Homecoming hero Diggins eyes second crystal globe after 'surprise of a season'

With five of the 15 Coop FIS Cross-Country World Cup stops to go, Jessie Diggins has got herself a firm grip of the 2023/24 season's overall Crystal Globe.

The 32-year-old superstar from Minnesota, USA has gathered 2,103 points and leads the rankings with a 260-point margin down to Sweden's runner-up Linn Svahn, as Svahn's teammate Frida Karlsson in third place is 428 points behind.

Three years ago, Diggins took the Tour de Ski title and became the first American to win the overall World Cup standings. Having won the Tour a second time in January, she is on her way to repeat the successful 2020/21 campaign. However, despite having done it all before, Diggins did not see this coming when the winter begun.

"This has been a real surprise of a season, and sometimes, when you get a gift like that, you just have to take it and run with it," she said.

"I'm not questioning too hard why it's happening. But I think part of it is I felt really, really supported. It was a really challenging summer and I feel like every time I get to race I feel really excited to just be racing."

After winning her first individual world championship title in the 10km freestyle in Planica, Slovenia, in February last year, Diggins faced other obstacles than the tough pre-season training in the summer.

In September she shared an emotional post on social media, telling her fans that after 12 years she had been struggling with her eating disorder again.

"I'm doing quite a lot better now, thanks to my amazing care team, and I reached out for help to them right away," she said in a video message.

"But I think it's important to share because it isn't a picture-perfect recovery story. It's real, it's raw and it's messy, and that's OK. I think that sometimes we project that in order to be successful you have to be perfect and struggle with nothing, but that's just not real life."

The brave message was received with a lot of love, with names such as Alpine star Mikaela Shiffrin (USA), cross-country icon Therese Johaug (NOR) and Paralympic Nordic skiing champion Oksana Masters (USA) showing their support in the comments section.

Since the World Cup season started in November, the often smiling and glittery Diggins has looked in top shape. She said the feeling of being back in the cross-country tracks had also been one kind of support.

"Racing is a really fun thing for me, it's where I feel confident and powerful and strong and I feel like I know what I'm doing out there and you don't always feel like that every moment of your everyday life," Diggins said.

"It's really special and something that I'm not taking for granted, so I'm just enjoying this season."

Apart from just being back competing, Diggins has a lot to be happy about this year. At the first World Cup stop in Ruka, Finland, she was 0.3 second from winning the 20km mass start free but had to settle for a second place behind Moa Ilar (SWE).

The weekend after, she got her first victory of the season as she finished first in the 10km free in Gaellivare, Sweden, and after that she has been on eight individual podiums, winning the 10km free in Oestersund, Sweden, the 25km mass start free in Toblach, Italy, the 20km mass starts free in Goms, Switzerland and the 15km mass start free in Canmore, Canada.

The triumph in front of many close ones in Canada, where half of her family is from, made Diggins surpass the record for podiums earned in a single season for an American athlete.

On 10 podiums and five wins, Diggins beat the previous top score of nine podiums and five wins, set by her Olympic gold-winning team sprint partner Kikkan Randall in 2012-13.

In Goms, she stayed behind the leader Karlsson until the sprint where she managed to push past the Swede despite having "lost all feeling" in her legs. Diggins credits her ability to completely empty herself for much of this season's success.

"It's funny because I'm an athlete who makes the sport look really hard," she said.

"I don't always have the most graceful technique, I'm usually in a lot of pain and it usually looks like I'm falling apart even if there's still some energy buried deep down that I'm ready to dig up.

"I've been working for a very long time to work up a strong-enough brain to override a tired body. So when you see a sprint finish like at the end in Goms, I am tired. I couldn't feel my legs and I felt like I was going to throw up. And at the same time, I'm just so focused on crossing the finish line with every little bit of power that I have."

