American cross-country skiing star Jessie Diggins clinched her third overall World Cup title on Sunday, extending her own U.S. record and adding another major accolade to her decorated career.
Diggins, 33, finished sixth Sunday in a 10-kilometer skate race on the Holmenkollen mountain in Oslo, Norway, to extend her lead over Germany’s Victoria Carl in the overall standings — which combines performances in the sprint and distance events — to 430 points. Individual World Cup races award 100 points to the winner, making Diggins’ lead mathematically insurmountable over the remaining three individual races.
It’s the third overall World Cup title for Diggins. In the 2020-21 season, she became the first American since Bill Koch in 1982 to win it, then was the first U.S. multiple-time winner when she did it again last season.
Diggins has long been setting records for U.S. cross-country skiing. She’s a two-time world champion — in the team sprint in 2013 and the 10km skate in 2023, which was the first-ever American gold medal in an individual cross-country event at worlds. At the 2018 Olympics, she teamed with Kikkan Randall to win gold in the sprint event — the first Olympic gold for any American cross-country skiers. At the 2022 Games, she became the first American to win an Olympic medal in an individual sprint, taking bronze. She also took second in the 30km skate in Beijing, joining Koch as the only U.S. cross-country skiers with individual Olympic silver medals.
Now in her 14th World Cup season, Diggins is having one of her best years. She has six World Cup wins — her second most in a single season, behind 2023-24 — and placed third overall in the Tour de Ski, the sport’s most grueling event, in January. This despite having an additional challenge this year — she was diagnosed with plantar fasciitis, an inflammation of tissue in the foot, in January.
“I am super proud of how mentally tough I was,” Diggins said of Sunday’s race in an audio message sent to media members. “I really felt like I was just super-focused and engaged and just pushing so hard for even every half a second, and that always feels good when you cross a finish line and you really know, that was everything I had with this day and my body.”
The World Cup tour’s final two stops are in Talinn, Estonia, on Wednesday for a sprint race and Lahti, Finland, next weekend for two individual races, a team sprint, and the official crowning of the season’s champions. Team races don’t award points for the individual standings.
Diggins also leads in the distance standings by 95 points over Norway’s Astrid Øyre Slind with just one race left and is sixth in the sprint standings.
On Sunday, Diggins reached the finish line in 25 minutes, 49.3 seconds and fell to the snow to catch her breath. She was in second at the time in the interval start race, behind Norwegian great Therese Johaug. Moments later, Sweden’s Moa Ilar crossed the line in 25:24.6, 24.7 seconds faster than Diggins. That time would hold up, and Ilar eventually topped the podium ahead of Norway’s Heidi Weng, 1.6 seconds back, and Carl, 10 seconds back.
But the day’s biggest prize went to Diggins, who said she delighted in watching her coach and wax technician, Jason Cork — whose birthday was Sunday — “crunch the numbers” and figure out she’d won the title.
“Today, that was the big highlight,” she said.
(Photo: Amanda Pedersen Giske / NTB / AFP via Getty Images)
