Every racer knows that the start certainly matters, but the finish is what everyone remembers. For Jessie Diggins, never before had the beginning of a cross-country season been shrouded in so much uncertainty.
Covid restrictions kept her grounded and meant that she went months without touching snow. Her training was limited to running through the Vermont woods or roller-skiing on roadways. By the time she landed in Finland five months ago, it wasn’t even clear how many races organizers could safely pull off.
“To be totally honest, I didn’t know back in November how long we’d be able to be racing, how many races we’d be able to have,” Diggins said. “Of course, we were hoping to be able to have a season.”
This weekend, she closes out the wild and winding cross-country season with the sport’s biggest prize, the World Cup Crystal Globe, becoming the first U.S. woman to win the overall title and only the second American, following Bill Koch, who won the men’s title 39 years ago.
“It’s really cool in a year that’s been really challenging,” Diggins said. “I think for everyone, it’s been really hard. There’s been a lot of things that have been just struggles frankly.”
Diggins will be honored at this weekend’s event in Engadin, Switzerland. Regardless of the results there, the 29-year-old Minnesota native has secured enough points to lock up the season title and becomes the first woman outside of Norway to win the championship since 2013.
It’s a big boost as Diggins again sets her sights on the Olympic podium. Partnering with Kikkan Randall, Diggins made history at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, winning the team sprint competition, which marked the United States’ first Olympic cross-country gold medal.
With the 2022 Beijing Olympics around the corner, Diggins was hoping for a strong season, but covid restrictions cast doubt on everything. Diggins had all of six hours of training on snow before lining up at her first starting line in late November.
“One of the big things this season I was really proud of was being patient and really trusting in myself and trusting in my plan,” she said.
She was rusty in those initial races but cracked the top five two weeks later in Switzerland. She won her first race of the season Dec. 20 in Germany and would go on to tally three more World Cup wins and 11 podium finishes. In Switzerland, she and teammate Rosie Brennan helped the U.S. record its first 1-2 finish in a World Cup race. And then they did it again a few days later in Italy.
At the world championships earlier this month in Germany, Diggins failed to find the podium but did record two fourth-place finishes. But perhaps most memorably, in January, Diggins became the first American to win the prestigious Tour de Ski, an arduous eight-stage race modeled after the Tour de France cycling event, taking skiers through courses in Switzerland and Italy.
The season is never a simple undertaking, but this season Diggins and her teammates spent four months on the road, facing covid protocols that largely restricted them to hotel rooms and competition venues.
“It’s really telling that in a really challenging year, we were able to have our historically best season ever as a team,” Diggins said. “I think that really speaks to our team chemistry.”
Diggins finished second in the World Cup standings in 2017-18. Long before the podium finishes started adding up, Diggins had established herself as a racer who was never short on effort, especially once the finish line was in sight.
“One of the things I always think of, how do I want to feel when I cross the finish line? For me, if I can cross that finish line and be totally destroyed and know without a doubt that I didn’t leave anything out there and I couldn’t possibly try harder, then I feel proud of my race,” she said, “even if the result is not even close.”
It rarely looks easy, and she says the speed and the result aren’t always in her control.
“But you can control the passion, the effort and the readiness you bring to every start line,” Diggins said.