Diggins does not name Karlsson, Svahn or teammate Rosie Brennan, in the overall fourth place, as the biggest obstacle standing between herself and a second overall Crystal Globe. Instead, it's all about being able to start as many of the nine remaining races of the 2023/24 season as possible.

"My focus is to stay healthy," Diggins said.

"Of course you cannot always control that but the way the points work, the biggest thing is being able to do every race."

Diggins opted out from the relay in Oberhof, Germany, in the end of January, to save her energy for the individual races and recover from a fall in the Tour de Ski's 20km pursuit classic, where she sprained her ribs.

"I try to get a little bit smarter as I get older. Hopefully that's working out but I didn't race the relays after the Tour de Ski because I was really, really tired. Also, my ribs were healing very, very slowly after I face-planted in Davos (SUI)," she said, adding that they are well now.

"Up until that point I'd raced every single race this season and it's too many races for me. With the style that I race, where I am in a lot of pain when I cross the finish line, I can't do that 37 times and make it through the season.

"I really love racing and it's really hard for me to sit races out. I don't enjoy it, but at the same time, we are trying to make sure that we don't burn me out."

As the World Cup returns to North America and her home state Minnesota in February, for the first time on US soil in more than 20 years, Diggins is not short of motivation.

After making her 300th World Cup start in Canmore, she is ready to put on another show in front of family, friends and fans in Minneapolis, USA. She feels the pressure to win, especially in her specialist distance 10km free, but most of all she just wants to enjoy competing.

"I'm most proud of being here, and being the best teammate that I can be," she said.

"In racing, at the end of the day, you do your best and maybe you win, maybe you're 200th, but you can't really control that. You can't control the snow, the skis, the wax or anybody else.But you can control your own effort and what you put into it.

"For me it was a big fight to be here and to be racing. And I'm really happy to say that I'm enjoying it. And I'm really having fun out there, it's to the point where I'm giving my coaches big smiles in the feed zones."

Coming home during the season is an unusual boost for the 2018 team sprint Olympic champion from Afton, a village in the western outskirts of Minneapolis, who spent her last Christmas in her home country in 2011.

"It's been many years being on the road, having very different experiences, and it's very challenging sometimes," she said.

"It can be really hard. I get really homesick, I really miss being able to see my husband and family, being able to sleep in my own bed and cook whatever I want whenever I want it, in my own kitchen, being able to cook. Little things like that – being able to wash your clothes when they're dirty.

"But at the same time, I could retire whenever I want, but I'm still here and still racing because I love what I do, so clearly the love for the sport outweighs the inconveniences of being on the road."

As the season concludes in March, Diggins, who is topping the distance standings and fourth in the sprint, could be greatly rewarded for her achievements this season as she keeps breaking new barriers for cross-country skiing in the USA, where her 22-year-old teammate Ben Ogden is praising her.

"If Jessie wasn't out there every day doing what Jessie does, I wouldn't be here. None of us would. She makes the team, she goes out there getting the sponsors. We owe her so much," he said.

USA are having a strong season, with 23-year-old Sophia Laukli winning the Final Climb event of the Tour de Ski, claiming the first World Cup victory of her career, and the team finishing third in the relay in Gaellivare. Ogden sees Diggins as a big role model in the tracks too.

"Jessie leaves it all out there on the course and she says she finishes and doesn't feel her legs. When I finish races, I feel my legs. They don't feel good, but I feel them. So I've got to get to that next level. And without role models like her, maybe I wouldn't even know that such a level existed," Ogden, who is 19th in the men's overall standings, said.

"It's fantastic to have her and I'm so grateful that my trajectory overlaps with hers for as long as it has. When she inevitably moves on it will be a massive void to fill in so many ways."

First, however, there are more titles to win for Diggins, who says her goal and strategy still is to take "one race, one weekend, at the time".

"At the same time it is like playing a game of chess – you're trying to look a couple of moves ahead," she said.

"We are trying to be smart and strategic because it is special to be in the yellow bib and it is something that we also do not take for granted."