In a single week, the list of American women who have won individual titles on the World Cup cross-country ski tour has doubled.
Jessie Diggins of Minnesota stunned herself, if not everyone else, by winning Friday's Tour de Ski 5-kilometer freestyle race in Toblach, Italy.
Diggins, 24, became the fourth U.S. woman to win a World Cup individual race and the second to do so this week.
Until Tuesday, the only American women to reach the top of the podium in an individual race were two Anchorage skiers.
One of them is one of Alaska's biggest sports stars — Kikkan Randall, who collected the first of her 12 individual World Cup wins in 2007 and is sitting out this season while pregnant.
The other is Alison Keisel, formerly Alison Owen, who skied for the old Alaska Methodist University team and lived and trained in Anchorage for several years during the 1970s. In 1978, Owen won the inaugural World Cup race for women, a five-kilometer race in Telemark, Wisconsin.
Earlier this week, Sophie Caldwell of Vermont — whose dad, John Caldwell, wrote about Owen's World Cup victory for Skiing Magazine in 1979 — joined the elite club of U.S. winners by taking the Tour de Ski classic sprint race in Obersdorf, Germany.
Three days later, Diggins bagged the biggest individual victory of her career.
Diggins beat Norway's Heidi Weng by nine-tenths of a second in Friday's interval-start race. Diggins started a few minutes ahead of Weng and several other top contenders and had to sweat it out at the finish line to see if anyone could top her time of 13 minutes, 15.5 seconds.
No one could.
"This win is a big surprise for everyone, especially me. I couldn't believe it," Diggins said in a release from the U.S. Ski Team.
Chris Grover, a West High graduate who is the head coach of the U.S. cross-country team, credited Diggins' finishing push for the win.
He said that according to split times, Diggins trailed Weng and third-place Ingvild Flugstad Oestberg by a few seconds at the three-kilometer mark.
"There are very few skiers in the world, however, that can close down the final kilometer of a course like Jessie," he said in the ski team's press release. "She was fierce and unrelenting on the downhills and flats leading back to the stadium — pushing extremely hard on her skis. We've been wowed by this ability of hers many times, most notably in the recent Lillehammer 4x5k women's relay."
Last month, Diggins anchored the American team that grabbed third place in a World Cup relay in Lillehammer, Norway, surging past Norway's B team near the finish line to secure the bronze for medal for a U.S. team that also included Alaska Pacific University skiers Sadie Bjornson and Rosie Brennan.
Bjornsen on Thursday placed 13th, 25.7 seconds behind Diggins, to maintain her 13th-place spot in the Tour de Ski overall standings. Diggins is 10th with two races remaining in the eight-race series, an arduous test that happens in three countries over 10 days. Caldwell, a sprint specialist, dropped out of the series after her Tuesday victory.
"It's really fun to have such a strong team," said Diggins. "Sophie wins and it gets everyone pumped up — it helped me go fast today. We feed on each other and use our teammates as role models."
Randall, 33, has for several years been the team's chief role model. Throughout her career she has enjoyed success unprecedented in U.S. history, showing younger skiers like Diggins that Americans can hold their own in a sport long dominated by Europeans.
In 2012, Randall and Diggins climbed the victory podium together as winners of the team sprint race at the World Championships in Quebec. It was America's first gold medal in the history of the world championships.
Last season, Diggins earned her second world championship medal by claiming silver in the 10-K freestyle.