Diggins takes energy from fans 'going nuts' to win Davos distance race

Jessie Diggins finished on the podium for the second time this weekend as she won the women's 20km individual start free at the Coop FIS Cross-Country World Cup in Davos, Switzerland, on Sunday.

The 31-year-old USA star, who is staying in Switzerland over the holidays, showed that she likes it in Davos as she followed up Saturday's sprint second place with a distance victory to bag her second World Cup top spot of the season.

Norway's Ingvild Flugstad Østberg finished second, earning her first podium position since March 2020. The Norwegian 32-year-old had noted the fastest times for most of the race and was 6.9 seconds ahead of chasing Diggins at 17.2km, but lost a lot of time in the last kilometres as the American showed why she is one of the best in the world going downhill.

Finishing 5.5 seconds before the Norwegian, Diggins had beaten the runner-up by more than 12 seconds in the last 2.8km of the race.

"I love this (distance)," she said.

"It's a sneaky, hard, course so I just kept focusing and kept trying to look for every second and to ski smooth with a lot of power and glide."

Diggins struggled with her eyes after crossing the finish line, admitting that her strong downhill run in the end had not come easily.

"I was taking some risks on the last downhill, I almost crashed," she said.

"It got a little scary in the end, I wasn't blinking in the downhill so I froze my eyes a little bit. But I'm OK, I got a lot of help after the finish, but that was kind of crazy."

The highest parts of the Davos course are more than 1,800 metres above sea level but Diggins said the many stars and stripes flags in the audience had given her that extra energy.

"(I felt) pretty good, actually, which is surprising," the three-time Olympic medallist said.

"Usually at altitude, even when you're having the best day of your life you don't always feel that good, and today I was like 'Oh my God, I feel good, this is great'.

"I just kept enjoying the atmosphere, enjoying the day, we had so many US fans out there, it was so crazy cool. They were going nuts out there. So I was just taking in all of the energy."

And the USA fans got a lot to cheer for as Diggins's teammate Rosie Brennan snatched the last podium position half a second before Tiril Udnes Weng, Norway's overall World Cup winner having to settle for a second fourth-place this weekend.

"It was good," said Brennan, who had been in fourth place with 3km to go.

"I'd never done a 20k interval start so it was a new experience, but I love the tracks here in Davos and I love everything about skiing here so I just thought I'll just go and ski as smooth as I can and hope that it turns into a fast time, and it did so I'm very happy.

"I think 20k is a good distance for me so I I'm excited to be racing them this year."

Click here for full results of the women’s 20km individual start free.