Jessie Diggins and the U.S. cross-country ski team are reaching new heights

When the elite cross-country ski racing season began in November, Jessie Diggins was an Olympic and World Cup champion who was trying to divorce herself from her race results. Her American teammates were more hopeful than accomplished. The World Cup circuit tests athletes in both body and will. In a year when the international series would make a stop in the United States for the first time in two decades, questions were both internal and external.

“I think even subconsciously there was a little bit of me that was like, ‘I want to show that it’s right for me to be here racing,’ " said Diggins, who last summer struggled with an eating disorder she had kept at bay for more than a decade. “I want people to believe me when I say that. But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some relief that the results were good, so that I could kind of show that it works for me to take care of myself.”

Diggins and her teammates are now taking care of themselves - and the competition. The 32-year-old Minnesotan just won the grueling, nine-day Tour de Ski, the most prestigious event in cross-country skiing outside the World Championships and the Olympics. She also leads the World Cup overall standings in pursuit of what would be her second title. But her victory in the Tour - and what it proved about her mental and physical health - is just the lead story for an American team that has established unprecedented momentum heading into next month’s World Cup races in Minneapolis.

Sophia Laukli, just 23, became the youngest American to win a World Cup event when she overcame a fall and surged to victory on the famed Alpe Cermis hill climb on the last day of the Tour. Rosie Brennan, a 35-year-old from Utah and Alaska, posted a second-place finish in one stage of the Tour, and she now sits in third place behind Diggins and Sweden’s Linn Svahn in the World Cup overall standings. And early in the Tour, Ben Ogden, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of Vermont, posted the first podium of his career, a third-place finish in a skate sprint - hardly his specialty.

With Diggins on the podium four times, the American team had top-three finishes in six of the seven stages. At one point, one of the Italian coaches approached the American team and asked, “Is the USA the new Norway?”

[Earlier coverage: ‘It feels historic’: U.S. Cross Country Ski Team enters Tour de Ski in unprecedented territory]

Not quite. But in a sport that’s based almost entirely in Europe and can struggle to gain attention domestically, the American team is posting strong, collective results at a perfect time - leading into the Feb. 17-18 World Cup races in Minneapolis, just more than 30 miles east of Diggins’s hometown of Afton, Minn. With those races a month away, the standard of expectations is changing for the entire American team, and the members are feeding off one another.

“Americans have not been good at cross-country skiing historically,” Brennan said by phone last week from Italy. “… But just having all these examples of success just makes you believe that it’s possible and it’s worth sticking with.

“You’re seeing it on the boys’ side, too. They have done a really good job of taking some of the energy and the results from the girls and making it their own and kind of fostering their own good vibes and positivity and belief. There’s just so much potential in the next - I don’t know - decade or so.”

Brennan’s story is the kind that would live in obscurity if she weren’t posting results like she is now - and that’s too bad, because overcoming obstacles like she has just to ski professionally at an elite level is inspiring whether she finishes third or 33rd. After graduating from Dartmouth, where she skied for four years, she had aspirations to ski professionally. The problem: She tore a disc in her back as a freshman, ripped a ligament in her left knee as a junior and as a senior crashed her car and suffered a concussion.

Her response: Move to Anchorage and train with a group that included American legend Kikkan Randall.

“When I moved to Alaska, I was pretty broken, physically and mentally,” Brennan said.

That was in 2011. Her first World Cup podium came in November 2020. She won two races that season. She was fourth in the sprint final at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics - a result that was both uplifting and heartbreaking. She is now a contender, but there’s an indescribable amount of work and faith and determination between becoming a professional and reaching the podium.

“You always hope it goes faster than it does,” Brennan said. “… I just stuck to it. It’s a life I really enjoy, so the small improvements were enough to keep me going.”

At an age when some elite athletes are winding down, Brennan seems to be gearing up. Skiing through the 2026 Olympics in Italy seems like a realistic goal.

“Rosie has such perseverance and determination and grit, and I think that’s why she’s succeeding now,” Diggins said via Zoom from Italy. “I think it’s so important to remember not to give up. If something doesn’t come quickly or easily, it’s important to remember it’s still worthwhile if you are having fun, if you believe in what you’re doing and if you’re still working towards your potential.”

That describes the American team, too. Diggins - who in 2018 combined with Randall to win the first U.S. cross-country skiing gold medal in history, then took a silver four years later - long ago realized hers. But in the fall, as she publicly discussed her bulimia and the doubts it brought on, then went to Europe and showed her absolute strength, winning three World Cup races and reaching the podium five more times this season, she became a legend who is clearly not done establishing her legacy.

And with some of her American teammates now posting results that turn heads, she is both inspiring and inspired.

“Ben’s podium was so awesome, I cried multiple times because it just made me so happy,” Diggins said. “It just keeps you inspired and excited. And it’s not just about the podiums, though. It’s the way we all look out for each other and take care of each other. … We’re all one big family, and I think that matters.”