aside, Bradbury was far from a flash in the pan and was thoroughly deserving of his spot in the final.
Eleven years earlier, Bradbury was part of the 5,000m relay team that won gold at the World Championships in Sydney, backing that up with a bronze at the championships in Beijing in 1993 and a silver in Guildford in 1994.
It was no surprise that he and his teammates Richard Nizielski, Andrew Murtha and Kieran Hansen won bronze at the 1994 Lillehammer Games in that same event, becoming the first Aussies to ever win a medal at a Winter Olympics.
Later that year though, Bradbury lost four litres of blood when a competitors skate sliced through his thigh, an injury that required 111 stitches and 18 months recovery.
The knocks kept coming. In 2000 Bradbury broke his neck in training, his doctor advising him against ever getting back on the ice again.
But the Aussie had unfinished business. He wanted one more crack at the Games.
"I wasn't the fastest skater on the ice tonight. I was obviously not the most deserving guy. I had a lot of luck on my side," Bradbury said on the night.
"But I won't take the race for the one minute it was on. I'll take it for the 10 years of hard work that I put in. I'll take it as a reward."
And aside from the furious fans in Utah that night, few would begrudge him that.
